5G Needs Better Wi-Fi to Meet Consumer Expectations, WIA Told

Infrastructure companies should view Wi-Fi not as a threat but a way of making networks more efficient, said Kevin Robinson, Wi-Fi Alliance senior vice president-marketing. The Wireless Infrastructure Association conference where he spoke Tuesday was both in person and streamed from Orlando. Wi-Fi and 5G compete with each other but more often work together to “deliver more value to the end customer,” Robinson said. When data is shifted from a smartphone to Wi-Fi, it means “a better user experience” for those still on the network, he said.

Wi-Fi wasn’t made to compete on mobility, but it “accelerates the realization of ubiquitous 5G experiences,” Robinson said. The majority of devices in the home or that people carry run on Wi-Fi, he said. “Wi-Fi is definitely up to the task.” Wi-Fi 6, the new generation, brings “dramatically better” capacity, performance and latency than past generations, he said. Wi-Fi is about to see big improvements as more Wi-Fi 6E devices come online that use the 6 GHz band the FCC made available for unlicensed use last year, he said: “We’re already starting to see the fruits.”

Linksys CEO Harry Dewhirst said Wi-Fi, and his company, have become part of the culture. “When you have a South Park episode dedicated to your routers, that’s a good start,” he said. Dewhirst agreed Wi-Fi and 5G work best together. “5G goes a long way,” but Wi-Fi closes the final 100 feet to the user, he said.

Linksys was the first company to offer a mesh solution that uses 6 GHz, Dewhirst said. That band “enables five times-plus the kind of capability that was available before,” he said. Linksys has been working for more than a year on the eventual Wi-Fi 7 standard and on “bridging the gap” between Wi-Fi 6E and 7, he said. Consumers are finding they need Wi-Fi 6E for virtual reality and other new apps, he said. “Gone are the days where the free box that you get from your telco is sufficient,” Dewhirst said. After the pandemic started, consumers rushed to get the newest technology and they are figuring out whether they made the right choices, he said.

Others said wireless is cutting costs for developers. Consumer devices and Wi-Fi are “driving everything,” said CEO William Mobley of video streaming provider FreeCast. Building owners are doing away with all the gear “that used to go in the closet, in the wall … that had to go to the TVs,” he said. Some 2 million ATSC 3.0 TVs are in circulation, he said.

“It’s amazing how many buildings still have poor connectivity,” said Rahul Bammi, chief business officer at View, a smart windows company. “We’re able to solve that by literally embedding small cells and repeaters into window frames.”

Buying Sprint and its 2.5 GHz spectrum “catapulted” T-Mobile “into a tremendous leadership position,” said Neville Ray, T-Mobile president-technology, in a keynote. “For years, we punched away at our larger competitors as they took an early lead in 4G. Today we see a completely new dynamic with T-Mobile leading the way in 5G.”