Waves with Wireless Nerd
Join me for a weekly look into what's making waves in tech and the wireless industry! What's new? What's now? What's next?
Waves with Wireless Nerd
Desired State Networking, Nostalgia, New Gear From Meter & Ubiquiti, T-Mobile’s Slicing, Wi‑Fi 7, And EU Spectrum Shifts
A week in San Francisco rekindled the builder’s spirit: start with intent, then craft the hardware, software, and process to make that outcome inevitable. From the Pier 27 backdrop to on‑stage moments with Anil, Sunil, and Bob Metcalfe, we trace how desired state networking shifts the conversation away from bolt‑ons and toward autonomy, reliability, and clarity. Think less “features” and more “the network just does what we expect”—and if it drifts, it self‑corrects and tells us why.
We dig into the product details that make that vision real: SFP ports moved to avoid snags, dual‑board firewalls for built‑in redundancy, and an IP67 AP that can switch antenna patterns in software for warehouses, hospitality, and large retail. Operations take center stage as Michelle shows how kitting, rack studs, and pre‑tilted AP mounts cut install time from minutes to seconds, standardize outcomes, and shrink on‑site surprises. It’s the part of networking that saves budgets and reputations, even if it rarely gets the headline.
Then the industry lens widens. T‑Mobile’s network slicing at the Las Vegas Grand Prix delivers dedicated lanes for first responders, payments, and media—wireless as a dynamic service, not a fixed asset. Ubiquiti blends a Wi‑Fi 7 bridge inside a switch for flexible uplinks. Europe’s upper 6 GHz decision pushes more indoor performance toward cellular while Wi‑Fi 7 continues its rapid rise, with Dell’Oro forecasting dominance by 2028. We also spotlight OpenRoaming’s momentum as Purple makes entry‑level onboarding and roaming enablement free, and a Wi‑Fi HaLow collaboration from Morse Micro and GL.iNet that stretches low‑power IoT across campuses and fields. Along the way, a dose of tech nostalgia reminds us why clarity matters: build systems that make the right outcome the easy one.
Join us for a grounded tour of what’s shipping, what’s changing, and what’s actually useful. If the vision of autonomous, intent‑driven networks gets you curious—or if you just want practical wins you can deploy this quarter—hit play, subscribe, and share your thoughts. And if you’ll be at AWS re:Invent, message us to swing by our live demo and say hello.
Thanks to our sponsors: Helium & meter Networks!
🤑Looking for ways to monetize your network? Check out helium.com!
💡Change everything you thought you knew about networking at meter.com
What's up, y'all? It's Drew Lins the Wireless Nerd, and this is the Waves Weekly Digest for November 20th through 24th, 2025. This is some new stuff that we've seen talking about, but I want to start off before we get into any of that and talk about meter up. Now, meter up happened this week and it was a phenomenal event. I can't say enough about it. I've had about a week to go over it in my head and think about what went right and what went wrong and what I learned and what I think everybody learned. And I think overall it was just really, really great. You know, I I got to interview some of the people there, I got to talk to some of the people there, I got to, you know, learn from the leaders that were there and really appreciate what was happening at the event. And I think a couple things stand out even now, a week later. First and foremost, the fact that it was at Pier 27 at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco was really, really cool. I mean, you walked in the building, you felt like you were in San Francisco. They had these huge doors open, you could look out and see the sun shining over the bay, and you say you saw the bay bridge in the background, you saw the entire skyline just unfold before your eyes, and it was just a great place to be. And it's been it was very reminiscent of one of the first times that I went to the Bay Area when I got involved in technology and growing up in South Texas, you know, I didn't have a lot of access to some of the products and the companies and whatnot. But I remember the first time going out there and I went dumpster diving just to go dumpster diving to say that I had done it. I didn't find anything but trash, but that's a different story. But it really reminded me of a throwback to what it was like when all of the stuff was starting, the ISPs were cranking up, the dot-coms were happening, technology companies were these incredible things that existed so far away from where I lived that there was just this presence, this awe of what was happening out there. And when I went out there for meter up, I had a lot of really good reminiscent feelings and nostalgia about everything. And I don't know why. I mean, it just hit me when I saw the Skyline Trans America Tower, and you're looking out there and you're there for a tech company, and you turn to your left, and it's this big open warehouse area, and people