Hudson Valley Wireless Success Story

How the largest independent fixed wireless operator in New York uses Preseem to deliver premium QoE for their subscribers and save on support costs.

About Hudson Valley Wireless

For 20 years, Hudson Valley Wireless has been delivering high speed internet to rural communities in upstate New York.

Based in the state capital of Albany, Hudson Valley Wireless is dedicated to providing broadband internet access to unserved and underserved communities across New York state.

Hudson Valley Wireless logo
With a network covering over 3,500 square miles and passing over 120,000 homes and 8,500 businesses, they now operate the largest independent fixed wireless network in all of New York, delivering last mile and middle mile connectivity to a growing base of rural and remote communities.

Hudson Valley Wireless started using Preseem around three years ago, and recently ran an experiment using the platform to temporarily double all the plan speeds to see if there was any noticeable impact on the network.

As Jason Guzzo, General Manager of Hudson Valley Wireless explained, the experiment was done with subscriber quality of experience (QoE) firmly in mind.

“Our motto at Hudson Valley Wireless is ‘High-Speed Internet with Hometown Service,’” he said. “Our teams are always focused on providing the best user experience. We have aligned ourselves with best-of-breed manufacturers and invested millions of dollars in deploying Carrier Grade LTE equipment, Licensed Microwave, Transport, and Managed Wireless. We deploy services in a competitive environment and our customers have access to a variety of wireline providers. Our team needed a product to shape the traffic allowing us to deliver ultra-fast service and focus on the user experience.”

Depiction of a network in a city

Preseem Helps Hudson Valley Enforce Plan Speeds Seamlessly

Guzzo was happy to report that Preseem passed the test with flying colors, with the platform able to show the impact of plan speed increases (minimal, in this case) before they were advertised to customers.

“The results are very positive,” he said. “Hudson Valley Wireless delivers packages with speeds up to 200-Mbps to residential subscribers. Our network is able to provide smooth connections allowing subscribers to work from home and stream video. Preseem allows us to provide smooth transmission of real-time and near real-time applications, leaving a lot more bandwidth for the consumers.”

He added: “The Preseem team was great to work with. The software is easy to use and the engineers are experts at integrations.”

Happy woman working on laptop

Keeping Things Simple and Lowering Support Costs with Preseem

Looking back a few years, Guzzo said the platform’s simplicity was the key factor in Hudson Valley Wireless’ initial purchase of Preseem.

“We have tried a few different rate shapers through the years. Most of these products provided basic bandwidth throttling and were too complex to administer or restrict traffic instead of better network performance. Preseem was easy to configure, and it simply works,” he said.

Beyond rate shaping, Preseem has also helped Hudson Valley Wireless gain a deeper understanding of their network, while helping to reduce support costs and increase efficiency.

“The solution gives us a good visualization into what applications are important to our subscribers, (as well as) network capacity and areas where we should focus on improving,” said Guzzo. “Since we implemented the changes, our support calls have dropped. We can do more with less because the network is being managed properly.”

All of which makes it easy for Hudson Valley Wireless to recommend Preseem to other internet service providers, large or small.

“We would absolutely recommend Preseem to other ISPs,” said Guzzo. “The engineering and support team are excellent to work with and the solution easy to administer. In short, Preseem fixes some of the underlying issues with TCP delivery allowing us to deliver a better customer experience.”