WI-Fi Demand Growing Rapidly, but Network Expansion Seen Complicated

The COVID-19 pandemic put more pressure on Wi-Fi to grow quickly, but expanding home and business networks raised complications for all users, speakers said at the Fierce Wi-Fi Summit Tuesday. “The pandemic has just put pressure points on areas that we didn’t even realize we would have pressure points,” said Patricia Kellaghan, senior director-products at Breezeline, which offers a managed Wi-Fi service. “We’ve had these massive lifestyle shifts, and they’re not temporary, they’re going to be permanent, and they’re going to continue to evolve,” she said. Customers are demanding better in-home connectivity, she said. “We really need key, strategic, forward-leaning partners who are pushing on the product road map so we can continue to keep up with demand and stay relevant,” she said. Breezeline had to move to more self-installation by customers, she said. Its products “have to be easy to use, they have to be easy to install, they have to put control in the customers’ hands,” she said. “The pandemic certainly has accelerated our deployment,” said Richard Squire, Liberty Global director-connectivity strategy. The company had a 30%-40% jump in connected devices when the pandemic started two years ago, he said. Wi-Fi needs to be simple for customers, he said: “This is really complex stuff, and ... we want to make it as simple as possible for our customers to use.” Because of regulatory and technical limits, no single access point (AP), “no matter how strong,” can cover the whole of many homes, said Bill McFarland, chief technology officer at gear-maker Plume. That means most need Wi-Fi extenders, but that “greatly complicates the problem of Wi-Fi management,” he said. “We need to make decisions about the frequency channels and channel bandwidths that will be used, how the APs will be connected to each other, which is effectively the routes and topologies, and to which AP and which on frequency band each client device in the home should connect,” he said: The Wi-Fi system needs to consider traffic loads, signal strengths, data rates, interference and the effect of Wi-Fi congestion.