are walking around sharing coffee, and all the meter employees are walking around their black jackets. It was just really, it was really neat. And I didn't expect to have that feeling when I heard Anil speak and with the theme of the whole event, but it kept creeping up on me where Anil talked about how technology has gotten to this point where everybody's just bolted so much on that meter's ideas to build from the ground up. Start with something fresh, start with something new, start with an idea and a concept and build it from the ground up instead of you know aggregating different companies or different technology components to put it all together. And that was such a cool way to harken back to those old days of people just getting, you know, rolling up their sleeves and building something brand new for the sake of building it brand new. And that that's shown throughout the whole thing. I mean, it wasn't just about the way that you know the way that they started the company and and the ethos that they take for building the hardware, but it also had to do with why settle for what is normal today. You know, one of the funniest moments was when Joshua, who's in you know in charge of all their hardware, uh comes out and talks about moving the SFP ports from the right hand side to the left hand side, and he had this moment where he talked about 1.2 millimeters and two millimeters and the difference between snagging your shirt on something and not, and how all of that just has to fit perfectly into a faceplate, and now everybody is going and looking at SFP ports to realize that they do protrude on every other piece of equipment just by enough that you could snag your shirt on it. But then it was the question of why? Why would you move the SFP ports over to the left instead of keeping them on the right? And it was because they could. It was because they weren't thinking traditionally, they were thinking about what made the most sense to them. And really diving deep into that was Sunil when he popped up and he started talking about the way that they were designing these networks for desired state networking. And it was this whole change in thought process of the way that that the network should work. And you know, a lot of it has to do with with what people are terming SLAs and QOE and all these quality of experience, but it's more about what is it that you want from the network? What do you want the network to do? And how do you build the hardware and the software so that the network will just act the way that it's supposed to when it's supposed to? And there was so much of that. And Sunil talking about you know his onboarding experience when he brings new employees in and about how he designs this, it doesn't even design anything. Sorry, he uses this iPad where he draws out how their mentality is when it comes to building these networks and these devices and the software. It was just a really, really neat moment. And when you add on top of that, the throwback of having Bob Metcalf there, which was just totally freaking awesome. I honestly didn't expect him to be as funny as he was, and it was just really great for him to be out there and sharing some great moments about the way the Ethernet was was conceived and built and why and how and where, and realizing that you're listening to someone talk about an approach to technology that it's the same approach that Sunil and Anil are taking with meter. It was really just really neat to have someone who could be there who's been there since the beginning to see how far this has come and to see people doing the things that he was doing so many years ago to build this technology and build this connectivity to really make things connect. And I think one of the main things that was missing that was really cool was AI. It was like it was it wasn't talked about. We didn't talk about AI. It was like a dirty word almost. And even Bob Metcalf joked with Anil about AI being a bubble, and he said he wasn't gonna answer that. And there was a lot of fun, there was a lot of fun back and forth about it, but it wasn't the idea of AI, it was about the idea of what some semblance of AI could do for you and do for your network and do for your business. And it was more about that going back to that desired state networking of being able to have a network do what it's supposed to do when it's supposed to do it, and if it's not doing it, have it automatically figure that out and then fix itself and prompt you and say, Hey, this is what I did, or hey, this is what I need to do, but I need approval to do it. It was along those lines leading up to them talking about building the first fully autonomous networks in 2027 as their goal. And that was so cool because you had this moment where we're all sitting there and they were like, they were talking, I mean, they were just talking about, they were showing off all the components they needed to do to or to complete in order to do what they set out to do, which is that fully autonomized