By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman
Every Wi-Fi expert worth his salt will have his preferred Wi-Fi planning and survey tool – but now the choice of platform has widened significantly. Startup Sidos is challenging deeply entrenched competition with a solution that is faster, easier to use, and a lot more flexible and cost-efficient when it comes to licensing, the company says. They won’t give exact figures, but market adoption is growing quickly, and for some very good reasons, Sidos says.
There are at most three or four professional Wi-Fi planning and survey tools, and the market has heavily favoured just one. Over three years ago, the founders of Sidos correctly identified this market as ready for disruption, and now the company is riding a rising wave of adoption.
“I think we got nearly all our assumptions right very early on, including our clear goal: To democratise Wi-Fi surveys and simplify the Wi-Fi planning and troubleshooting experience. I don’t think we’ve had a client yet who hasn’t been excited about our solution after trying it out for a week or two. It’s just easier, faster, and ultimately a lot more cost-efficient,” says Konstantin Khitrik, CMO of Sidos.
Konstantin Khitrik – former head of marketing at Ekahau – and Mika Hakala – founder and CEO of Sidos and former CEO of Ekahau – are both veterans of the industry. They decided to design everything in-house early on. “To deliver something truly innovative, we needed complete control of the entire solution from the Cloud UI/UX down to the hardware chipset. We also knew that the key to getting Wi-Fi planning and troubleshooting right is high-performance, accurate measurement hardware, which by the way is really not easy to get right. Today, our Sidos Wave is the fastest and most advanced measurement device on the market by a long shot,” he says.
Another critical part of Sidos’ success is getting the pricing and licensing model right. “It’s common practice in the market today to restrict tool usage to one individual, which means there is no sharing. It’s a source of big frustration for many organizations because it doesn’t allow for a cost-effective way to service their customers. We knew that, and we wanted to offer a more flexible option,” Konstantin Khitrik says.
Sidos offers measurement hardware and cloud platform access at a lump sum subscription fee per month, and users can freely share the measurement device with partners and colleagues. “Sometimes the Wi-Fi expert may want to ask a colleague, an integration partner, or even the client to do a quick survey, and now they can do that without it costing more. You can even mail the device or leave it onsite. This opens up some very interesting use cases and business models for our customers,” he says.
Sidos features to take out the guesswork
Meanwhile Sidos is incorporating some unique features into its platform including a machine learning engine called ‘Sidos AI’. Sidos AI uses survey data to calculate wall and floor (or ceiling) attenuation values, which reduces the risk of falling into a frequent predictive design pitfall: guesswork.
“From the user’s perspective, it’s just a few clicks to transform a survey into a predictive simulation that models all kinds of useful scenarios. Sidos AI can even show a Wi-Fi coverage heatmap for rooms the user couldn’t access during a survey,” Konstantin Khitrik says.
Another recent innovation is the use of ‘micro apps’ that run on the Sidos Wave device. Micro apps are fast and convenient ways of performing a range of troubleshooting and planning tasks without needing a phone or a laptop. For example, the ‘Mesh’ micro-app is used to guide the Wi-Fi installer to the best on-site placement of mesh APs, a solution that Sidos says is attractive to home broadband service providers. Deploying the right number of mesh devices in the correct locations will reduce the number of customer service calls, which means lower OPEX for the CSP, Sidos says.
“Our Mesh app is by far the fastest way for example to make sure that a home broadband subscriber gets the absolute best performance from their Wi-Fi mesh system, and it can be easily used by any field technician, even by a person with no Wi-Fi experience. This is just one of many micro-app applications, and we’ve got many more in the pipeline,” Konstantin Khitrik says.
At WiFi NOW we’re delighted to have the innovators and disruptors from Sidos as a new partner. Also: Experience Sidos’ solutions live and in person at Wi-Fi World Congress 2025 in Mountain View, California, on April 28-30.
/Claus.
