Why it’s time to go beyond the flow on WiFi 7
Hugh Simpson, Market Development Manager – Wireless, says that we’ll see widespread adoption of WiFi 7 in 2025.
It’s remarkable how quickly, once it has proven its worth, a technology gets adopted universally. When this happens, it is almost undetectable. When we all moved from playing music and videos on CDs and DVDs to streaming, for example, it seemed to happen overnight. The move from SMS and MMS to instant messaging apps, was similarly imperceptible.
When the switch to a new tech happens, there is nothing that companies involved in making and marketing products can do to stop it. If the benefits of a technology are compelling and if it’s reasonably affordable, there is no way to stem the tide. You just have to go with the flow.
Ticking all the boxes
As new standards have emerged over the years, we’ve seen similar transitions taking place with WiFi. And while we in the industry may wring our hands over the changes taking place, most customers are unaware that anything is happening. We have been discussing how to navigate the step-up from WiFi 4/5 to the WiFi 6/6E and WiFi 7 standards for at least 18 months, but most end user customers will, at best, have only been vaguely aware of any such debate taking place.
Why should they be concerned after all? They don’t need to worry about the actual technology and how it works – only that it does actually work, and that it delivers real benefits, good value and investment protection. WiFi 7 ticks all of those boxes already and that’s why we are seeing extremely fast uptake of the technology.
Future-proof option
WiFi 7 delivers immediate benefits if you need to support dense volumes of connections and provide consistent and reliable performance to all users across a wide area. If you don’t need to do that, WiFi6/6E will probably give you everything you need right now. But as the difference in cost between these two technologies is small, most buyers are naturally going to choose the latest standard, as that’s the one they will perceive as giving them the most future-proofing and the best return on investment.
With affordable choices available for all sizes of business, Zyxel Networks currently offers seven WiFi 7 access points – with even more coming by late 2025 – that provide options for all deployment scales and scenarios. It’s little wonder that WiFi 7 is taking off, and over the next few months, we fully expect it to grow in popularity and for sales to accelerate quickly.
Swim into the stream
For Zyxel Networks partners, it’s important to ensure that WiFi 7 and the available options are given a high profile – and to make sure you know your way around the range and ready to talk to customers about the different options.
One big advantage for partners with our WiFi 7 range is that all other devices support Nebula, our cloud platform, which means you can pre-configure them for auto-installation and offer to manage WiFi performance and security remotely for your customers. That’s a really good business opportunity and one we can help you to develop.
The message then is not just to go with that steady and growing tide of adoption, but to swim into the stream. Rather than just going with the flow, it’s time to start adding to its impetus and taking the WiFi 7 message to customers.