network. Now, speaking of components, they introduced some really cool hardware that was very simply named, which was great. They had, you know, switch one, two, and three, which were named S1, S2, and S3. They had firewall, F1, F2, and F3. And what was really neat about one of their firewalls is they took two firewall boards and stuck them in the same 19-inch one RU cabinet or I'm sorry, uh uh rack mount kit, and you put it in there, and it's got two firewalls in run in one cross-connected to each other. So that way you've got redundancy built into the hardware, which is really neat to see. It was simple things like that. They introduced some new products that weren't really ready to be shown off yet, and you'll hear more about those in the interview that I did, uh, where we walked through everything that was on display with Shaboom, who's just such a wonderful person and such a good friend uh over at Meter who loves passionately talking about what they're doing. So I'm gonna roll Shaboom's interview after this, by the way. So uh so stay tuned. But you know, it was it was that level of doing things that make sense. You know, one of the things that they showed off was this access point. It was an IP67 rated access point that allowed you to choose your antenna pattern configuration from you know from the device. So you could say, hey, right now I want it to be Omni, or right now I want it to be, you know, 60 by 120 or 60 by 60, whatever it is. The theory that that you could build that into the device to give people the capability to really have a flexible device that they could deploy anywhere and everywhere or everywhere, and make those, you know, those software changes that would have a real-world performance increase for certain types of installations like warehouses or you know, grocery stores or whatever it is. So it was the idea that now they're coming in, they've gotten past the point at meter where they're really trying to define what those networks are and what they should be. And now they're looking at tweaking all these different little things. So adding in the new access points, AP1, AP2, and their gateway one, adding in the new APs, they introduced a wall plate AP for hospitality, which everybody knows that's that's the key to hospitality, right? Wall plate AP. So cranked out a wall plate AP. I have a hilarious story that I'm debating sharing about hospitality and someone that I met there who was incredible, and I got to spend some time with them on the shuttle on the way over there. We shared an Uber on the way back, we touched, you know, we had some touch points throughout the show, and I got to meet this incredible person. I completely misunderstood who he worked for and what he did. But at the same time, it was really neat because I didn't realize who he worked for. I thought he worked for somebody much, much smaller in scale in the business that he's in. And and and I had a great time with him. And then when I learned what he really did, I was like, oh man, that's awesome. I probably shouldn't have been asking stupid questions, but whatever, we had a good time. We got we got to know each other, and that was pretty great. Anyway, that's beside the point. But overall, man, I want to say that kudos to the meeter up team, the Sarah's for making it happen. Sarah Kwan always goes out of her way to do something exceptional. Sarah Stern for bringing us all together and making sure that we're all on the same page. Sunil and Neil, I mean, the guys are just killing it. It's so much fun to watch them enjoy what they're doing. Joshua and his his incredibly meticulous approach to hardware. And and we didn't hear from Charlie talking about cellular. That's okay. I did get some time to spin with Michelle Woods, not Michelle Brown, Michelle Woods, as I uh accidentally punched it in the LinkedIn the wrong way. But one of the things that stood out was her part of the conversation. And again, I really this is what I like to hammer on with the meter stuff, right? It's I don't care if they build the best hardware in the world, I don't care if they build the best software in the world. I everybody can build great hardware, everybody can build great software. So I'm just saying, I mean, their stuff's probably really good, don't get me wrong. However, that's awesome. But what it really comes down to is who's putting this in. How are they installing it? Why are they installing it? Where are they installing it? And the efforts that they have put into that have been absolutely exceptional. Michelle showed off how they were able to save so much time by just kitting everything at their at their place and then shipping it off to the customer, and not just kitting the equipment that goes in the rack and having these custom-built racks using these things called rack studs that change their install time from six minutes to 90 seconds or less. You know, simple things like that that are have a huge impact. But then taking access points and their antennas and mounting them to what looked