We joined as both as an attendee and a panelist at the Wi-Fi NOW event at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA. Some of the main themes were the rise of AI Networking, experiences of Managed Service Providers and Network as a Service, Wi-Fi service roaming, and the Wi-Fi 7 ramp. We cover presentations by numerous companies, including Cisco, HPE Aruba, 650 Group, American Bandwidth, Juniper, Join Digital, Meter, Arista, WorldVue, Helium, Pavlov Media, Meta, Airvine, SmartWAVE Technologies, Alta Labs, GoZone WiFi and Cambium Networks. If we were to consolidate the day into one theme, it might be that Managed Service Providers (MSPs) are making significant demands of their suppliers, and they are working to provide significant value to their various constituencies, like airports, venues, and multiple dwelling units.
650 Group. We offered our view that over the past fifteen years, the Wi-Fi 5, Wi-Fi 6, and, so far, Wi-Fi 7 upgrade cycles have not affected the revenue growth rates of the Enterprise Wi-Fi market. Instead, the point was that industry growth is influenced by economic factors such as tariffs, tax changes, real estate expansion and contraction. Adding to this point, we want to share that software and services that add value on top of Wi-Fi infrastructure has had a very significant impact on vendor leadership over the past couple of decades; we see this continuing as we enter the AI networking era.
Cisco. Yogesh Paliwal discussed the impact of using AI on Enterprise Wi-Fi networks. Cisco broke the problem into two parts: AI for Wireless and Wireless for AI (very similar to how its branding at the RSA show the day before: AI for Security and Security for AI). AI for Wireless (AIOps): efficiency and experience – automate, reduce manual effort in planning, design and deployment. Following the logic of the slides, advanced AI functions can enable control of Wi-Fi devices as they move from place to place, without requiring significant manual intervention from IT personnel. Additionally, Cisco shared that its “AI-RRM” (which operates on its recently introduced Access Points) significantly improves Radio Frequency (RF) performance (see chart). And Mr. Pailiwel discussed Wireless for AI, which can be interpreted as Wi-Fi suitable for M2M, IoT, and robot connections. Cisco has multiple innovations it discussed, including its “Spaces” platform, customer apps, and data lake capabilities, Cisco Sensors, ultra-reliable wireless capabilities, and its relationships with device companies.
Howard Buzick of American Bandwidth discussed his company’s Wi-DAS offering. All of its phones on the network use Passpoint, allowing them to connect to various networks. We share a fascinating traffic chart that Howard showed from the Wi-Fi NOW show, which demonstrates its roaming capabilities. The company plans to partner further with Aruba, Cisco, Extreme, Juniper, and Ruckus to deploy 802.11mc/az and LCI in numerous school districts, so that first responders can locate devices for various safety functions.
Panel about AI, Network as a Service, and the Future of Enterprise AI, including Bob Friday of Juniper, Karl May of Join Digital, Shubham Salomi of Meter, and Sriram Venkiteswaran of Arista Networks. Arista said it expects its enterprise customers to use its AI and cloud capabilities to achieve very high reliability and secure communications, while reducing the need for IT staff intervention. Meter said it offers an end-to-end services approach where it manages the WAN connection through the LAN to end users, enabling significant reliability. Join Digital said when it founded, it took that approach that it has to sell to companies even though they have no networking team left and thus it takes on the whole IT services each company needs; additionally, Mr. May explained that, recently, some of his customers demand that they pay Join up front instead of paying over time. Juniper said that its beginning at Mist were to solve a challenge where its customers would improve their experience by using cloud-management; he also said the convergence of networking and security has become a significant challenge its customers are asking for; additionally, Mr. Friday said that Agentic AI era will usher in a new age of APIs and programming in the networks they deliver.
WorldVue President Robert Grosz shared his experiences in serving hotels with Wi-Fi Service. We research the sales of Wi-Fi Gear in our Network as a Service reports and categorize these sales as Managed Service Provider (MSP). The company has invested in technology to enable personalization of the Wi-Fi and associated services.
HPE Aruba Wireless CTO Stuart Strickland discussed the growing importance of experiences from the 5G industry to the Wi-Fi ecosystem. HPE shared that four concerns have impacted the development of the Wi-Fi ecosystem. First, the client ecosystem is developing in a fragmented way, which impacts network performance. Some client operations are being proposed to operate in LPI mode and communicate with each other without coordination from the network. An example is when numerous hotspots are activated in a room with Wi-Fi network coverage, which negatively impacts Wi-Fi performance. There are several AR/VR clients being brought to market that attempt to take control of the network instead of letting the network manage the numerous devices. A representative from Cisco shared that they have similar concerns and are open to various proposals for mediating how clients impact the performance of enterprise Wi-Fi networks.
Helium’s GM of Network, Mario Di Dio discussed that it has the world’s largest, decentralized Wi-Fi Offload infrastructure. It offloads two US-based major MNOs, AT&T and TMUS, and last week it signed up Movistar in Mexico. It uses 90,000 Wi-Fi hotspots, resulting in 25TB daily. Helium discussed how it has various partners who deploy the hotspots, including examples like the Heavenly Market, a restaurant in New York City. Carriers join to work with Helium because it provides coverage in high-usage areas (especially indoors), reduces costs per gigabyte, and requires no capital spending.
Pavlov Media’s Glenn Meyer discussed how it uses OpenWiFI to operate its nationwide network of Wi-Fi networks spanning 1,600 multi-family properties in 193 cities. It chose OpenWiFi because allows it to chose Wi-Fi infrastructure at a lower price and, during COVID, allowed it to purchase devices while there were supply disruptions. Meta’s Jack Raynor, who is Group Chair of OpenLan and OpenWiFi shared the stage with Mr. Meyer and reiterated that many companies chose to work with OpenWiFI in order to save on capital spending.
Airvine’s David Sumi discussed its through-wall wireless backhaul system and explained that using Airvine’s product eliminates the need to drill through walls to carry network traffic.
Cambium Networks’ Bruce Miller introduced a development from the company regarding its use of microservices. The company is using microservices to develop specific network management capabilities for new use cases and vertical markets. Installer, Onboarding, and Property Manager applications take advantage of Cambium’s microservices and offer its customers significant advantages in reducing capital spending and operating expenses.
Panel with Al Brown of SmartWAVE Technologies, Jeff Hansen of Alta Labs, and Todd Myers of GoZone WiFi. We were surprised to hear that, despite numerous other presentations pitching the advantages of roaming technology, Passpoint, this group of presenters said that turning on Passpoint in a venue can have inadvertent consequences. In one experience, turning on Passpoint in a venue tenfolded the traffic on the Wi-Fi network, and the problem is that the network owner isn’t necessarily compensated for this extra use, which degrades the user experience. We took away the message that economic relationships between users and network owners are essential. Alta Labs, a technology developer, said its revenues have doubled year over year.
