Why Wi‑Fi 7’s Surge Matters And How Wi‑Fi 8 Will Change Network Design - Plus the WiFiNow Awards and BEAD Funds!

The wireless world just flipped from speed bragging rights to real‑world reliability, and we’re here for it. We break down how Wi‑Fi 7 went mainstream faster than anyone expected, why Cisco’s below‑6E pricing and AI‑ops licensing strategy vaulted them to the top, and what that means if you’re debating an upgrade from Wi‑Fi 6 or 6E. The decision no longer ends at the radio—it’s about committing to a cloud and AI stack that will steer roaming, airtime, and assurance for years.

Then we look ahead: Wi‑Fi 8 isn’t promising just bigger peaks, it’s setting the stage for multi‑AP coordination and agentic AI on the AP to lower real latency in messy RF. Think clusters over boxes and an RF brain that orchestrates who talks, when, and where. Qualcomm’s timeline and industry whispers around MWC Barcelona point to silicon arriving sooner than standards alone suggest, and early targets hint at around 25 percent gains in throughput and 95th percentile latency when the cooperative features are turned on.

Outside the lab, the buildout story turns concrete. BEAD awards are now announced across all states, with fiber shouldering most deployments and Starlink providing a resilient layer where fiber won’t reach. That changes planning for schools, libraries, and campuses—align your LAN upgrades with incoming backhaul so you don’t overbuild. We also spotlight Helium’s joint venture with Mambo Wi‑Fi in Brazil, where a tokenized incentive model meets a conventional ISP to crowd‑host the last mile with SLAs backed by analytics. Add a stadium refresh at Empower Field that shows the payoff of 6 GHz for operations and fans, a candid look at convention center Wi‑Fi contract tiers, and MikroTik’s consumer‑friendly Wi‑Fi 7 router with Matter and Thread.

IoT rounds out the shift from hype to critical infrastructure. Enterprises are consolidating on fewer platforms, budgeting for lifecycle security and observability, and treating sensors, cameras, and handhelds as production endpoints. That pressure dovetails with Wi‑Fi 7’s latency improvements and Wi‑Fi 8’s reliability playbook, making AI‑driven control and better telemetry table stakes. If you’re planning 2025, this is the moment to pick your control plane, design for coordinated clusters, and map your upgrades to where the fiber—and the budgets—are actually landing.

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Chapters

• 1:30 Setting The Week’s Agenda
• 1:51 Wi‑Fi 7 Adoption And Cisco’s Play
• 3:05 Strategy: Choosing Cloud And AI Stacks
• 3:25 Wi‑Fi 8 Roadmap And Multi‑AP AI
• 4:31 Designing Clusters Over Boxes
• 5:18 BEAD Awards: Fiber First, Starlink Backup
• 6:35 Decentralized Wi‑Fi: Helium x Mambo
• 8:02 Stadium Wi‑Fi And Convention Center Deals
• 10:02 MikroTik’s Home Wi‑Fi 7 Push
• 11:30 IoT Grows Up: From Hype To Critical
• 12:24 Wi‑Fi Now Awards And Picks
• 16:22 Use Your Voice: Industry Accountability
• 17:42 WLPC26 Registration And Community

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 1:00

What's up, y'all? It's Drew Lentz, the Wireless Nerd, and this is the week of December. 17th is today, and I want to go over the Waves Wireless podcast with you. This week we're talking about Wi-Fi 7 finally hitting its escape velocity, Wi-Fi 8 getting even more real with a roadmap, bead money finally turning into concrete builds in real-world Wi-Fi and stadiums and neighborhoods. Let's jump in. So, first and foremost, Cisco pulled off something nobody expected a year ago. Wi-Fi 7 is now the fastest adopted wireless LAN technology in the company's history, according to Del Oro. Even with China's W LAN spending dropping by double digits in third quarter, 2025, global Wi-Fi revenue would have hit double digit growth if China hadn't slumped. And outside China, the market's back on a strong upward trajectory. The trick wasn't a magic fi, it was pricing and licensing. Go figure. Cisco kept Wi-Fi 7 AP pricing below where Wi-Fi 6E launched and then leaned hard into recurring software and AI ops licenses. So more of the growth comes from the cloud management and AI features that customers pay for over time. The result with all this is that Cisco jumps in the first place on Wi-Fi 7 revenue while public cloud managed WLAN grows about twice as fast as the rest of the market thinks to higher ASPs and those AI driven features layered on top. Why is this important? Because if you're deciding when to jump from Wi-Fi 6 or 60, the message here is that Wi-Fi 7 is not a boutique early adopter play anymore. It's a volume platform in North America, EMEA, and the rest of the world. The strategic decision here is less Wi-Fi 7 