essentially looked like a cutting board. It was an HDPE board, looked like a big cutting board. But they mount the access point and the antenna and then they rotate or move the articulating mount to apply the appropriate amount of down tilt and yeah, and you know, azimuth on that antenna so that when it's installed, it's already, it's already set up, it's already calibrated, it's already ready to go. And being able to define what the procedure for installation is and and monitor the way that those installations get done, that to me is where the rubber meets the road. Like literally, that's where the equipment gets installed. So it's an addition to all the great stuff that they do, being able to have it installed exactly how they want it. Anyway, there you go. That's I I had to go on and on about meter up, man, because it was awesome. It was so much fun to be there. I appreciate the invitation to come out there and spend some time with them. It was really great. It was great to see a you know, a bunch of friends, great to see some familiar faces, and great to learn about what meter is doing. If you want to learn more about them, obviously, I hope you know meter is one of the sponsors of the Waves Podcast, and we've always been so happy that they choose to spend their money with us and sponsor what we do. So uh please visit them, meter.com, if you want to learn more about what they're doing. Look them up online or drop me a message, and I'll be happy to introduce you to anyone over at the team at Meter. All right. So now it's time to dig into what's happening. This is what's happening, what's new, what's now, what's next. Mostly what's new for the week of November 20th through 24th, 2025. Let's start off by talking about T Mobile. T Mobile is pushing the hybrid 5 private 5G uh slicing from F1 to factories. T-Mobile's all over the place doing this stuff. I don't know if anybody watched the F1 race that just happened in Las Vegas, but some neat stuff that was happening there. T-Mobile US leaned hard into the enterprise market this week, positioning its new hybrid private and 5G models in middle ground between fully private networks and pure public 5G. The carrier is combining nationwide 5G advanced coverage with network slicing and local edge compute, giving enterprises dedicated performance without building end-to-end private systems. At the F1 Las Vegas Grand Prix this past week, T-Mobile showcased real slices for first responders, allocating up to five times more resources in congested areas while also handling point-of-sale transactions and media workflows on separate logical lanes of the same network. Network slicing at its best, staying in their lanes, if you will. Although there aren't any lanes in F1, but you know what I mean. Anyway, analysts say this shared yet guaranteed approach could redefine how campuses, ports, and factories buy wireless, not as a static asset, but as a dynamic service with QOS and security tiers on demand. And where did that take place the most? Like I've mentioned before, this happened at F1. Pretty, pretty incredible. So during race week, several strip hotels created ad hoc creator lounges near track side fan zones, each with enterprise grade Wi-Fi and separate SSIDs for influencers, production crews, and fans. Local reporters describe live speed tests topping over 800 megabit per second down for media teams uploading 4K clips, while casual users saw around 250 megabit per second with less than 20 milliseconds latency and crowd conditions. Property tech staff said they tuned AP placement and band steering on the fly because on race day, man, it was getting pretty crazy and they had to go out and do some heat maps and make sure that everything was roaming the way it was supposed to. It's pretty awesome to see that that proof of concept, if you will. We've already everyone's heard about network slicing. We've talked about network slicing, and essentially, you know, this is taking one base station and slicing it up and giving people the ability to access different, you know, either different resources or or secured resources on the network and really slicing it up to give people the capacity that they need. So very, very cool. What do we got next? All right, so Ubiquity has introduced something pretty unique into the industry. This is called the device bridge switch, and it goes along with their whole product set of trying to make wireless bridging easier. And this time they did something a little bit different. Instead of putting a switch inside the access point, they put an access point inside the switch. This is a compact PoE plus switch with one 10 gig Ethernet port and seven two and a half gig ports, a six gigahertz ready Wi-Fi 7 bridging integration for seamless high capacity wireless uplink. So, what this is is it's a switch, one of their typical switches, featuring seven two and a half gig PoE plus ports and a single 10 gig PoE plus port, but it has Wi-Fi integrated into it. It's got six gig Wi-Fi 7 integrated into it. So you can