A Big Week for Wi-Fi

Sometimes the most important news doesn't present itself on the front page of the paper. This was one of those weeks: Two announcements that may have gone unnoticed but with the help of a couple of good friends came to my attention.

Thumbs up to the FCC!

The first is the FCC's new 'Notice of Inquiry' (we've written about it here) listing two possible new bands for unlicensed (Wi-Fi) use. Yes, it will take a while - but the most important step on a long journey is the first.

In short, the FCC wants to know what measures could be put in place to allow unlicensed use of the 5.925-6.425 GHz (close to the existing 5 GHz Wi-Fi bands) and 6.425-7.125 GHz bands while protecting incumbent users. It's a big swath of spectrum, folks - more than one GHz in total.

So here's us (at Wi-Fi NOW) giving a huge thumbs up to the FCC for kicking off this process. We're also hoping that big US tech is ready to put some force behind this - meaning getting the FCC all the detailed & workable answers that they need.

That 'big tech' would include Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and the united US cable industry. Even another half gigahertz of Wi-Fi would be a huge win for consumers & the industry and spark another round of amazing innovation in unlicensed.

Apple takes the lead on Multipath TCP in iOS11

So this thing I would have completely missed if it were not for Dean Bubley's blog post here. And it's actually a big deal - a lot bigger that what it looks like at the surface.

Apple's iOS11 - due for release this fall - will support an API for 'TCP Multipath'. So what does that have to do with Wi-Fi, you say? Well, a lot, actually. It means that app developers, carriers, anyone with services running on iOS11 will finally be able to combine Wi-Fi and cellular into a single service fabric of their choosing.

Apple says it will offer reliability, congestion control, seamless handover from cellular to Wi-Fi and back, and aggregation (although this is only available for experimentation, for now). Just like Apple kickstarted Voice over Wi-Fi a couple of years ago, they're now redefining how Wi-Fi will be used by apps for data.

Apple's new API will have far-reaching consequences not just for apps & services but on the infrastructure side, too. When you can make full use of whatever data streams are around (Wi-Fi most of the time) and combine these as you wish, wireless will gravitate towards more Wi-Fi. And we'll see lot more service innovation in coming years.

We'll be watching this space very carefully.

/Claus.