The Covid-19 crisis took businesses by surprise last year, and when the nationwide lockdown was announced, companies were scrambling to keep business continuity plans (BCPs) going. While digitally savvy companies barely missed a step in the transition to WFH (work from home) or WFA (work from anywhere), others struggled to keep operations going.
The criticality of digital and wireless networks became generally visible almost overnight. Many companies without the means to go digital have either gone bankrupt or become irrelevant.
The success of digital initiatives often depends on the network, particularly Wi-Fi, a primary connection point between the Internet and various devices. Wi-Fi is like air, you can’t see or touch it, but it’s important to bring fully digital experiences to life. Wi-Fi will continue to play a pivotal role in empowering businesses after a pandemic and allowing people to stay connected as everyone’s capacity and connectivity needs increase.
A recent Deloitte study of the adoption of advanced wireless systems like Wi-Fi 6 shows accelerating digital transformation after the pandemic. The market penetration of Wi-Fi-enabled devices has developed so strongly that the market penetration of Wi-Fi-enabled devices has already exceeded 10 billion – that is more than the world’s population and carries 55% of the world’s Internet traffic, the share of which is via Wi-Fi. Fi is increasing rapidly.
The latest generation of Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E (Wi-Fi 6 in the pristine 6 GHz band) has hit the market and will take some time to reach the mass market. Work is already underway on next-gen standards such as Wi-Fi 7 for future requirements – higher bandwidth, outstanding speed, lowest latency and the most efficient use of energy.
Wi-Fi will provide impetus for innovations that promote digital leaps by not only supporting existing use cases such as online learning, remote working and telemedicine, but also helping to realize future use cases such as driverless cars, advanced biometrics at airports, remote Building management, extended reality (AR / VR / MR) and smart farming among others
In a word, “resilience” has led to increased investment in wireless technology to strengthen a company’s ability to cope with current and future business disruptions. Organizational transformations that would previously take years are now possible in months, as we recently saw. The speed with which tectonic changes are taking place will come as no surprise if, in the not-too-distant future, strategic shifts take place within weeks.
Wi-Fi has become a ubiquitous aspect of modern life. In today’s business world, secure wireless systems are essential to seamlessly connect employees, customers, and machines to enable robust remote work functions, increasing automation, hassle-free access to data at the touch of a button, and fully digital service delivery.
Who would have thought that 4K video conferencing and HD virtual summits would be the new norm for doing business and reaching stakeholders worldwide without leaving your room!
With conventional academic sessions suspended since March 2020, digital learning has bridged the gap, allowing teachers and students to connect on a daily basis. This ensures continuous learning and creative collaboration despite bans or geographic restrictions.
Not only has Wi-Fi helped fuel the explosive consumption of multimedia content on OTT platforms, but Wi-Fi 6 has every scam about using high-end VR / AR (Virtual / Augmented Reality) devices eliminated. It is now possible to have a lifelike digital experience, traversing every street in the world in minute detail without leaving the door, or playing high frame rate games in cinematic resolution that push the limits of the naked human eye.
With the growing demand for open interoperability in the home, deploying a mesh network will be the next big thing to set up multiple access points and routers that cover every inch of the home without sacrificing bandwidth, speed, or latency, and provide area-wide coverage.
Telemedicine has also helped save the day and life in healthcare. Remote diagnosis and advice, online testing, and real-time monitoring are not only gaining popularity with patients, but also enabling them to overcome the chances of the doctor-patient relationship.
In addition, legacy industries such as agriculture benefit from the 24×7 connectivity. Wi-Fi has paved the way for farmers to stay up to date and get important information right into their hands over the phone as they can now digitally access weather information, sowing patterns, harvest prices at mandis and much more.
In addition, the game changer will be smart and organized agriculture supported by drones to monitor plant health and field-based IoT devices to measure soil moisture, weather conditions and related environmental factors to increase agricultural productivity through efficient use of resources.
Wi-Fi SENS is a new standard for motion tracking and environment mapping using Wi-Fi signals that finds application in all environments it communicates with – be it at home, hospitals, schools, offices, airports, hospitality, etc. This reflects the infinite possibilities of Wi-Fi, its future innovative use cases, and how each of us will be touched by its low-key, transformative role in digital acceleration around the world.
(The author is the managing director,)
