VIENNA, Va.—The tension between Wi-Fi dreams and reality was in play at Wi-Fi Now, as speakers addressed both the rosiest views of the technology and its toughest realities – and some innovations that are bridging them.
Edgar Figueroa, president and CEO of the Wi-Fi Alliance, said that 3 billion Wi-Fi-enabled devices are expected to ship this year and another 8 billion are already in use, a substantial installed base.
“[Wi-Fi] is the beast of burden of data, and it is becoming more and more the definition of the Internet itself,” Figueroa said.
Wi-Fi Alliance plans to soon make its certification program for the second wave of 802.11ac features public, with new options including multi-user MIMO and enabling the use of channels up to 160 MHz for new gains in speed and capacity. The organization expects to start seeing momentum this year for the WiGig standard for gigabit speeds over short distances, and Figueroa noted that Facebook announced earlier this month that it is developing a radio system for dense urban areas based on WiGig, called Terragraph, which it is testing at its Melo Park, Calif. headquarters and preparing to trial in San Jose.
He also noted that the “Internet of Things” presents a huge opportunity for Wi-Fi, for devices using both existing standards and the new 802.11ah or Halow standard designed to support low-power transmissions over distances up to 1 km.
“We do live in world of Wi-Fi. It’s here, it’s now, and it’s not going anywhere,” Figueroa said.
But the existing world of Wi-Fi has its issues, particularly for that enormous installed base. Trond Wuellner, group product manager at Google who heads up its OnHub in-home Wi-Fi device development, told the audience that according to his company’s numbers, the average OnHub can see 18 other Wi-Fi networks (taking into account both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz).
“The contention for this network is incredibly strong,” he said, adding that he expects the density of competing networks to continue increasing.
Google addresses this through a dedicated radio that scans the environment and select the best channel based on advanced algorithms, and the ability of different OnHub devices to coordinate with one another. Other vendors and start-ups, such as Luma and Eero, are pushing improved in-home Wi-Fi coverage through a mesh network approach with multiple access points, and Qualcomm introduced its Wi-Fi Self-Organizing Network concept earlier this year.
Usability and user experience are also important, Wuellner said, both for in-home Wi-Fi, the connected home and IoT applications in general.
“The connected home is sort of this mythic dream,” he said. “A lot of people aren’t ready for that. … We really have to keep our focus on the user.”
He noted that Google emphasized industrial design in OnHub so that people would feel comfortable placing it where it could be seen – unlike traditional routers with protruding antennas and lots of wires, which might get stuck somewhere out of sight and thereby sabotage coverage. That theme of aesthetics coupled with good coverage was also emphasized by Jeff Lime of TESSCO Technologies, which is working on a new headquarters for a major Silicon Valley firm where Wi-Fi APs have been installed in floor panels. Increasing the number of sectors by using antennas with narrow beamwidths to limit the number of users per AP helps deal with capacity issues, Lime noted, but hiding the infrastructure can be a challenge.
“People don’t want to see all this infrastructure,” he said, even as Wi-Fi becomes even more important to handle the expected growth in connected devices. “LTE can’t handle all this. We have to make this work, and make it work correctly for all of our customers.”
Security was also a major theme for Wi-Fi companies. Google, for example, pushes software updates to OnHub every six weeks, and sooner if necessary to patch software vulnerabilities.
“All the routers that I’ve seen in the industry are vulnerable,” Wuellner said, expressing concern that many industry routers rely on outdated and vulnerable security features because they are easy to support.
Vulnerability comes in different forms, as Donna Rice Hughes pointed out to the audience. Rice Hughes heads up the advocacy group Enough is Enough, which promotes safer Internet access for children and families. Rich Hughes has helped bring the “Friendly Internet” accreditation from the United Kingdom to the U.S., for companies which can meet a minimum standard of web filtering so that children cannot access pornography and other inappropriate content (adults can bypass the limitations through a verification process) through public Wi-Fi hot spots. Security company TitanHQ, which is one provider of such filtering, gave a number of case studies on how filtering has been used both to provide security for enterprises as well as drive particular consumer behaviors. For Irish airline RyanAir, TitanHQ restricts usage on almost 4,000 iPads for pilots so that they can only access information necessary for in-flight duties. For family restaurant chain Dave & Busters, the company provides content filters, while at a major bank TitanHQ has helped drive online banking adoption by only providing Wi-Fi access to the bank’s web site for people who are waiting in line at its branches.
The conference program ended with a spotlight on Wi-Fi’s capabilities to connect people around the world and in the U.S. with limited resources and access to broadband — and how such markets can not only be tackled successfully but can be profitable even while charging customers $3 a month or less.
Microsoft has 18 affordable access pilot projects around the world, including in Seattle and rural Virginia, to provide Wi-Fi access to schools and government offices. In Virginia, the company is leveraging TV white space spectrum and 802.11af technology in partnership with a local Internet Service Provider and giving low-income students an AP for their homes so that they can have Internet connectivity, according to Paul Garnett, director at Microsoft. The first base station is already up and about 100 APs are expected to be deployed by the end of this school year. Former Cisco engineer Jim Forester is chairman of two companies, AirJaldi and Mawingu, serving India and Kenya with ultra-low-cost Wi-Fi access that costs only a few dollars per month and relies on training a local workforce, and has made the model profitable.
“We’re not running around saying, ‘Here’s the Internet!'” Forester said. “They know about it. They want it. It’s just not there, or they can’t afford it.”
WiFiNow 2016 continues today and tomorrow. Follow me on Twitter for live updates: @khillrcr
