By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman
Wi-Fi sensing company Origin Wireless sold for incredible US$170M
The most eye-watering Wi-Fi news of the past week – and perhaps of the entire year so far – is that Origin Wireless has been acquired by US security giant ADT for the unbelievable sum of US$170 million. The press release can be found here. Origin has been fairly well known for its work in bringing Wi-Fi sensing services to market during the past decade and has been a frequent speaker at WiFi NOW events, especially in the US. We don’t know all of the details but Origin’s most significant win – to our knowledge – was with Verizon in 2022 (read more about it here).
Wi-Fi sensing has been proposed as a method for delivering home security services based on motion detection via Wi-Fi devices. To our knowlege, no Wi-Fi sensing service from any vendor has thus far generated substantial revenue, which leaves us with the distinct impression that ADT paid probably 10 or 20 times too much for this acquisition. But we could be wrong, of course. Most commercial Wi-Fi sensing services are today delivered as free features included in home broadband services apps.
Interdigital & Turk Telekom team up for sensing using 6G and Wi-Fi
In yet another odd announcement this week, Interdigital and Turk Telekom say that they’ve demonstrated something called ‘integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) on both cellular and Wi-Fi infrastructure’. According to the statement, ISAC is destined to become part of the new 6G standard but neither party explains why this standard would be implemented on Wi-Fi infrastructure, which has had commercial sensing services and technology available for a decade at least. It is also not clear how sensing on 6G services would be useful given that most cellular services are most effective over long distances and penetrate poorly to the indoors. Make of it what you will – here’s the link to the story.
Germany’s Fritz! to showcase new Wi-Fi gateways & mesh at MWC
Leading German home gateway brand Fritz! (formerly AVM) will be showcasing a number of new Wi-Fi products at MWC – all aimed at the European markets. The Fritz!Box 6835 is a Wi-Fi 7-capable FWA home gateway combining 5G for backhaul with dual-band Wi-Fi 7 for fronthaul. The company is also introducing the Fritz! Failsafe, which offers failover to 5G backhaul in the event of fixed network service disruptions. The company is also introducing a new Wi-Fi 7 quadband repeater named 6700 Pro and has started talking about Wi-Fi 8.
Gateway and broadband infra vendor Gemtek to ‘unveil Wi-Fi 8 vision’ at MWC
No doubt Mobile World Congress 2026 – which begins today – will be ground zero for many new Wi-Fi 8 announcements during the coming week including one such from Gemtek. Gemtek has announced that it will unveil a Wi-Fi 8 vision “positioning the new standard as a foundational technology for AI-driven, service-oriented networks,” the company says. “Gemtek’s Wi-Fi 8 solutions deliver deterministic low latency, carrier-grade reliability, multi-AP coordination, and AI-assisted optimization, enabling support for immersive applications, real-time AI interaction, and large-scale residential and enterprise deployments,” says the the announcement that can be found here.
/Claus.
