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Wi-Fi 6 makes debut in Africa

2 Jul 2019

Ruckus Networks, now part of CommScope via acquisition, has been at the forefront of Wi-Fi 6 and recently completed its first use case in Africa at The Fourth Session of the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA-4) held in Nairobi Kenya.

Riaan Graham, sales director for Ruckus Networks sub-Saharan Africa

Wi-Fi 6, also known as 802.11ax and the latest generation of Wi-Fi, bridges the performance gap to deliver at ten gigabit speeds. The new standard allows faster network performance by connecting more devices simultaneously, transitioning Wi-Fi to the de-facto for internet connectivity.

As the world’s highest-level, decision-making body on the environment, the historic Assembly provides a framework for shifting global economic systems towards more sustainable trajectories that tackle environmental challenges.

This year’s theme was on Innovative Solutions to Environmental Challenges and Sustainable Consumption and Production. Connectivity across the venue, expo, conference, and meeting rooms was critical and Ruckus delivered the Wi-Fi 6 experience with their R730 access points (APs).

“Wi-Fi has transitioned through six generations over the last 25 years, where speed and efficiency have improved tremendously,” said Riaan Graham, sales director for Ruckus Networks sub-Saharan Africa.

The latest sixth-generation Wi-Fi, based on the 802.11ax standard, not only supports a maximum data rate of nearly 10 Gbps for better speed, but will provide better performance in congested areas - from stadiums and city deployments to your own device-packed home. This was clearly seen with the speed and performance achieved at UNEA-4, with 50 Ruckus APs supporting approximately 733GB for over 4700 clients with an average speed of 105.9Mbps each day.

Wi-Fi 6 is essentially built for IoT – a future-facing upgrade that can be costly and difficult to manage. Even more, this technology showcased four-fold capacity increase, along with better security.

“Bridging the gap between insatiable demand and performance is critical and Wi-Fi 6 will bring about a profound change in the industry. In fact, analyst firm IDC expects to see Wi-Fi 6 deployments ramping up significantly in 2019 – becoming the dominant enterprise Wi-Fi standard by 2021 – and we are well positioned to take advantage of these trends,” concludes Graham.