At Mettis, we have been carrying out the world’s first industrial trials of Wi-Fi 6 – the next generation of Wi-Fi – in partnership with the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA).
We’re delighted that the trials have now been successfully completed and Wi-Fi 6 is ready for carrier network development.
“We are proud to have supported the trials of Wi-Fi 6 as part of our programme to develop Mettis into an advanced, digital factory,” said Dave Green, Head of IT, Mettis Group. “Our site has provided an excellent testing ground because it is challenging from a connectivity perspective. There is a large geography to be covered and industrial radio interference can disrupt signals. Wi-Fi 6 rose to the challenge and will play a key role in our digital future.”
Wi-Fi 6 offers many benefits for industry including increased capacity, higher data rates and greater performance in environments which have many connected devices. It will enable the use of augmented reality, real-time monitoring of equipment and a host of other applications in an enterprise network environment.
The industrial trials were completed as part of a wider programme which covered five diverse markets including transport hubs such as airports, high-density shopping centres, rural education settings and home environments.
The trials showed that Wi-Fi 6, with wider channels up to 160 MHz, and capacity up to 9.6 Gbps (compared to 3.5 Gbps in Wi-Fi 5), can enable nearly three times faster gigabit data rates along with better reliability, lower latency, more deterministic behaviour, and better network efficiency, especially in environments with many connected devices. Wi-Fi 6 will help with congestion problems, increase densification of the network – helping to connect more devices, and enable new use cases.
However, the trials don’t end there. We’ve been granted a license by Ofcom that enables us to be the first in Europe to trial Wi-Fi 6E which operates at a frequency of 6Hz, increasing speed and reducing Wi-Fi congestion further.
“These successful deployments prove the strength of Wi-Fi 6 technology to achieve better throughput, lower latency, enhanced reliability, improved network efficiency and better user experience,” said Tiago Rodrigues, CEO, WBA. “Ultimately, they prove the readiness of Wi-Fi 6 for carrier deployments, and the WBA continues to develop and expand new trials that support Wi-Fi 6 and 6E expansion into new areas in different geographies around the world.”
Thank you to the teams at Broadcom, Cisco, iBwave, Intel Concurrent Engineering and Keysight who continue to collaborate with us to make these industrial trials a success.
Download the full Wi-Fi 6 trials report on the WBA website here.
