By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman
One of the most enjoyable and meaningful things we get to do at our Wi-Fi World Congress is to select and honour two new WiFi NOW Hall of Fame award winners – and as always, last week was no exception. We’re delighted to announce that Matt MacPherson, Cisco’s Wireless CTO, and VK Jones, VP at Qualcomm, are our two new inductees. Both have made exceptional lifelong contributions to the Wi-Fi industry.
Wi-Fi is the world’s single most successful technology of all time with billions of devices in use all over the world. But we wouldn’t be where we are today without the lifelong exceptional contributions of our industry’s greats. Last week’s Wi-Fi World Congress gave us an opportunity to honour two individuals who have made truly exceptional contributions to the Wi-Fi industry – and continue to do so.
Unless you have deep insider knowledge, you probably would not know that VK Jones has invented and patented much of what we consider standard Wi-Fi today, and that includes MIMO-OFDM and MU-MIMO. VK Jones was instrumental in adopting OFDM for 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi and later in the creation of the 802.11n and 802.11ac standards, which secured the introduction of the 5 GHz band into Wi-Fi. More recently, VK was the first to recognise 6 GHz opportunity. We are indebted to VK for his vision, commitment, incredibly hard work, and lifelong outstanding contributions to the Wi-Fi industry. He has rightly been called ‘The Godfather of Wi-Fi’.
Matt MacPherson has worked for Cisco for more than 30 years, most recently as Cisco’s indefatigable Wireless CTO. Matt is an exceptional industry leader with a grand vision for the proliferation and advancement of Wi-Fi as the world’s primary connectivity technology everywhere. Among his achievements is the development of the Hotspot 2.0 (Passpoint) Wi-Fi roaming standard and tireless work in advocating for 6 GHz Wi-Fi across the world.
Today Matt represents the most inspired leadership this industry has to offer in terms of industry engagement, holding board of director roles at the Wireless Broadband Alliance, CTO Innovation Forum, Wi-Fi Alliance, and FiRA. He was elected CTO of the Year by Wireless Broadband Alliance in 2023. We are honoured that Matt is a frequent speaker at our Wi-Fi World Congress.
Huge congratulations to both of our new Hall of Fame inductees! We hope that you will continue to contribute to our industry for many years yet to come.
/Claus & the WiFi NOW Team.