yes or no, and more of whose cloud and AI stack do you want to marry for the next five to seven years? So good news on that Wi Fi 7 front. Now, right on the heels of that, Qualcomm has just laid out their framework on how Wi-Fi 8 and agentic AI fit together. And sounds like less of a speed bump and more of like a reliability playbook. The focus is on ultra-high reliability multi-A B coordination, which we've talked about on the show multiple times, better uplink scheduling and using AI to orchestrate which APs talk when, and with an eye toward edge AI devices that need predictable latency, not just big peak numbers. This is AI on the AP trying to figure out how to coordinate all of this focus, not just for multiple frequencies and multiple client devices, but for multiple access point and AP coordination. At the same time, Wi-Fi Now, so our buddy uh Klaus over at Wi-Fi Now is teasing that Qualcomm's quote complete Wi-Fi 8 generation platform portfolio reveal for the MWC uh Barcelona 2026 Barcelona, which tells you that the silicone is much closer than the standards timeline would suggest. So roadmaps for chipmakers and vendors lineup around Wi-Fi 8 being about 25% better throughput, about 25% lower latency at the 95th percentile and messy RF compared to Wi-Fi 7 in that same spectrum once those multi-AP features are turned on. So it's gonna be big, it's gonna be awesome, it's gonna be multi-AP strategic AI decision making. And according to Klaus, it's gonna be real at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona 2026. Now, this is awesome for design teams. This is the start to think about how you want clusters of APs instead of boxes on a floor plan. So let's think about that from a design perspective. You don't have one AP serving you know an area, you want multiple APs so that they can coordinate together so that they can use their resources to make sure that the maximum efficient and effective throughput is delivered to those client devices. So more clusters, less boxes. Wi-Fi eight's value shows up when APs coordinate, like a single RF brain, if you will. And for leadership, this bigger shift is cultural. If your organization isn't ready to trust AI-driven controllers to schedule airtime and roaming, you won't see most of the promised benefit of this. So get ready on the AI train that's coming through to a town near you. All right, what are we going to get into next? There's lots of stuff going on. The bead funding thing. Okay, so telecompetitors updated benefit of the bargain list now includes California, which means all 50 states have announced bead provisional awards. In one representative set of awards, roughly about 85% of the locations are slated for fiber, about 14% for Leo satellite via SpaceX, and only a tiny fraction for HFC hybrid coax or fixed wireless. So the money may be technology neutral and paper, but the builds are overwhelmingly fiber, plus now a strong Starlink backup layer. Another telcompetitor tracker shows that 29 states and three territories have had their bead final proposals formally approved by NTA, NTIA as of December 10th. So this is unlocking real construction dollars, is finally making these things happen. State and industry groups are now pushing NTIA to accelerate release of non-deployment funds, which pay for the planning, permitting, the modernization, digital equity work, and all the stuff that sits along the actual physical component of it. For network builders, this says the Wi-Fi and the wild and rural US is going to ride on fiber and Starlink far more than cable over the next five years. For schools, libraries, and universities, it's time to start mapping how these bead builds intersect with wireless land upgrades so you don't overbuild and underspect land behind that new fiber drop. All right, let's talk about this one. Helium, the decentralized wireless network that migrated to Solana and a proud sponsor of the Waves Wireless Podcast, just announced a joint venture with Brazilian ISP Mambo Wi-Fi to bring helium-powered hotspots into Brazilian cities. The idea is that Mambo handles the ISP side and local customer operations, while Helium's D-Pen model rewards individuals for small businesses or and small businesses for hosting access points that contribute to broader coverage. This is one of the first mainstream D-Pin deals that looks like a crypto experiment, a little bit less and more like a conventional ISP extending its footprint using tokenized incentive layers. For Wi-Fi pros, the interesting bit is not the token. It's how coverage and quality of service get enforced within the last mile radio when it's owned by a crowd instead of a single operator. If this model works at scale, you could see