By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman
Wi-Fi World Congress Mountain View hosts 400+ passionate Wi-Fi experts
Last week’s Wi-Fi World Congress – produced by WiFi NOW and held at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA – collected more than 400 passionate Wi-Fi experts under one roof for three days of conferencing and exhibitions. The event featured the first ever Wi-Fi HaLow Global Summit (attended by more than 100 delegates), the OpenWiFi Global Summit, and two days of Wi-Fi World Congress programs featuring the world’s leading Wi-Fi industry speakers. We’re absolutely delighted about the event and we’ve decided we will return to the Computer History Museum for WWC USA 2026 at around the same time next year. It’s the perfect location to support the broad Silicon Valley-based Wi-Fi ecosystem.
First ever Wi-Fi HaLow Global Summit attracts 100+ attendees
For the first time ever Wi-Fi World Congress featured the Wi-Fi HaLow Global Summit, which attracted more than 100 attendees. The event took place on April 28 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California and featured the world’s leading Wi-Fi HaLow technology companies as speakers and sponsors. The case for Wi-Fi HaLow IoT connectivity is growing stronger and the market for HaLow is expected to expand significantly in coming years. Among speakers and sponsors were Morse Micro, Newracom, Vantron, AsiaRF, and MegaChips.
Greg Ennis and Dorothy Stanley receive WiFi NOW Hall of Fame lifetime achievement awards
WiFi NOW Hall of Fame awards are given to individuals who have made exceptional contributions to the Wi-Fi industry – and at Wi-Fi World Congress USA in Mountain View, we’re delighted to announce two new WiFi NOW Hall of Fame members: Dorothy Stanley and Greg Ennis. Dorothy was part of the original WaveLAN team (Lucent), which evolved into the Wi-Fi we know today, and she has worked tirelessly for Wi-Fi for more than 25 years, including until recently as IEEE 802.11 working group chair and for HPE Aruba Networking (she’s still contributing to IEEE standards work and she’s still a part of HPE).
Greg Ennis co-authored the “DFWMAC” protocol that was adopted by IEEE 802.11 as the foundation for the standard in 1993 and after that he took on the role of Chief Technical Editor for the original 1997 802.11 standard. Greg co-founded and worked for Wi-Fi Alliance 1999-2016 and he is the author of the book “Beyond Everywhere – How Wi-Fi Became the World’s Most Beloved Technology” available here.
Wi-Fi Alliance marks 5-year anniversary for 6 GHz Wi-Fi
April 23 2025 marked 5 years since the FCC signed 6 GHz Wi-Fi into law – and since then the Wi-Fi industry has embraced 6 GHz Wi-Fi massively by releasing more than 5,000 6 GHz-capable (and certified) product types (also read here). While the US & Canada leads in 6 Ghz spectrum adoption, most countries across the globe have allocated some 6 GHz spectrum to Wi-Fi although the battle to secure in particular the upper 6 GHz band for Wi-Fi continus. For more see here.
Notre Dame Stadium’s outdoor Wi-Fi 6E (with AFC) doubles connectivity capacity
Last week Notre Dame Stadium became the first higher education institution to deploy an outdoor Wi-Fi 6E network. According to this news release the deployment includes 1100 indoor and outdoor APs, expands coverage by 20x, doubles capacity, and increases Wi-Fi power by 60x. AFC functionality – required for standard power Wi-Fi operation in the 6 GHz band – is provided by Federated Wireless while HPE is responsible for the APs. Notre Dame says up to 90% of 130,000 students are expected to rely on Wi-Fi 6E-capable devices by end of summer as the university is rolling out Wi-Fi 6E networks across academic, residential, research, and other spaces.
/Claus.