plug the switch in like you normally would, but the switch wirelessly communicates back to your Wi-Fi network, which again is pretty unique. It's running for$299 on ubiquity.com or UI.com, uh UI.com. It's just, you know, a little bit different. It just shows that they're continuing to do these creative, innovative things. You know, I'm not gonna lie, I want one. I but I don't know what the hell I'm gonna use it for, but I want one because it seems kind of cool. I think I'm gonna buy one and test it out just to see what it does. But kudos to the team over at Ubiquity for keeping it fresh. Next up, oh man, the Spectrum Battle in Europe, right? In the EU. A key advisory board to the EU, the Radio Spectrum Policy Group, known as RSPG, proposed that 540 megahertz in the upper six gigahertz band, which would be 6425 to 6960 if you're playing along at home. Those should be earmarked for mobile operators, not Wi-Fi, marking a major win for 5G advanced and future 6G services. This is a sharp contrast to the US, Canada, South Korea, I don't know, like almost everywhere in the world, it feels like, which has opened up that block for Wi-Fi 6E and 7. This didn't go the same way in Europe, and there's a lot of talk about this online. So you don't have access to those same frequencies that we are using for six gig Wi-Fi in the States. Now in Europe, it's a little bit different. European mobile giants like Dort Telecom, Orange, and Vodafone argued they need that mid-band spectrum to remain competitive in 6G deployments and industrial connectivity, while groups like Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, again, pretty much everybody, lobbied to reserve this for Wi-Fi. Analysts believe the decision could tilt Europe towards cellular heavy architectures for indoor and campus Wi-Fi networks, forcing Wi-Fi vendors to focus on that lower 6 gig and that really congested 5 gig lanes while enterprises lean more on neutral host or private 5G for guaranteed performance. This is a big hit, man. I mean, this is that not being able to use the same frequency space in Europe as you do in the States. And it's it's just kind of a loss, right? If you're using Wi-Fi, you want to make sure it works the same way everywhere. And Europe decided that that wasn't something that they wanted to do. I don't know. In other news, Berlin quietly launched Wilderness of Berlin, a citywide wildlife sensor network using low-power Wi-Fi and other radios to track foxes, boars, and bird species around park and rail corridors. Hundreds of smart camera traps and audio sensors are being deployed, connected back via municipal mesh and fiber to a central platform where ecologists and city planners analyze movement patterns. That's pretty awesome. Residents can access a public dashboard to see where certain species are most active, blending conservation and civic tech. It's pretty cool. I totally butchered the name. Wild turn, I don't even I don't speak German now, no. W-I-L-D-T-I-E-R-N-A-H. Wild turn wild turn? I don't know. Someone, where are my German friends when I need them to explain the Wi-Fi for me? Anyway. But if you combine those two stories, man, think about it. Europe's 60 choice or 6 gigahertz choice sets a long-term trajectory, right? More licensed cellular for indoor performance, less unlicensed headroom for Wi-Fi. At the same time, groups like the Wildlife Network in Berlin are showing how creative low-power Wi-Fi could continue to matter, you know, not to mention the whole digital divide thing or getting people access when they need it. But now they've got this. I don't want to say they have a loss of spectrum because they never had it to begin with, but now they don't get access to the same spectrum that the rest of the world is able to use. So kind of a bummer for Europe. Next up, our good, our good friends over at Del Oro. I got to see Sean Morgan this week or last week, which is always makes it a better week when you get to hang out with Sean. After this, I'm going to talk a little bit about her views on what we saw over at Meeter Up. But the little bit different approach here, let's talk about some statistics from Del Oro. Del Oro's latest report shows that enterprise wireless LAN market grew 11% year over year in quarter one of 2025, largely on the back of that Wi-Fi 7 adoption, which already accounts to for 12% of enterprise wireless LAN units shipped worldwide. So we're already hitting 12% number, double-digit numbers for Wi-Fi 7 in Enterprise Wireless LAN. In real world trials run by Wireless LAN or the WBA with ATT and some of the other providers, Wi-Fi 7 has nearly doubled the throughput versus Wi-Fi 60 at 5 gig using 40 megahertz channels and sustained more than a gig at 40 feet over 160 megahertz in 6 gig test. I've seen it 2.9 is the fastest that I have used it on a phone, but at WLPC last year, we hit it, we saw it hit over three gig, which was pretty neat, which also prompted some really cool things that we're gonna be doing at WLPC in Phoenix. So stay tuned for that. There's