more ISPs treating these community-hosted Wi-Fi as an extension of their access network with SLAs backed by analytics and automated enforcement instead of truck rolls to every AP. For Munis or those municipalities and campus-style environments, it raises new questions about governance. Who actually owns the RF plan when these radios are crowdsourced? And if you think about how Wi-Fi 8 is going to add to that, now if you've got multiple APs that are serving single clients, who you know who's responsible when you have all these different APs on a network and you know what happens between handoff from one to the other? This could get really weird really fast. So income again, incomes AI to help make all of this better. The Broncos fans are finally getting some some game day Wi-Fi refreshes. At Empower Field at Mile High, Fryzen Business just finished a Wi-Fi 60 upgrade with more than 2400 APs, supporting 76,000 fans, operations, and media on a single converged network. This new design carves out dedicated SSIDs with 6 gigahertz capacity for ticking ticketing, point of sale, cameras, and staff devices, while fans are seeing higher uplink speeds for video sharing and early tests during late season games show smoother in-seat ordering and fewer app timeouts compared to the old system. So good news for those Bronco fans. Now, if you've ever been to a conference in Orange County, Florida, this might make sense. Now, if you've ever worked a booth or set up a booth at Orange County Convention Center, this might make you a little bit more angry than you've been in the past. So if you've ever had to set up a booth there or you've ever had to rent space, you know that I believe they were charging like$900 a day for one and a half megabit per second. It would like notoriously, if I have to remember any of the convention centers I've ever been to, their policy is like absolutely the worst. It was a tiny amount of capacity for a whole lot of money. Now, on top of that, there's this trend where large convention centers like Orange County Convention Center and Detroit's Huntington Place now bundle tiered Wi-Fi performance into their event contracts, quoting megabit per second per attendee and concurrent device caps alongside ballroom square footage. Planners are using Wi-Fi metrics as a negotiation lever, asking for specific throughput and latency guarantees for hybrid sessions, AR activations, and life polling rather than best effort. And again, it's horrible. If you've ever had to pay for one of these, you know that the amount of throughput that you get for the dollar that you spend is absolutely horrendous. So starting to think that they're adding tears into this. Man, the next time you go to a conference and you wonder why the Wi-Fi sucks, it's probably not because of the event manufacturer or the people there deploying it. It probably has more to do with the infrastructure that you're plugging into. Just a heads up. In other news and coming to a home Wi-Fi network near you, MicroTake just announced something called the HAPB3, the HAPB3. I don't even know how to say this particular product, but whatever. Anyway, it's got five two and a half gig Ethernet ports, triple band Wi-Fi 7, and it's got matter with thread built into it. It was a really cool announcement, uh looked very Steve Jobs-esque, and I think even the internet is recognizing that. If you go to R, you know, R slash Microtik, you can see them talking about it. There's a video up on YouTube where it shows the product itself entering the home Wi-Fi markets, a home router space. It's pretty interesting because you know, MicroTik, if you don't know who Microtik is, they've been along for a really long time, like a ridiculously long time. And they're a Latvian company who makes wireless access points. And they always, I felt like were a pretty strong competitor to Ubiquity, but way less expensive. They were very bare bones, man, and they ran you know different different versions of their firmware or software that you could load on to it to do different things on their firewall. But they have always been probably the one of the most creative companies out there when it comes to product mix. They've got PoE powered switches and they've got switch PoE powered PoE switches, they've got routers, they've got firewalls, they have all these different things that are very economical, very inexpensive. And now to know that they're coming into the home market is pretty interesting. So go check it out. Look up the H A PE3 HEP B3. Uh go check out r/slash microtik. You can join the conversation about what's happening about it. Speaking of matter and thread, RCR Wireless is calling 2025, the year that IoT shifted from quote, gold