Technology

Comcast today is officially launching its own Wi-Fi extender devices called xFi Pods that help to address problems with weak Wi-Fi signals in parts of a customerhome due to things like the use of building materials that disrupt signals, or even just the homedesign. The launch follows Comcastannouncement last year that it was investingin the mesh router maker Plume, which offers plug-in &pods& that help extend Wi-Fi signals.

The company said that it would launch its own xFi pods that pair with Comcastgateways to its own customers as a result of that deal.

Those pods were initially available in select markets, including Boston, Chicago and Denver, ahead of todaynationwide launch.

The pods themselves are hexagon-shopped devices that plug in to any electrical outlet in the home, and then pair with ComcastxFi Wireless Gateway or the xFi Advanced Gateway to help Wi-Fi signals extend to the hard-to-reach areas of the home.

The pods work with the Comcast Gateways to continuously monitor and optimize the Wi-Fi connections, Comcast explains, while its cloud-based management service evaluates the homeWi-Fi environment to make sure all the connected devices are using the best signal bands and Wi-Fi channels. Plus, the devices are smart enough to self-monitor their own performance, diagnose issues and &heal& themselves, as needed, says Comcast.

However, early reviews of Plumepods were mixed. CNET said the system was slow and the pods were too expensive, for example. But Engadget found the system had the lowest latency, compared with competitors, and helped devices roam more easily and accurately.

Comcast has addressed some of the earlier complaints. The pods are now much more affordable, for starters. While they&ve been selling on the Plume website for $329 for a six-pack, Comcastsix-pack is $199. A three-pack is also available for $119, instead of the $179 when bought directly from Plume.

More importantly, perhaps, is that Comcastsystem is different from the pods featured in earlier reviews.

While Plume technology is a component of the new pods, they are not Plume devices, Comcast tells TechCrunch. Instead, Comcast licensed the Plume technology, then reconfigured some aspects of it in order to integrate xFi. It also designed its own pods in-house.

In addition, Comcastengineers developed new firmware and new software in-house to make it easy to pair the pods with a Comcast Gateway.

The Comcast xFi pods can be bought from its own website, the xFi app and in some Xfinity retail stores.

The xFi app (for iOS and Android) is also how customers can manage and view the connection status of the pods.

Comcast says it will make buying pods even easier later this year by offering a monthly payment plan.

The company has been upgrading its Wi-Fi offering in recent months as a means of staying competitive. Last year it launched the Xfinity xFi platform to help customers better manage their home Wi-Fi network with features like device monitoring, troubleshooting, &bedtime& schedules for families, internet pause and otherparental controls.

Comcast declined to say how many pods were sold in its first trial markets, only that the response so far has been positive and boosted the companyNet Promoter Score as a result.

Image credits: Comcast

Canonical, the company best known for its Ubuntu Linux distribution, is on a path to an IPO. Thatsomething Canonical founder and CEO Mark Shuttleworth has been quite open about. But don&t expect that IPO to happen this year.

&We did decide as a company — and thatnot just my decision — but we did decide that we want to have a commercial focus,& Shuttleworth told me during an interview at the OpenStack Summit in Vancouver, Canada today. &So we picked cloud and IoT as the areas to develop that. And being a public company, given that most of our customers are now global institutions, it makes for us also to be a global institution. I think it would be great for my team to be part of a public company. It would be a lot of work, but we are not shy of work.&

Unsurprisingly, Shuttleworth didn&t want to talk about the exact timeline for the IPO, though. &We will do the right thing at the right time,& he said. That right time is not this year, though. &No, there is a process that you have to go through and that takes time. We know what we need to hit in terms of revenue and growth and we&re on track.&

Getting the company on track was very much Shuttleworthfocus over the course of the last year. That meant killing projects like the Ubuntu Phone (which Shuttleworth said was &painful,&) as well as the Unity desktop environment. Instead, the companyfocus is now squarely on helping enterprises stand up and manage their private clouds — no matter whether those run OpenStack, Kubernetes or a combination of those.

That doesn&t mean Canonical has forgotten about the desktop, though. Shuttleworth told me that the desktop team still has the same size as before. He also noted that the desktop is still a passion for him.

&We took some big risks a year ago,& he said. &We cut a bunch of stuff that people loved about us. We had to see if people were going to respond commercially.& That move is paying off now, though. During a keynote earlier today, Shuttleworth noted that Canonical is now in talks for about 200 new deployments for 2018 — up from about 40 in 2017.

While the hype around OpenStack has died down considerably over the course of the last two years, Canonical is still seeing good growth there — especially now that there are only a few major players left, including RedHat, which he name-checked a number of times during both his keynote and our conversation.

Why are things going well for Canonical when others couldn&t make a business out of OpenStack &I believe for this community — the OpenStack community — itreally important to deliver on the underlying promise of more cost-effective infrastructure,& he said. &You can love technology and you can have new projects and it can all be kumbaya and open source. In practice, to me, most of the stuff that we saw at OpenStack was bullshit. The stuff that really matters is computers, virtual machines, virtual disks, virtual networks. So we ruthlessly focus on delivering that and then also solving all the problems around that.&

Today, Canonical can deliver an OpenStack platform to an enterprise in two weeks — with all of the hardware and services in place. &I don&t mind being a bit controversial because we are delivering the promise of OpenStack,& he said. &The promise of OpenStack wasn&t delivering endless summits and endless new projects and endless new ideas.& That, he said, is exactly the kind of bullshit he was referring to in his earlier comments.

Looking ahead, Shuttleworth noted that heespecially interested in what Canonical can do around IoT solutions, too. Thanks to Ubuntu Core and its Snap system, it has all the tools in place, including a lightweight management layer. The company also is focusing heavily on getting more customers in the financial services sector. No doubt, having a bunch of large banks and brokerages as reference customers will help the company when it comes to its IPO — and my guess is that we can expect that one to happen next year.

Epic Games doesn&t want the party to stop.

The gaming company announced today that it plans to funnel $100 million into Fortnite eSports competitions for the &2018-2019 season,& a move which will undoubtedly drive talent and enthusiasm to the battle royale title.

The company announced the investment in a short blog post:

In the 2018 & 2019 season, Epic Games will provide $100,000,000 to fund prize pools for Fortnite competitions. We&re getting behind competitive play in a big way, but our approach will be different & we plan to be more inclusive, and focused on the joy of playing and watching the game.

Fortnite has had an explosive period of growth over the past several months since the release of its battle royale flavor following the popularity of PUBG, but Epic Games seems to be doubling down on ensuring the continued popularity of the recent multiplayer gameplay trend.

Unlike a lot of popular eSports titles, Fortnite is available across a pretty wide variety of platforms beyond just the PC, with console and mobile flavors also available. Epic hasn&t released much in the way of usage numbers lately, but the game hit 2 million concurrent players in January and it has undoubtedly surged in popularity since then.

Whether the young title can continue to draw attention and crowds in the face of fresher talent moving forward will depend heavily on streamers and eSports leagues continuing to show interest, but $100 million in investment in prize pools will almost certainly prove to be quite helpful.