By Claus Hetting, Wi-Fi NOW CEO & Chairman
Here’s the lowdown: We believe 2020 is going to be one of the most consequential years in the 20-year history of Wi-Fi – perhaps even the most important. Here’s your (non-exhaustive) reference guide to what’s important in Wi-Fi this year and what we will be focusing on. There will be no shortage of innovation and plenty of new opportunities to dig into for entrepreneurs and established giants alike.
The road to 6 GHz Wi-Fi (Wi-Fi 6E) & the opportunity ahead
We can’t repeat this enough times: The biggest opportunity in Wi-Fi (and in wireless in general) in a generation is the release of the 6 GHz band. Releasing 1.2 GHz more spectrum (in the US) is not just an opportunity, it’s a paradigm shift in wireless. We will dig into all the details to help you make sense of this new windfall. See more about what 6 GHz can do for home connectivity here and discover more about what this will mean for performance here.
Our belief is that 6 GHz Wi-Fi – dubbed Wi-Fi 6E by the Wi-Fi Alliance – will impact every wireless segment, from the home to the carpeted enterprise, to industrial IoT, to e-learning in schools, and not least to fixed wireless access (FWA), plus a lot more. All of this will continue to drive up the utility of Wi-Fi while also driving down the cost of connectivity.
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Wi-Fi 6: Next generation Wi-Fi for the smart home 2.0
Meanwhile Wi-Fi 6 continues to ramp up faster than any new Wi-Fi standard in history (and also a lot faster than 5G). Lots of current Wi-Fi 6 focus is on the smart home 2.0 – and the reason for that is simple: Consumers want more Wi-Fi. That means the market wants higher speeds, better coverage, better quality – and all of this to support more connected devices including devices for IoT.
Opportunities in making home Wi-Fi better to delivering new, high-value services over home Wi-Fi have never been more abundant. During the year we will invite the home Wi-Fi leaders – including optimisation experts such as Plume and ASSIA, mesh solution providers like ARRIS and Heights, and ISPs including Comcast, Charter, Liberty Global, and many others – to share with us their vision for the smart home 2.0. We’ve only just started exploring what’s possible for the smart home 2.0.
New services for cognition & sensing
One of the hottest new opportunities in Wi-Fi is cognition and sensing. At CES this year we’ve seen new services launched based on passive Wi-Fi ‘listening’. Now add to this new, active Doppler-shift based technology such as this award-winning solution from chipmaker Celeno.
We believe we’re still only scraping the surface of what is possible with Wi-Fi-based sensing. During the year we will dive into the details of the technology with the help of our vendor and service provider partners – and we will discover how all of this can be applied to develop and deploy powerful new services for the home, senior living, healthcare, public spaces, and more.
Enterprise 2.0: Data, AI, engagement, monetization, & security
The wireless enterprise is evolving in leaps with plenty of new technology and new business opportunities to boot. More and better connectivity is a given but how about applying AI, harvesting data in the right way, integrating IoT, delivering meaningful engagement, monetizing public venue Wi-Fi, and not least making all of this safe and secure? All of this will be high on our the agenda in 2020.
AI is the term still buzzing out there but here is what we think is the most consequential impact of AI: Reshaping enterprise wireless architectures from the bottom up, which is exactly what for example Mist Systems (today Juniper) is doing. Meanwhile don’t forget the great AI work delivered by Arista and newcomer Aprecomm, adding an AI layer to any Wi-Fi network.
Data and consumer engagement are key components of Wi-Fi for the public-facing enterprise, and new flagship cases have been launched. Meanwhile we still need to keep close eye on getting Wi-Fi security right. To support that effort we’re partnering with WatchGuard throughout the year.
Wi-Fi 6 for massive scale IoT including industrial use cases
Wi-Fi 6 comes with just the right toolbox of features to enable massive scale IoT in the home, for the industrial enterprise, and everywhere else. In 2020 we will be zooming in on the solutions and companies allowing Wi-Fi IoT to scale: Removing obstacles to onboarding, using AI for security, creating end-to-end high-value service solutions, and more.
In particular industrial IoT is an expanding opportunity for anyone working with Wi-Fi 6. So what are the right industrial use cases for Wi-Fi 6 IoT and how can they be enabled? We will dig into this question with the help of the world leaders in industrial wireless.
A new era in Wi-Fi-based FWA with 6 GHz, 60 GHz, and more
Wi-Fi-based FWA is coming of age and with the imminent release of 6 GHz, opportunities will expand enormously this year. How can vendors and ISPs capitalise on new spectrum and new Wi-Fi 6 technology to deliver more broadband services better and at lower cost? During the year we will dig into this question and many more with the help of FWA industry leaders including Cambium Networks, ON Semiconductor (Quantenna), Starry, and others.
Mass market mobility & convergence for cablecos, carriers, & ISPs
Bringing great Wi-Fi into a gapless mobile service fabric together with 4G/5G is really the Holy Grail of connectivity – and the wireless industry will take steps towards full convergence already this year. TCP Multipath is one of several technologies pushed by tech giants as well as the 3GPP with their new standard for 5G/Wi-Fi convergence in Release 13.
In the course of the year we’re teaming up with world experts to discuss mass market Wi-Fi roaming, Wi-Fi ‘offload’, and mobile/Wi-Fi convergence in all its forms. We’re specifically digging into all the details on mobile/Wi-Fi convergence with a new Masterclass seminar series on exactly this topic.
Affordable connectivity for the next billion Internet users
We already know that Wi-Fi is the right cost-effective way to connect the unconnected or make more connectivity available affordably across the globe. Both Google’s and Facebook’s schemes to bring more low-cost connectivity to Asia, Africa, and Latin America are excellent examples of just that as is the work of Microsoft’s Airband initiative.
So who is leading the charge and what are the right strategies and technologies to make such schemes more successful? We will be teaming up household-name tech giants to dig into this critically important topic. And we will be supporting unlicensed affordable connectivity projects from all over the world as much as we possibly can in 2020.
Quality, Quality, Quality
Last but not least: New Wi-Fi 6 standard is blazingly fast – but not all Wi-Fi is created equal and the Wi-Fi industry still needs to find ways to deliver better Wi-Fi service quality everywhere. During the year we will take a concerted look at all the innovations out there for boosting performance and especially for taking Wi-Fi services to the next level of guaranteed quality both indoors and out.
To do this we will be working with our partners such as Spirent Communications, Epitiro (for quality assurance, and many others still to be announced.
/Claus.