By Scott Paul, Beacon Broadband Customer Services Director

In a world where technology reigns supreme, finding the right tools to enhance our everyday lives can feel like discovering superpowers.

A new employee who recently shadowed a fiber installation reminded me of how Beacon Broadband services come to the rescue with dynamic tools for businesses and individuals. Beacon Broadband increased employment opportunities in the Brookings community by hiring three additional customer service representatives.

One of the actions we have implemented is cross-training new hires in all departments. We don’t need experts in everything, but we want them to see all the moving pieces that make up our business. For instance, we may send them to a hub site to see the inner workings of our network. Perhaps they shadow our outside plant manager to see how the mainline is strung or a bore machine operates.

One of our new hires observed firsthand what a fiber installation looked like for a commercial customer. The items that stood out for this new employee were the elements the business had implemented before our arrival. This business hired an IT professional to manage its network. They had a switch to route the communications from office to office with a firewall to protect devices on the network. The business had chosen to flag inappropriate content and block key websites from using the bandwidth provided.

The new hire said, “It was so amazing to see everything a business does to manage their communications.” All I could say in response was, “If you think that’s amazing, Beacon Broadband’s Managed Wi-Fi for our residential customers is going to be like a superpower.”

Beacon Broadband Managed Wi-Fi services and the dynamic duo supported by Calix Experience IQ and Protect IQ— available through the Beacon Home app— offer Beacon Broadband customers a range of benefits that make them feel like true superheroes.

Fasten your cape and get ready to explore the included customer benefits of Beacon Broadband’s Managed Wi-Fi.

What is Managed Wi-Fi?

Managed Wi-Fi is a premium service offered to broadband subscribers by many leading communications service providers. While every CSP offers basic internet connectivity, the managed Wi-Fi experience takes service to the next level.

As its name suggests, managed Wi-Fi allows Beacon Broadband to provide cutting-edge tools that allow customers to optimize their everyday Wi-Fi experience, ensuring they enjoy the fastest speeds, the best performance and Wi-Fi coverage that extends throughout their homes.

At Beacon Broadband, we provide the Beacon Home app and the enhanced experiences of ExperienceIQ and ProtectIQ, which are included in our internet packages.

Beacon Home App

When it comes to managing your home Wi-Fi network, the Beacon Home app heightens your speed. Like having your loyal sidekick ready to assist and empower you on your technology journey, here’s how it saves the day.

Download the app and with a few simple clicks, you can easily navigate the app to:

• Reset the primary SSID or password for Wi-Fi.
• Run bandwidth tests to monitor network performance for speeds up to 2.5 Gbps.
• View and assign connected devices to profiles, places and/or priority networks.
• Create a guest, work-from-home or custom wireless network(s).
• Add new devices to the network quickly.
• Set parental controls and view advanced security options.
• Set restrictions for the whole network, regardless of user or device.

ExperienceIQ

If the Beacon Home app is all about speed, then ExperiencelQ is the X-ray vision for your network. You set the rules for your home network experience. With so much of everyday life now conducted online— from work to school to leisure—it is important to put parameters around online activity.

With ExperiencelQ, you can easily create and enforce online rules for users and devices in your home network.

Features provide our customers peace of mind by protecting children from inappropriate or harmful content and allowing set time limits and prioritizing applications and devices on the home network that access the home Wi-Fi. This is especially important for customers who work from home.

When enabled inside the Beacon Home app, ExperiencelQ allows you to create a profile and associate specific devices to each member of the household.

By using ExperiencelQ, you can:

• Receive a view of each user’s approximate time on different applications.
• Use content filtering to ensure the online safety of children and other family members.
• Schedule times to prevent family members from accessing the internet or specific applications.
• Set the duration for how long individual applications can be used.
• Prioritize applications and devices on the network that access the home’s Wi-Fi.

ProtectIQ This service is all about the security of the connected home, using your power of strength to defeat villains and their plots to gain access to your information.

ProtectIQ is a network-level security application that works quietly in the background and proactively keeps malicious websites, viruses and intrusions away from your home networking space.

ProtectIQ leverages a large cloud database of known virus and ransomware threats. By looking for the specific signatures of these threats in real-time, it can help prevent data transfer before a malicious payload is delivered to any vulnerable devices in your network.

As new threats emerge daily, the database is updated continuously to offer protection against the latest threats.

With ProtectIQ in their home networks, our customers can keep their data and assets shielded from hostile activity over the internet. By offering ProtectIQ security, the Beacon Home app protects the entire home or business network and provides our customers with an added layer of protection for connected devices.

All of these tools were shared with our new heroes in the Customer Service Department—Kassandra Marley, Tori Powell and Chris Burton—who are ready to serve your fast fiber internet needs.

Wi-Fi is just Wi-Fi. Managed Wi-Fi is like having an advanced commercial service within the walls of your home.

Beacon Broadband’s Managed Wi-Fi elevates a customer’s network experience to new heights. Add in the fact that it’s included at no additional cost at Beacon Broadband, and it’s hard to find any kryptonite in the managed Wi-Fi.

Embrace your inner hero. Join forces with the Beacon Home app and prepare to enjoy a tech journey that feels like a thrilling adventure.

 

Pictured: Beacon Broadband customer service representatives stand ready to enhance your Wi-Fi experience. From left to right are Kassandra Marley, Tyler Wilson, Chris Burton and Tori Powell.