gonna be some really cool speed tests coming out showing what we're doing with Wi-Fi 7. So it the the hype is of Wi-Fi 7 moving in is is really meeting, you know, the expectations are being met, which is which is pretty cool to see. So different, different aggressive competition we're seeing out there with you know a number of the different manufacturers. And uh Delaware reporting that there's a prediction Wi-Fi 7 will surpass 90% of indoor AP revenue share by 2028. So in two years, it's gonna be 90% Wi-Fi 7 with Wi-Fi 8 APs arriving late that year. So late 2028 is when Delaware is predicting the Wi-Fi 8 access points coming in, but definitely not uh material impacting spending until 2029. So if you're thinking about upgrading, you're good to go for a couple years. It looks like if you if you're thinking about making the jump and you're questioning whether you should wait for Wi-Fi 8, no, man, just deploy. There's no, I mean, you're gonna, it's what, three years away? You're gonna have to swap out tech by then anyway. There's a lot of talk about what's gonna be in Wi-Fi 8. So I'm looking forward to more discussions on Wi-Fi 8 to really articulate what it can do, how it can do it, what makes it stronger, what makes it better. All right, what else do we have going on here? In in other news, travelers at Austin Bergstrom International Airport have been posting TikToks and Reddit threads about an informal power corridor near gates 17 through 21, where new Wi-Fi 60 and 7 APs and heavy outlet density apparently line up perfectly. Flyers report 600 to 800 megabit per second down and low teens latency while charging compared to 150 megabit per second and more jitter elsewhere throughout the terminal. Airport IT staff responding comments hinted at an ongoing phased upgrade and said user-generated speed maps are being folded into future AP placement decisions. Ferney Munoz, have you been to the Austin Bergstrom airport? Is it you, Ferney, that's been doing these heat maps? And in case you don't know what I'm talking about, go look up Mr. Ferney on LinkedIn or on Twitter or on Instagram and realize that as much of a wireless nerd as you think you are, Fernay schedules layovers at airports just so he can walk around and do heat maps at airports. I don't know how factual that is. I know that he does it, but I don't know if he actually schedules the time to do it. I think it's more of a passing time thing. Although I would not put it past Fernay to schedule an extra hour to go do a heat map at an airport, which is kind of funny. And I wonder, Ferney, we need to get you on the show, man. How many Wi-Fi 7 deployments and networks have you seen out there? And have you seen it Chrome? I don't know. But if anybody knows, it's Mr. Fernay. A couple of other things that popped up this week on LinkedIn that I saw that were pretty cool was Morse Micro meeting with GLINET. And GLINET makes one of my favorite home devices, my little router that I carry with me everywhere that I go. I love that thing. The story really started with Morse Micro and GLINET joining forces to launch the Halo Link 1, which is their 80211 AH or Wi-Fi Halo access point, and the reference platform aimed at long-range, low-power IoT deployments, built around Azure Wave's AWHM593 module, which is the one that goes inside there, uh, featuring Morse Micro's MM6108 Wi-Fi certified Halo system on a chip, the Halo Link 1 combines sub-gig reach over one kilometer line of sight and typical test with ultra low power consumption and support for thousands of devices per AP, which is ideal for agriculture, industrial sites, and large campuses. GLINET adds a MediaTech MT7621A dual-core CPU and a 2x2, 2.4 gig radio, effectively bridging Halo backhaul tradition to traditional Wi-Fi and Ethernet so that legacy sensors and controllers can join Halo networks without a redesign. This unit's being sampled to tier one OEMs and ISPs now. You can buy it via Mouser for 99 bucks is the introductory price. And this positions it both as an evaluation kit and something that is completely production ready. Now, if you look at what they've done recently, that's their that's their Halo Link 1 kit. We've covered that one before. But if you look at what they just did on their announcements on LinkedIn, this thing was really neat to see just because it's two really great teams that are coming together. And GLINet is just, I mean, they make really inexpensive equipment that works really well. And it just it's it seems like it's very purpose-built. It does exactly what it's supposed to do when it's supposed to do it. They're going to be out at CES as well. But yesterday, or I guess last week, is when uh I read about it yesterday, but it was last week. They were welcoming the team over there and they're having what they call what they called, quote, an in-depth discussion on strategic collaboration and innovation in next-gen routers and IoT connectivity solutions. They said, quote, it was a productive and inspiring exchange. We look forward to