Smarter Wireless: Design Standards, Tool Updates, Trends And Real-World Use

Miss the days when Wi‑Fi talk meant real problems, real tools, and real wins? Same here. I’m back on camera to unpack what actually moved the needle and what’s about to—from the push to standardize Wi‑Fi design to the quiet march toward Wi‑Fi 8 and the gear being pitched as “ready” for it. I share how a voice clone and an AI-powered workflow with Kero and Claude helped me build The Wireless Monitor, a curated briefing that filters the firehose into actionable trends for engineers and leaders.

We dig into WLPC’s session themes and why the proposed Wi‑Fi design standard needs rigorous, vendor-neutral guardrails to be trusted. Expect a candid look at silicon announcements, multi‑gig switching, and whether Wi‑Fi 8’s promised gains translate into real quality of experience. On the practical side, I highlight tools worth caring about: Wi‑Fi Check for clean device-to-AP-to-internet visibility in one tap, and Hamina’s Clip, a compact survey companion that connects over BLE and plays nicely with VPNs. These tools reflect a larger shift from “does it connect” to “does it deliver outcomes we can prove.”

Beyond specs, we talk retail, hospitality, and the reality of Wi‑Fi as context: personalization at the menu board, telemetry that informs staffing and layouts, and the ethical line as research turns RF into sensing and “see-through-walls” headlines. Resiliency is rising too—cable operators bundling 5G failover and battery backup, LEO constellations promising backup paths, and policy tremors around WISPs and MDU bulk contracts. The throughline is simple: connectivity is now an engine for decisions, not just a pipe. If you care about standards you can trust, tools you’ll actually carry, and networks that stay up when it counts, hit play and join the conversation.

Enjoyed this one? Follow, share with a teammate, and drop a review with your take on design standards and whether I should keep video, go audio-only, or publish the AI-generated version next.

Chapters

• 1:00 Back On The Mic And Video
• 2:48 2025 Stats And Community Support
• 5:04 Voice Cloning And AI Projects
• 7:09 The Wireless Monitor And Subscriptions
• 10:28 Sponsorships And 2026 Format Plans
• 13:09 WLPC Preview And Design Themes
• 16:41 Standardizing Wi‑Fi Design Debate
• 21:16 Wi‑Fi 8 Hype, Silicon, And Skepticism
• 25:18 Wi‑Fi As Sensing And Surveillance
• 29:07 CES/NRF: Utility Over Hype
• 33:44 New Tools: Wi‑Fi Check And Clip
• 39:13 Resiliency: 5G, LEO, And “Invincible” Wi‑Fi

