After recently welcoming BlueportiQ as a new member of the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA), we were honoured to sit down with Urbino Lobo, VP Sales EMEA, to discuss a number of different topics.

Can you please introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about BlueportiQ?

My name is Urbino Lobo, and I am the Vice President of Sales for BlueportiQ. I have been in the technology industry for 20 years, with the last ten focused on promoting and selling Wi-Fi connectivity solutions. BlueportiQ is a privately-owned company from North America. The company’s passion stems from over 20 years of experience in creating and managing networks under a sister company… resulting in the development of a game-changing solution we proudly call VAULT™.

BlueportiQ’s mission is to make Wi-Fi available everywhere through a simplified, cost-efficient, and totally secure roaming mechanism. How does the company achieve this mission?

As the centralized authentication system available anywhere in the globe, VAULT enables our mission. VAULT allows the creation of unique Wi-Fi passwords or credentials for use on any network regardless of the broadcasted Wi-Fi name. VAULT is fully hardware agnostic and does not require a dedicated on-premises device.

  • Why Simplified?… VAULT is a home-like experience for the user with a single sign-on process. Only with VAULT, we take the experience outside of the home to any public Wi-Fi network. It’s simplified onboarding that leads to easy Wi-Fi roaming. Every time a user arrives to a familiar network, their device is automatically connected, secured, and identified. VAULT learns the location of where the device is connected, manages the network policies for that user, and accounts for all traffic until the device leaves the network. This unique connection occurs automatically without user intervention.
  • Why Cost-Efficient?… With zero upfront cost, VAULT utilizes existing hardware on the network with minimal, if any, requirements.
  • Why Secure?…VAULT only operates on secure Wi-Fi networks. The user selects the appropriate SSID and enters their unique VAULT passphrase, thereby encrypting communication between the user device and the network. Simultaneously, the user session is placed in a dedicated VLAN, creating isolation from other network devices.

How has 2021 looked for BlueportiQ, and what does the company have in store for the rest of the year?

Our production environment started earlier this year and we’re already approaching 100k sessions daily! This milestone is very exciting and a turning point for BlueportiQ. For the remainder of 2021, we’ll increase our footprint targeting multi-family and enterprise networks and expect to reach our first 1M sessions daily by the end of the year. Our roadmap indicates improved support for new technologies such as WPA3 along with additional API features like the ability for residents to self-service a bulk Internet package together with a payment mechanism. We’ll continue interoperability testing with new strategic Wi-Fi manufacturers while adding to the list of certified and supported equipment… even though we’re agnostic and integrate with most access point and CPE manufacturers.

What does BlueportiQ hope to achieve through its WBA membership?

The WBA and BlueportiQ share similar objectives – to bring more relevance to Wi-Fi networks and to simplify the user experience. This goal can only be achieved if roaming between cellular to Wi-Fi is secure, seamless, agnostic, and accountable. Partnering with the WBA provides BlueportiQ the opportunity to voice our experience and unique approach to roaming. We are currently working with the WBA to actively join industry workgroups and to develop a seamless integration between our products and the Open Roaming framework. We aim to be an “Identity Provider” with the value-add capability of aggregating all Wi-Fi authentication technologies into a single location, acting as a “traffic broker” between operators.

Learn more about BlueportiQ by visiting the company’s official website.