- Cisco Wireless CTO Matt MacPherson says there’s a recognition that the industry needs a combination of 5G and Wi-Fi
- Cisco has a ton of expertise in enterprise Wi-Fi and it’s selling a private 5G solution
- Enterprises no doubt will continue to operate Wi-Fi networks even after installing private 5G
A lot of vendors in the private 5G sector like to say 5G is better than Wi-Fi for security and reliability reasons, among others.
Well, Cisco Wireless Chief Technical Officer Matt MacPherson freely admits that 5G can do some things that Wi-Fi cannot. For example, you’re not going to use Wi-Fi going 80 miles an hour down the highway. But he’s quick to point out that Wi-Fi addresses a large percentage of the applications and services that an enterprise wants.
“From a cost-per-bit standpoint, the way I look at it is these are collaborative technologies, 5G and Wi-Fi, and if you're a service provider that's doing a macro 5G network, what you really want to do is to leverage those Wi-Fi networks,” he told Fierce. “When's the last time you walked in a building and Wi-Fi didn't exist? It's already there. It's already deployed.”
Four people on his team literally wrote the book on Wi-Fi 7. Now available on Amazon, the book explores how to design and optimize a network to fully leverage Wi-Fi 7's capabilities. MacPherson penned the foreword and says Wi-Fi 7 enables greater reliability with multi-link operation and much better data transmission than previous iterations of the Wi-Fi specification.
Yet he’s cognizant of the need to work with 5G. Besides other big venues, Cisco regularly designs the network for Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where the mobile industry does its best to push 5G on anyone and everyone. “But there’s a recognition in the industry that you need a combination of 5G and Wi-Fi both,” he said.
To that end, Cisco works with LTE and 5G radio partners to offer a private 4G/5G solution. It’s unknown exactly how many of these solutions are deployed, but it’s been pitching its solution for several years. It claims its private 5G integrated with Wi-Fi is better because Cisco has a lot of experience building customer solutions for enterprises and can easily integrate the new technology into existing IT environments.
“We take a very enterprise view. We know how enterprise manages networks. We know how enterprise applies policy to those networks and we'll come in with a private 5G solution that allows you to use the same tools and a lot of the same management capabilities, definitely the same policy engine,” MacPherson said.
Still, the majority of indoor networks are going to be Wi-Fi – full stop, he said. “I'm talking like 90% of them,” he said, adding that while it’s a matter of internal debate – it’s actually probably closer to 95% today – by factoring in future private 5G deployments, “I think 90 is probably a good number.”
Even with private 5G, enterprises are likely to keep their Wi-Fi networks. Consider all the types of devices that connect to Wi-Fi and not to 5G.
“You don’t have 5G light bulbs. You don’t have 5G thermostats. A lot of the controls within a building are working in unlicensed” spectrum, he said.
5G not replacing Wi-Fi
Some industry analysts share his prognosis for Wi-Fi. After all, nearly every enterprise hosts a Wi-Fi network and they will continue to do so, said Monica Paolini, president of Senza Fili.
“I never heard of any enterprise giving up Wi-Fi – just like you never hear of anybody giving up their mobile phone,” she said. An enterprise will switch to LTE/5G only if Wi-Fi is no longer meeting their needs. “4G and 5G have their own advantages, but most enterprises do not need them.”
Wi-Fi NOW Chairman and CEO Claus Hetting is an unabashed fan of Wi-Fi and never believed private 5G was going to take off like some of the more bullish 5G players expected.
“It may have come as a surprise to a lot of private 5G people that it hasn't taken off more. But honestly, I never thought it would take off particularly much. I always viewed it as something that might be applicable to the top 1 to 2% of the enterprise market, where there's very, very specific reasons to go that route,” he told Fierce, suggesting that outdoor environments like harbors and mining facilities are prime candidates for private 5G.
Dell’Oro Group analyst Stefan Pongratz said the private 5G industry is in a better place today as expectations and the broader narrative have been calibrated to align with the current state of the market.
“The pivot from selling private 5G as a Wi-Fi+ package in places where Wi-Fi exists and can do the job 99% of the time to selling private 5G where Wi-Fi or the public cellular network is not up to the task is helping to boost the market,” Pongratz said.
“There will be some cases where Wi-Fi and 5G will compete, but for the most part, the spectrum is complementary,” he said. “In other words, we expect both enterprise Wi-Fi and private wireless RAN investments to grow over the next five years (private wireless is projected to grow at a 21% CAGR over the next five years).”
Get ready for Wi-Fi 8
The bottom line is Cisco is always looking to make Wi-Fi better, and that includes the team that just published the book on Wi-Fi 7. They’re already thinking about all the features they want to put in Wi-Fi 8.
“We're quite excited about 8. Of course, that's years off, but I think there's a lot of innovation that's still happening in Wi-Fi and wireless in general. This is all moving, I believe, the industry in the right direction,” MacPherson concluded.