Demand for mobility defines Wi-Fi’s growth path

INDUSTRY

The quest for mobility is a key trend driving growth in the Wi-Fi sector.  This is the view of Richard Smuts Steyn, CEO of Multisource Telecoms, wireless communications specialist.  The company launched Altai, one of the world’s leading Wi-Fi product suites, into South Africa recently.

While existing Wi-Fi systems typically produce Wi-Fi hotspots with a maximum range of 200 to 300 square metres, the new Altai range is capable of creating a Wi-Fi hot zone of up to 10 square kilometres.

The ability of the Altai products to provide truly wide area access, to create “hot-zones” or “hot-regions” as opposed to hotspots was a major talking point of the show.

“Where internet connectivity via fibre to the home was previously considered to be the utopia, it is now more about the ability to receive high capacity broadband access while on the move and between disparate mobile access mediums,” said Smuts-Steyn.

“It’s all about the device and a search for exceptional wireless access.”

The launch of the Altai range also opened up a renewed interest and confidence in the ability to seamlessly hand off voice and data communications from GSM to WiFi in select regions. “The Altai range allows for high capacity data offload onto a Wi-Fi network that not only reduces the data burden on the GSM infrastructure, but provides far higher throughputs than currently provided by even the 4G networks,” Smuts-Steyn explained.

Data throughput using super Wi-Fi is capable of transmitting up to 80 megabits per second, compared to 3G, which has a capability of 10 megabits per second and basic ADSL, with a capability of only 512 kilobits per second. The system is also very stable and reliable.