By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman
What can smaller companies do to stand out in the marketplace? The answer is simple: They can innovate – and the best smaller companies innovate at a much faster rate than large corporations. Case in point: Taiwan’s AsiaRF. CEO Paul Lai founded AsiaRF in 1997 and today the company leads in innovative Wi-Fi HaLow client and network solutions, Wi-Fi 7 modules, and more. The latest is the HaLowFly USB dongle.
Wi-Fi HaLow may still be a small market but the all over the world innovators are turning to Wi-Fi HaLow to create a new breed of low-cost wireless solutions. Taiwan’s AsiaRF has been developing Wi-Fi HaLow clients and APs since 2023 and today, the company’s is one of the most creative and successful in the Wi-Fi HaLow space. AsiaRF’s latest product is a testament to HaLow’s flexibility and potential.
The HaLowFly USB-C dongle client is the latest addition to AsiaRF’s expansive HaLow product portfolio that also includes indoor and outdoor HaLow gateways as well as various other client options. “What’s important to understand about Wi-Fi HaLow is that it is enormously versatile, easy to scale, and very low cost when you look at its coverage, client support, and performance capabilities. The wireless world has never before had anything like this available. We believe HaLow is looking at a very bright future,” Paul Lai says.
Wi-Fi HaLow doesn’t deliver gigabits of data rate but certainly delivers enough speed to cover myriads of IoT and other connectivity use cases at range. “HaLowFly delivers 16 Mbps of peak data rate and up to 400 meters of range when connected to a table-top gateway at non-line-of-sight and can reach up to 1 kilometer when the AP is raised to a height of 10 meters. It plugs into any device including Android or iOS phones and boots in 10 seconds. It easily becomes part of a HaLow IoT network that is fast to configure, deploy, and scale. The HaLowFly dongle addresses the challenge of limited HaLow devices in new product development,” he says.
AsiaRF’s HaLow solutions allow industries – including warehouses, manufacturing, agriculture, robotics, healthcare, and more – to set up wide-area Wi-Fi-based networks at the cost of perhaps a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. Meshing (see graphic below) means that HaLow networks can easily be extended to wider areas while multi-mode (2.4 GHz Wi-Fi capability) keeps non-HaLow devices connected when needed. Networks can be designed to support long range, low-rate connectivity at a few hundred kilobits per second or 10-15 Mbps using tighter AP spacing, AsiaRF says.
“HaLowFly adds even more flexibility and not least mobility to HaLow networking. Once our clients understand who easy and effective it is to build wireless IoT networks in this way, the economics of their operations change very quickly. They don’t need private 5G or other expensive proprietary systems to run their connected operations,” says Paul Lai.
Paul Lai’s team of 35 engineers also produce in-house developed Wi-Fi 7 modules (based on MediaTek’s Wi-Fi 7 chipset platform) for enterprise applications. Paul Lai has more creative products in the pipeline for 2026 including body-mounted cameras for law enforcement with multi-mode HaLow/Wi-Fi/4G connectivity. AsiaRF’s HaLow solutions will soon be upgraded to incorporate Morse Micro’s 8108 chips, which will double peak data rates, Paul Lai says.
/Claus.
