Broadband Communities Editorial

Bios:

Spectrum Community Solutions is Charter Communication’s brand dedicated to multifamily properties. Spectrum Community Solutions delivers industry-leading broadband connectivity solutions to apartments, single-family gated communities, off-campus student housing, senior residences, RV parks and marinas.

Adam Moore is the Group Vice President of Customer Operations for Spectrum Community Solutions. His organization includes Product and Technology, Customer Experience and Customer Service with four U.S.-based call centers dedicated to serving Spectrum’s bulk customers.

Sean: Spectrum Community Solutions has been a mainstay in the multifamily industry providing bulk services.  What do you think drives your success?

Adam: Two things stand out in my mind: Customer service and scale.

First, by creating Spectrum Community Solutions as a vertical business unit within Charter Communications, we demonstrated our focused commitment to the multifamily industry. We own nationwide sales, operations and, most importantly, customer service. In 2019, we recognized that our clients would be better served through specialized customer service teams, so we carved out dedicated call centers that serve both the residents and property staff of our bulk communities. Our clients appreciate that the call center staff understands their needs, can address their issues and won’t send them to another area of our business in order to resolve their concerns.

Second, we proved that we can scale bulk services. Charter has over 800,000 miles of hybrid-fiber network across our 41-state footprint. Spectrum Community Solutions provides a portfolio of Internet, Managed WiFi and Video products to meet our clients’ needs, and we deliver these products over multiple architectures. For new construction properties, we typically build fiber; however, the majority of our clients operate a large portfolio of existing properties, and these clients prefer solutions that do not require construction. That is why we offer those clients our innovative Advanced Community WiFi, which utilizes the existing coax network with no need for disruptive or time-consuming property rewires.

Sean: That’s interesting. I thought to get symmetrical speeds a property would need fiber?

Adam: On the contrary, as a result of our ongoing investments, we will soon have the capability to offer speeds up to 2x1 Gbps over our existing hybrid-fiber infrastructure using high-split technology. This network evolution, which will soon be available to our Spectrum Community solutions clients, is as simple as changing out the current node to our next-generation node technology utilizing distributed access architecture. Since we are using the existing wiring, there is no construction necessary and no need to dig up the property or cut into a resident’s walls. And as we deploy DOCSIS 4.0, we will have the capability to deliver speeds up to 10x1 Gbps on this architecture.

Sean: That’s a lot of speed. How much speed do residents really need?

Adam: Most online activities today, such as streaming video, surfing the web and gaming, need only a small fraction of that amount of speed. Our investment today is about evolving our network for the future. Technology and how people engage online is continuously evolving, and we want to be ready to meet our customers’ speed needs – now and in the future.

It is good to keep in mind that typical Internet usage remains heavily skewed to downstream activity. Even following the broader adoption of video conferencing applications during the height of the pandemic, downstream traffic continues to dominate usage, at a ratio of 14 to 1 versus upstream traffic. This is easy to understand when you consider that a Zoom call requires less than 4 Mbps of bandwidth both down and up, while a 4K HD stream requires 15 Mbps of downstream bandwidth and nearly no upstream bandwidth. With the majority of Internet traffic being streaming video, this quickly adds up to asymmetrical demand.

So, while we are excited to have the capability to provide symmetrical gigabit and multi-gig products, these will mostly appeal to property owners who prioritize branding their communities as technology-forward, with a best-in-class Internet amenity.  Spectrum’s Standard (300 Mbps) and Ultra (500 Mbps) speed tiers remain our most popular options today.

Sean: Managed WiFi has been a popular topic at Broadband Communities. What trends are you seeing there?

Adam: We’ve been installing Managed WiFi for over seven years, and we have certainly experienced increasing demand. I’d say the customer trends are toward control, customization and always-on connectivity.

Property owners continue to turn to Managed WiFi as a valuable amenity that not only provides ubiquitous, always-on connectivity and enables IoT solutions, but also gives them some control. But we’ve evolved our product set to provide higher value features to residents while making it easier for property staff to administer features. An example of this is our Advanced Community WiFi, which utilizes our award-winning WiFi 6 router and is the bulk version of our Advanced WiFi residential product. Advanced Community WiFi provides residents the ability to self-install their router and to customize their own network. Most Managed WiFi products don’t give residents that type of control and security, whereas Advanced Community WiFi features parental controls and proactive security monitoring to mitigate the growing number of threats that target WiFi devices. 

For property staff, while the setup of Advanced Community WiFi is hands-off, they still have control and visibility into the WiFi service like they would with Managed WiFi. Additionally, Advanced Community WiFi includes installation of WiFi in common areas and, if the property needs an always-on network to connect IoT devices, we extend a network for that purpose. Since we’ve launched it, Advanced Community WiFi has become our most popular Bulk Internet product.  

Sean: Let’s talk more about ubiquitous connectivity.  What does “ubiquitous” mean for Spectrum? 

Adam: To us, ubiquitous connectivity means the seamless combination of Internet, WiFi and Mobile with Gig-powered wireless everywhere Spectrum operates. Customers want fast, reliable and secure connectivity inside and outside of the home for all of their devices. At Spectrum, we offer a compelling combination of the fastest Internet, the fastest WiFi and the fastest overall speeds in Mobile from our combined WiFi and cellular with nationwide 5G. Having superiority in all three, along with enhanced security from Advanced WiFi, provides the best overall experience. For example, our Advanced WiFi detects Spectrum Mobile devices and not only automatically connects them to WiFi but also boosts the device speed up to a gigabit. While there is a lot of attention being paid to the transition of cellular networks to 5G, WiFi 6 and beyond will continue to deliver faster speeds than cellular. This has translated to increased mobile device usage over WiFi – now more than 85 percent of Spectrum Mobile customers’ activity occurs over WiFi. For MDU developers, this trend has shifted focus away from Distributed Antennae Systems (DAS) to community WiFi solutions.

Sean: You mentioned video products earlier. As the streaming wars continue, are your clients finding that Bulk Video is still an important amenity? 

Adam: The majority of our clients still purchase bulk video solutions because video remains valuable. There is more value in a technology amenity that includes Internet, Advanced WiFi and Video, compared to one that includes only Internet. Granted, the video landscape is ever-changing, so continued innovation here is important. Spectrum has continued to invest in providing our customers with a best-in-class video experience. We’ve developed the nation’s most-watched streaming platform on a per-household basis – the Spectrum TV App – and we offer both large and skinny video packages that can stream through the Spectrum TV App or through our traditional cable boxes. And through our joint venture with Comcast, we plan to offer in the coming year a next-generation streaming platform called Xumo on branded 4K streaming devices and smart TVs, providing customers with a world-class user experience and navigation.

Sean: Any final thoughts to share with our readers?

Adam: Simply that we are excited for the future at Spectrum Community Solutions. We have a product set and network capability that is difficult for our competitors to match, and we have a network evolution plan that ensures we continue to deliver the best-in-class connectivity services and products that our multifamily clients and residents depend on.