American Bandwidth

Many CIOs and CTOs are faced with the problem of poor indoor cellular coverage in their managed facilities. Employee and visitor complaints are frequent, calls are dropped, and frustration runs rampant.

In most markets, 5G networks have been broadly deployed and offer a great quality of experience outdoors. Most 5G spectrum, however, is in the mid-band range or higher, making it very difficult to penetrate the walls and even windows of modern buildings.

Visitors and staff often must walk to specific zones or even exit buildings altogether to find coverage.

The commonly offered solutions, such as DAS and Private Networks, are expensive, complex and can take a long time to deploy.

At the same time, Wi-Fi networks, starting with Wi-Fi 5, have gained capabilities that make them an excellent candidate for enabling indoor coverage for smartphones – provided two essential capabilities: security and carrier connectivity are added to the mix.

Ameriband Connect Provides the Solution

At American Bandwidth, we took a hard look at available technology and were able to design an elegant, inexpensive solution for indoor coverage that can be deployed immediately. 

Ameriband Connect is an industry standard solution to enable your Wi-Fi network to behave like an indoor cellular network. Relying on the Passpoint® standard and our relationships with wireless carriers, we can automatically and securely connect every visitor device with SIM credentials thus avoiding the need for captive/visitor portals, open Wi-Fi networks, having to train users where/how to login, etc.
Almost every smartphone in the US has a Passpoint profile preinstalled in the factory, and when you buy a new phone, it has Wi-Fi calling enabled by default.

These users, when they’re seamlessly connected to your network, have a great experience using apps and data services, as well as Wi-Fi calling. From the end-user perspective, they are having a great cellular experience in your buildings and facilities, everywhere you have Wi-Fi coverage.

The Ameriband Connect solution includes specific guidance to optimize your network for Wi-Fi calling and videoconferencing, including the enablement of fast roaming and validating firewall rules to be sure devices on your network can access carrier Wi-Fi calling servers.

Enabling our solution is a simple configuration on your existing enterprise Wi-Fi network that can be completed in about one hour using our white-glove service. Employee and customer complaints stop almost immediately, allowing CIOs and CTOs to focus on other priorities.

Ameriband Connect has been deployed in thousands of facilities nationwide. This includes high-density, high-usage venues such as stadiums, concert venues and airports, medium-use venues such as hospitals, higher-ed and K-12 schools, and lower-impact venues such as offices and retail chains.

Wi-Fi Provides the Foundation

Today, enterprise-grade Wi-Fi networks are carefully planned for capacity and coverage and include a professional RF design.

Wi-Fi 5 and newer equipment supports “fast roaming” which allows devices to quickly hand off between access points to assure an optimal experience with Wi-Fi calling and videoconferencing.

Wi-Fi 6 networks improve upon this by using the same spectrum scheduling algorithms as LTE and 5G networks, massively increasing efficiency.

Wi-Fi 7 provides even greater spectral efficiency while gaining access to 1200Mhz of new spectrum in the 6Ghz band. It even includes “deterministic latency” to allow real-time applications including AR and VR to request very fast response times and reliably receive them.

With such strong strides in indoor wireless networks, the obvious solution to most cellular coverage problems is to assure a smooth, secure and automatic transition between outdoor 5G networks and indoor Wi-Fi networks.

Wi-Fi and Ameriband Connect deliver on that promise.

Learn more at get.ameriband.com/more-info