driving innovation together with the Morse Micro team. That's from GLINET. So very cool to see GLINET and Morse Micro continue to do what they're doing. It's very, very neat to watch. Now, there was another really cool announcement from the Wireless Broadband Alliance. I know Tiago was out there like shouting this one from the rooftops that felt like there was some excitement in these posts. Big announcement. It says Purple, the B Corp, a global leader in guest Wi-Fi and connectivity platforms, today announced a pivotal commitment to advancing the Wireless Broadband Alliance's open roaming standard. This removes the friction for venues. And by doing this, Purple is offering its entry-level guest Wi-Fi solution, which is called Connect, free of charge, along with free open roaming enablement across a venue's network networks estate. Now, what this means is that if you use Purple, which is a really cool analytics platform on the back end, you can see how many people are showing up, how much time they spend, guest tracking, et cetera, et cetera. If you use that, this is something that you can add to Purple to really enhance what it does. So now Purple is not just allowing your onboarding to take place easier from a captive portal perspective and giving you that visibility into who's doing what when they're on your property. But now, as they add open roaming to that, it takes it a step further. It really enables people to flow from business to business, from area to area without having to connect. And open roaming uses Passpoint. And basically what happens is your phone automatically recognizes if you have the profile on it, it automatically recognizes that you're near a network. It automatically connects, it gets you online. You don't have to fuss around with passwords and connecting to SSIDs and whatnot. It just does what it's supposed to do. Now, from their press release, it says Purple, global leader in guest Wi-Fi and connectivity, announced a pivotal commitment advancing WBA's open roaming standard. This initiative is a critical step in democratizing access to the open roaming network, inviting venue owners, network managers, and industry partners to expand the secure automated Wi Fi utility worldwide. Open roaming is designed to make connecting to Wi Fi as seamless as cellular, leveraging a federated network model to eliminate repetitive logins and deliver ubiquitous secure connectivity. More than 3,000 open roaming certificates have been issued, and over 800 end entities are actively using open roaming today. Purple's free connect. Offering supports this mission by providing the foundation businesses need to participate, ensuring the benefits of open roaming are accessible to all. This is very cool. It's a great, it's a step in the right direction. Open roaming has long been talked about as a really great way to get people online. And so we're excited to see that purple is jumping on and adding this to their Connect platform. And this is definitely going to advance what the WBA is trying to do. So congrats to everybody involved in that. Something fun I wanted to bring up just because like the nostalgia's hitting hard. I mean, this is like nostalgia week, right? After I'm telling you, there was something about going to San Francisco to go to meters event that felt super nostalgic. I don't, I don't, I can't put my finger on it. I don't really know what it was, but it was the idea that they were doing something innovative and not using anyone else's technology. It was them. Like you could you could picture the guys like building this, you could picture the teams putting it together and throwing out the playbook and then being in San Francisco and the Bay Area. And it was just it was just a great throwback. But I feel like the algorithm is so on point with everything that's going on. That I jumped on Twitter and or X for the first time in a long time, and something that kept popping up was people that were posting nostalgic throwbacks to Windows 95 and Windows 3 3.1 3.11. And it was just so great to go back and look at that and see pictures of the control panel and see pictures of the way that the first operating systems looked and what was great about them. And you know, it was someone mentioned on on X, they said, Man, I really miss things being this simple. And the first thing in the corner was a 32-bit ODBC connector. And I was like, Man, I remember the first time I realized what ODBC was, and I used it can to connect to an access database so I could plug it into a website using oh my god, what was it called? What were those? The oh man, front page, front page web extensions. Golly, remember those things? Anyway, it was it was really cool. And then I saw you know further on it said, if you've ever configured config sys and auto exit back, we can be friends, you know, and it would just really made me think about like I feel like that was a moment in time that my head goes back to where I just I remember the control panel, and I remember the first time I saw it, I