Huawei SA says it is strengthening its WiFi 6 strategy after witnessing increased demand for its WiFi 6 products and services among South African enterprises.
The Chinese multinational telco, which claims to have the largest WiFi 6 market share globally, is preparing to roll out its second portfolio of WiFi 6 solutions in SA, as more local organisations recognise the benefits of the next-generation wireless network.
WiFi 6 is poised to offer a performance leap for companies across all industriescompared with previous generations of WiFi standards. It not only provides significantly faster connection speeds, but also introduces new capabilities that offer more advantages, including technologies such as orthogonal frequency-division multiple access and 8x8 multi-user, multiple input, multiple output −a set of multiple-input and multiple-output technologies for wireless communication powered by 4G and 5G.
The next-gen wireless network builds on WiFi 5 to deliver four times higher bandwidth and more connections, achieving lower latency and reduced energy consumption, according to Huawei.
Matamela Aubrey Mashau, CTO of the Southern Africa region at Huawei, says after introducing the industry’s first WiFi 6 access point solutions for commercial use in SA last year, the company has witnessed increased demand and its local Enterprise Networking Solutions division is ramping up deployment plans for its improved portfolio in June.
“There has been a high demand of our WiFi 6 solutions, which we have been rapidly selling locally since last year.
“This reflects global patterns where we are number one in terms of the WiFi 6 market share. Next month, we will be releasing more than 10 different new WiFi 6 models in the local market under the AirEngine WiFi 6 portfolio, which will expand our opportunities in the market and address different customer scenarios.”
While the majority of industries are expected to benefit from the much-anticipated release of WiFi 6, it is industries that are the highest users of Internet of things (IOT) devices that will reap the rewards, according to industry watchers.
Huawei's AirEngine WiFi 6 products integrate with Huawei's 5G and artificial intelligence technologies, to provide high-capacity, large bandwidth and low latency capabilities to various applications, according to the tech giant.
With athroughput rate of up to 10.75Gbps, the new solutions aim to resolve various pain points for local organisations, such as creating seamless IOT convergence, resolving issues related to maintaining strong blind-spot signals and loss of key services during roaming, according to Mashau.
Its main distributors are Pinnacle and Mustek, which has many partners that distribute an array of Huawei solutions to local customers.
“Huawei’s WiFi strategy is to digitally transform enterprises from all industries. As a growing number of enterprises utilise emerging technologies to innovate their services, improve user experience and enhance operational efficiency, they require high-bandwidth, stable, reliable and seamless wireless networks,” notesMashau.
Musato Technologies, Extreme Networks and Cisco are among the local networking firms that also offer WiFi 6 products and services.
Huawei says it has been actively promoting the development of the WiFi 6 industry and standards, having submitted more than 240 WiFi 6 proposals to the WiFi Alliance.
The telco giant has acquired many patents to ensure it remains a leader in many areas of the WiFi 6 standard, according to Mashau.
“Huawei has taken the innovation of 5G technology and embedded it into WiFi 6 technology. According to forecasts by analyst firms, 60% of enterprises will include networks as the core of their digital strategies by 2023,” Mashau concludes.
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