Enjoying this story?
Leave your email here and we'll get you all the latest Wi-Fi news.
By Claus Hetting, Wi-Fi NOW CEO & Chairman
The reasons for Amazon’s acquisition of pioneering Wi-Fi mesh vendor eero in 2019 are becoming increasingly clear as Amazon last week released a raft of new eero and eero-powered devices for the smart home – and now also a solution for small and medium enterprises. Here’s an overview of the new products.
During a live event last week Amazon revealed a long list of new smart home devices and – perhaps not surprisingly – several of them use Wi-Fi in new and creative ways. Amazon’s Wi-Fi mesh brand eero is now incorporating its technology into more Amazon smart home devices while also expanding into enterprise SMB as well as the market for professionally installed home Wi-Fi services and hardware.
Eero says there are now six ways in which the company is improving Wi-Fi – read all the details here – and here’s the gist of it: Firstly, Amazon’s popular smart speaker Echo will now have eero’s mesh Wi-Fi built-in, which means the latest Echos can now be used as Wi-Fi extenders. Eero says the new Echo units can add up to 1,000 square feet (about 92 square meters) of Wi-Fi coverage at rates of up to 100 Mbps.
Eero also released a mobile phone hotspot backup solution, which allows your eero mesh network to connect through a mobile phone – meaning to the cellular network or another Wi-Fi network – in the event your primary fixed line broadband fails. Eero says you can connect up to eight mobile hotspots or Wi-Fi networks for backup and that the system switches over and back automatically. The new backup service will be available with the eero Plus subscription and from select ISPs, eero says.
Eero is also for the first time making inroads into the market for SMB Wi-Fi as well as the market for professionally installed (and managed) residential Wi-Fi. The latter category of connectivity products and services is relatively new and includes competitive solutions for example from NETGEAR.
Eero’s SMB and professional home Wi-Fi product line just released includes a PoE-capable wall mount Wi-Fi 6 AP delivering 2,000 square feet (185 square meters) of coverage for 100 devices. Eero’s new PoE-based Wi-Fi solution family also includes a wired PoE gateway and a Pro Installer app to guide professional installers through the deployment process, the company says.
Last but not least eero released a Wi-Fi networking solution aimed at small and medium sized business simply called ‘eero for business’. Much of the same well-known eero mesh technology with the difference being the new SMB platform that includes a customisable captive portal, compliance opt-in, multiple SSIDs, and more. Learn more about the new eero SMB solution here.
/Claus.