was like, man, this is really cool with you know the DOS back in, and now Windows was this UI that you could do things. And even at that, you know, I saw Sound Blasters making cards again, which is crazy. I mean, just to think about Sound Blaster, I remember the first time I opened up my CD ROM kit, the first time I bought a CD ROM that I could connect into my computer and how awesome that was. Anyway, I hope y'all are feeling as nostalgic about all of it as I am, but it's just really neat to see the roots of where all of this came from, and not even where it came from. I mean, I know it started so much longer ago than that, but but to see just the innovation taking place over the last 40 years has been so dope just to watch. I mean, it's just been I remember the first time I got online, man. I remember tapping into Vax clusters, I remember, you know, dial in, I remember freaking WindSock errors, I remember, you know, the first time when Netscape came out, I was like, God, this is so great. My CompuServe login, my Prodigy login, my AOL login. Oh man. God, you know, I really wish CompuServe was still running. That was so much fun to tap into. You know, it was that service within a service. Anyway, I just thought I'd talk about that real quick. If you're feeling nostalgic, it's just it's neat sometimes to go back down memory lane from a technology perspective. And I like even at that, I saw a pop-up on Instagram where it's I'm I'm assuming it was AI created. It says, Man, this place looks utterly familiar. And it was a real life version of a scene from a video game. And you know, just recently I've been playing, I've been playing Call of Duty for the first time in a long time. Modern Warfare, you know, Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare 3 and World at War. I've been going through those again, and I've got my kid beside me, and we're playing the games and whatever. And it's like I think back when I when I open up some of those maps, it's like I've been there, you know, like I've it's crazy. And I don't even know, I don't even I hope this resonates with someone because like it's just so nuts. Like I'll fire up in a video game, and I haven't quote unquote been there in so long. But dude, I remember it. I spent so much time in that virtual world. It's like, dude, imagine walking into a real life Doom house. I mean, maybe someone needs to do that for like a for like it's CES or like one of these big events, they need their entire booth to be like an old school Doom map because I could walk through that thing in my sleep. Anyway, I just thought I'd share that just because it's there's a lot of that going on right now. I thought it was kind of hilarious. I can't be the only one, man. I the algorithms are too on point for it just to be affecting me. Anyway, drop a drop a note, man, drop a comment. If you're listening to this, drop a comment on one of the platforms and tell me if if I'm crazy or if you actually remember going back into time and seeing some of these things. I it's just awesome. It's awesome to get nostalgic. All right, so the last thing I'm gonna leave you with is I'm gonna publish some of the interviews that that I did at Meet Her Up because I don't want you to just hear about it from me. I'd love for you to hear about it from the people that were there. And also I'd I'm gonna cut out a special edition. I said earlier that I was gonna feature her interview after this, but I'll just drop it as a separate one. I want you all to appreciate what I was able to appreciate. So I'm gonna drop an interview I did with Shaboom who walked me through every product that they had out there. But real quickly, I'm gonna drop a couple comments here. I'm gonna, I'm gonna I'm gonna play some of the interviews that I had at Meter Up so that you can hear, not just from me, but from Troy and from Sean about what we saw at Meter Up and what made it pretty impactful. Anyway, with that being said, I hope you all have a wonderful week. This is the Thanksgiving week here in the state, so happy Thanksgiving to everybody. I hope you have some great time with your families. I hope you enjoy some awesome downtime. Next week's gonna be hella tricky for me. I will be out at Amazon at AWS reInvent at the big conference. We're doing an incredible demo at the Five Guys Burgers at Five Guys Las Vegas at the Grand Canal Shops. If you happen to be in Vegas for AWS, please send me a message so that I can get you registered so that you can come by and eat a free burger, and we're gonna be showing off some really, really neat stuff that's already been hinted at. And I've, you know, the news release has dropped, and it's some things that I've gotten to work on that are so cool and so much fun and so creative that I'm just happy to be a part of some of these incredible efforts that we're doing over here at Eero. So go take a look at that. And otherwise, have a wonderful week, and I will talk to you all soon. Thanks. See ya.
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