rush hype to critical business infrastructure, especially in manufacturing, logistics, and utilities. Instead of chasing random pilots, enterprises are consolidating around a smaller set of platforms and are finely budgeting for lifecycle management, security patching, and network observability as part of their IoT deployments. For Wi-Fi and private wireless pros like us, this is an inflection point where shadow IoT becomes a formal load on the wireless LAN. Thousands of sensors are now out there, thousands of cameras and handhelds treated in production environments as production endpoints, not just toys or trinkets on your network. It also means more pressure on deterministic behavior, trying nicely, tying it back into your Wi-Fi 7 latency improvements and Wi-Fi multi-AP reliability stories. This is a way where IoT is finally stepping up and it's no longer being cute. It's actually becoming essential. All right. And tomorrow night, if you haven't registered for it, get your butt over to wifinowal.com for the Wi-Fi Now 2025 awards. Lots of stuff popping up. There's been announcements all over LinkedIn and the internet, and the expert judges have completed their voting. It's time to announce a finalist for a 2025 Wi-Fi Now Award. So awards for affordable connectivity. You've got smart uh smartwave, via systems, and helium. Best Wi-Fi IoT, uh, Siva, Morse Micro and Synaptics. My votes on Morse Micro there. Best service provider, Wi-Fi solution, INEA Plume and American bandwidth. I'm going for American bandwidth. Best Enterprise Wi-Fi solution, Cisco, Corvo, and Ruckus Networks, probably pulling for Corvo on that one. Best in-home Wi-Fi product, Plume, Spectrum, and Qualcomm. I'm gonna go for Qualcomm. Best Wi-Fi service provider, uh, I don't know how to say this. Boo Boy Guess, Telcom, Touchstone One, and Spectrum. I don't know. I have Spectrum at home, so that's where I'd cast my vote. Best Wi-Fi Innovation, Morse Micro, Qualcomm, and Cisco. I'm pulling for Morse Micro. Best Wi-Fi startup, Links Technology, Pico Sella, and Quantal RF. I don't really have a dog in that race. Don't know too much about all three of them. Maybe this is a good time for me to learn. Best consumer Wi-Fi router is gonna be uh Qualcomm, Xeomi, Eero, and TP Link. Obviously, pulling for Eero in that one. I've got too much blood, sweat, and tears into that one to not pull my weight behind the company I work for. Best Wi-Fi testing or tools platform, Lightpoint, YBot and NetAlly. Oh god, that's a tough one between YBot and NetAlly. Probably gonna pull for NetAlly. Love Julio my team over there. Best Wi-Fi deployment solution, Extreme, Helium, and Cisco. I like Helium, man. I'm such a fan of what Helium's doing, but I love my boys over at Extreme and at Cisco. Probably gonna pull for that one. So huge congratulations to everyone that's out there. The awards gala is tomorrow. So if you want to see Klaus dressed up in his penguin suit, it will be tomorrow, December 18th. I don't know what time it's happening. Let's see. It says Thursday, December 18th, 7 p.m. Central. Or C E T, not Central, 10 a.m. Pacific time in the States. So 10 a.m. Pacific, 12 p.m. Central Time, or 1 p.m. East. So join now. Visit wifinowglobal.com, register for the awards. Let's see what color Klaus's bow tie is this year. It should be pretty sweet. So let's talk about something interesting. There was a post that was online, posted on LinkedIn, talking about merger issues and troubles between a couple of different manufacturers out there. And, you know, it was interesting to see how one person's voice can have a pretty deep effect. I had a conversation uh with my buddy who posted this. I'll leave the names out of it. I'll let you guys wonder and go look on LinkedIn and see what happened. But essentially someone said, you know, ever since this merger acquisition happened, I've been having problems as an end user ordering and receiving and getting updates and things like that. And it just goes to show you that, you know, this is the person who wrote it is, I don't want to say a fanboy, because I think we're all fanboys of some way, shape, or form and some type of technology. But to hear someone who is an industry-independent voice who says, Hey, look, I see a problem with this, made me really happy because it showed me that people aren't scared to speak up, even if it's friends of theirs, even if it's people that they've worked with or vendors that they've worked with, it was great to see that interaction. But even more impressive was to see the amount of interaction from the entire industry jumping on board and saying, How can I help? What can we do? Not, you know, obviously there's a there's a whole sales component