While 5G stole the show at MWC Barcelona, Cisco believes that 5G is just one side of the coin. The vendor claims that 5G will need to team up with Wi-Fi 6 to bring about a drastic transformation in wireless connectivity.
In a recent official blog post, Cisco claimed that Wi-Fi 6 will drastically revolutionize wireless connectivity and 5G internet experience, along with providing several new use cases that are not feasible at present. The Wi-Fi 6 standard is likely to receive consent from the Wi-Fi Alliance towards the latter half of this year.
Greg Dorai, Cisco’s Vice President of wireless product management for enterprise networking, recently revealed various new use case possibilities with Wi-Fi 6 in an interview with SDxCentral. Dorai believes that Wi-Fi 6 deployed in combination with 5G will practically cater to all device use cases.
However, he conceded that the Wi-Fi 6 standard won’t really come handy in pervasive connections for outdoor smartphone use cases.
He explained that 5G will be better when traveling on a bullet train running at some 200 miles an hour.
In addition, he said that voice handoff when traveling between the 2 networks [5G and Wi-Fi 6] will drop calls at present; however, various vendors, including Cisco, are working on to resolve that issue.
Dorai still stressed on the fact that for latency and reliability of the connection, Wi-Fi 6 is as capable as 5G in both indoor and outdoor use cases. He further said that the preliminary use of Wi-Fi 6 together with 5G will be good enough to connect numerous users for enhanced virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and deeply engaging video experiences.
On the financial front, a Wi-Fi 6 chipset will be half the cost of a 5G chipset and won’t be subject to hefty patent royalty fees.
Wi-Fi 6 is already compatible with the recently-launched Samsung Galaxy S10 and supports a latency of around 10 to 15 milliseconds, thence avoiding signal collision between different users that leads to dropped connections as is the case with earlier Wi-Fi standards.
Taking Sides
Moor Insights & Strategy analyst Will Townsend supported the views of Cisco by saying that both 5G and Wi-Fi 6 will be better when working in tandem. He said that either of the two can be seen supplanting or replacing each other. Unlike Verizon and AT&T, Townsend believes that a blended use case of 5G and Wi-Fi 6 will be great.
He further said that unlicensed spectrum and WiFi is perfect for indoor deployments and Wi-Fi 6 will offer lower latency as well as improved coverage.
On the other hand, several vendors and telecom operators have long been arguing that 5G alone will provide the required spectrum efficiency, speed, and low latency to support mission critical apps, particularly for controlling indoor robotics as well as autonomous vehicles within diverse industrial settings.
In a recent statement, ACG Research Analyst Chris Nicoll shunned the claims that any app will truly need a combination of 5G and Wi-Fi 6 other than for enhancing mobile broadband services.
“If millimeter wave (mmWave) small cells are widely installed as envisioned, 5G alone will “work beautifully indoors since its limited propagation means less interference,” he added.
He further claims that Wi-Fi 6 will come with a considerable amount of security concerns. He said that both 5G and Wi-Fi 6 should stay fairly separate for a performance and security perspective.