there, like gives people a chance to displace a product, but at the same time, it was great to see the industry stepping up to see how they could help that out. So I guess my point with this message is don't be scared to use your voice and to talk about something that that you think is right or something that you think is wrong, even if it is a friendly vendor or a friend of yours, it's always good to speak up because you never know what's going to come out of it. So kudos to the person for saying what they did. Again, if you wanted more information, slide in a DMs, I'll direct you in that in that direction. But it's just really good to see that people still have a voice, especially since this industry particularly has gone across a number of times and voices have tried to be stifled. And in WLPC26 news, oh man, it looks like WLPC26 is coming together. They oh launched for tickets and registrations on Monday the 15th. I even did a little countdown, bust out the DJ equipment, had a good time playing some music and trying to get everybody hyped up. More people than I thought actually tuned in, and I've continued to get messages about it. So, yes, I used to be a DJ. Yes, I still know how to DJ. Yes, I was having some fun. But all in all, it was really good. Within the first, I think Kisa, within the first couple minutes, or 120 registrants that went in there. More than half have already registered. I think there's still a handful of tickets left, with the cap being, I believe, I want to say like a 300 or 400. So if you haven't registered for WLPC, make sure you make your way over there. If you've missed the registration window and you need to get in, drop a message. There might be, you know, a slot that opens up. It's gonna be really, really cool. It's gonna be a lot of fun. It's happening in February. Nerd Boot Camp. There'll probably be a golf outing. If you play golf, uh, myself, Matt, Starling, Stu, a bunch of us are gonna get together and probably go hit some golf balls and have a good time as we did last year. And if you weren't there when my wife ordered shots of tequila for everyone delivered on the golf course by the cart girl, then you were missing out. But don't let that happen again. If you like to play golf, come join us a day early. We're gonna get out there and hit the links, more than likely, with a bunch of sponsored swag. I think we all chipped in some type of swag, but it was a lot of fun. Either way, I'm really looking forward to WLPT WLPC26 coming up. And I'm looking forward to something even sooner than that. CES is right around the corner, and there's gonna be a lot of really neat things and neat announcements happening at CES. I'm gonna be there. I'm gonna be working, which is gonna be exciting and fun, setting up some Wi-Fi. Uh, more details about that later, but it's gonna be a really great time. Hopefully, I'll get some time off to go walk around and walk the show floor. If you know me, you know, one of my favorite spots is to go downstairs at the Venetian and go into the area where everything is up and coming and see what kind of new technology is making waves down there. That's a great spot to go. But there's gonna be a lot happening at CES, and then right on the heels of that, and I mean right on the heels, CES ends on Thursday or Friday the next day. National Retail Federation NRF happens in New York City. So from one side to the other of the United States, getting into NRF is gonna be great. So first we're gonna see the consumer side of everything, then we're gonna see the retail side of it all. So it's gonna be a really fun kickoff to January way to break in the new year with some new technology, some new services, some new stuff to see. Maybe some, you know, maybe I'll win a raffle or something and get something neat out of one of them. Anyway, it's gonna be a busy first part of the year in January. Next week is the week of Christmas. I will try and do a podcast. I don't know, you know, if there's gonna be any huge news. This is a pretty down week for a lot of people between now and December 25th, where it's just like kind of chill. Everyone's here celebrating, you know, getting ready for Christmas holidays, celebrating Hanukkah, you know, getting everything ready and and spending time with family. So I'd encourage you to do that. If something fun comes up, maybe I'll make a little post about it. But until then, I hope you all have a wonderful end of your week. Have a wonderful weekend, and I will talk to you probably next week and enjoy. If you find anything fun, pass it on, man. I always have I'm always looking for new and fun, cool stories out there. So feel free to send me something. Anyway, have a great week. See ya.