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:30

What's up, everybody? It's Drew Lentz, the Wireless Nerd. Today is February 4th, 2026. This is the Waves Podcast. My name is Drew, and I am a wireless nerd. I figured I would go back on video because I wanted to try out working with audio only over the last couple of months. And it was fun. You know, part of the issue was honestly was like turning on the lights and making sure that the background didn't have too much clutter and whatever. And I spent a lot of time over the last month trying to figure out what I wanted to do with the podcast in 2026 and how I wanted to proceed with it and what I want to talk about and all those good things. And before I knew it, four weeks had gone by and I hadn't cut an episode. And I was like, dude, I can't go another week without cutting something else. The loyal listeners want to hear, or maybe not, you know, the five of y'all that listen. That's not true. There's actually a lot of listeners, and I do appreciate that. 2025 was a really good year for the podcast. The statistics were insane. I posted some of them on LinkedIn. We got some great numbers. We got a lot of really great viewers. We had a lot of people that were listening, a lot of people that are downloading. So I appreciate all of you very much listening to the Waves podcast. Every time I walk into a room, I get a handshake or a high five. And so I'm always extremely appreciative of everyone's comments and of everyone's support. So thank you so much for that. I I don't know, I don't know. I don't know what I want to do with the format. I've toyed with all of these things in my head, and I'm gonna do one of them for sure just to see how it comes out, and then I'll tell you how I did it, right? What I did is I I made a voice clone of myself and I and I reached out and and talked to a team and got their support and trying to figure out how to do it and had this great time putting that together. So I've completed my voice clone, which is insanely accurate, terrifyingly so. And I've done something else in between now and then, and I've been spending a lot of time really working with AI and working with a lot of coding and development efforts using AI, and that kicked off actually in November. My interest was sparked. I took a two-hour session on Kiro, which is the Amazon IDE, and it is insane the way that it interfaces with Claude and what it gives you the ability to do. And one of my first projects was obviously aggregating news. Hello, because as a loyal fan of the Google Reader, I still have yet to find something that aggregates news better than that until now. I've told a couple of y'all about it, but I do want to, I'll show it off at WLPC. I built something called the Wireless Monitor, and the Wireless Monitor is a briefing that's delivered to me exclusively on what's happening in the wireless industry, and it's really great. And I've I've been for the last couple of weeks, last I guess last couple months, I've been tweaking it, trying to make it as best as it could be. And so it presents this opportunity for me to read about the news in a way that's comfortable to me. And it's really cool. And so I think I might start giving people access to it as a premium subscription, which which I want to I want to try and do. I want to try it out. I've got a couple people that pay me five bucks a month, and I appreciate that. It it pays for some of my services, which is great. So if you're interested in subscribing, please do. That five dollars actually goes a really long way because it might not be five bucks that approaches here, it might be five bucks that I spend on you know Sonic Happy Hour with my kids, but nevertheless, it it it figures out its way into the podcast. So I do appreciate that. Also, on that note, my sponsorship season has ended for 2025. So once again, thanks to Helium Mobile and thanks to Meter for sponsoring me over the last year. What a cool sponsorship. I got to learn a lot about the products and and work with them and work with the team and generate some really cool content. So I appreciate that. Moving into 2026, sponsorships are now open. If you're interested, please reach out and let me know. What else is going on? Yeah, so I really wanted to figure out what to do with waves. Do I go back to video? Do I stay audio only? Do I do AI generated entirely? Probably not, but I think I'm going to do an AI generated version of Waves. Just for fun. So we'll see. Why not, man? And I'll show you guys how I'm doing it at WLPC if anybody's interested. Speaking of WLPC is right around the corner. We're in that two-week stretch of the timing for the show to come up. And if you're gonna be there, I can't wait to see you. Please come up and say hi. Please remind me of your name if you don't mind if you're listening to this, because I don't want to be like, oh man, what's that dude's name? Or what's her name? I can't remember. A lot of you I do know, but if there's a chance I might not know your name, please feel free to throw your name out there. And not just for me, for anybody that you meet, I'll tell you that it's a great networking tip. The rule of threes when it comes to people's names. Make sure if someone introduces themselves or you introduce yourself, drop your name three times. Have them repeat your name three times. It's very easy to do. Hey Drew, I'm Bob. Hey, Bob, I'm Drew. It's great to meet you. Bob, my name's Drew, and it's fantastic to meet you. There you go. It's funny and it's quick and it's easy, but it'll remind you. Also, what are your thoughts on on sharing contact information by bumping phones and QR codes for sharing cards? I'm curious what everyone uses because I've got business cards that I print and I don't really use. I'm curious how people interact with that. So I'm going to be watching, paying attention to the way that people when people move their contact information back and forth. So we got that. But that's a WLPC coming up. There are lots of really great sessions at WLPC this year. Let's bring up that the course catalog here. And some of the things that we're talking about, the reason I want to talk about them isn't just if you're if you're going, but what I'm interested in is the industry as a whole, what what's being discussed? And there's 75 that are in here. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to focus on the 30-minute sessions and the 20-minute sessions. That trims down a little bit. And let's let's look at the theme, right? Seven Ways to Prevail as a wireless expert, antenna math, automating Wi-Fi validation with no cold code tools. Francois's going to do great at that. I know it. Can we standardize Wi-Fi design? That is something. That one right there, I'm just going to hit the pause button on that because Bruno talking about that with the WBA is something that I'm curious what everybody's thoughts are. Not just then, but but now. There's this thing that the WBA has been pushing, and they just they had a really great announcement about it a couple of weeks ago. And and the WBA is getting behind it, and UCLA is getting behind it, and it's about a way to standardize doing wireless design and wireless testing so that there's some not just not necessarily a methodology, but there's at least constraints to the way it's done, like in you know, good design equals this, and not four bars, right? Good design equals neg 74 or whatever it is in this type of space. And I remember the Wi-Fi Alliance doing this with Wi-Fi certified homes a long time ago with Lenar and some of the other builders that were out there. But I'm curious how this is going to how this is going to work in in our industry and how many people are going to get behind it. Because it's one thing, it's one thing to put it out there and say it. I'm trying to bring up the article right now. The WBA Wi-Fi design design standard, that's what it was called, right? And it's one thing for for people to say, yeah, it's a great idea, let's adopt it, but it's another thing for a vendor to be pushing it, right? And that's the part that I'm having an issue with. No offense, Ukla, you guys make great products and you know, and Eka How and Sidekick and all the wonderful things there. But having a vendor driving this is like immediate cringe for me. And I don't know if if anyone feels the same way because it feels like it's this opportunity for a vendor to say, you should design great Wi-Fi, and the design standard is based on our equipment. And I don't think that that's how they're pushing it, but it doesn't matter, right? It it doesn't matter. I don't I'm staring at the article, and even without reading the article, I just think about the idea that a vendor is pushing this, and it's like, ugh, you know, how does that affect people's interpretation of what's going on? So I'd love to see more people get involved with this. I know the WBA is the strong advocate behind it, but I'm curious if the industry, you know, people like you, they're listening to this, if you're going to be interested in supporting something like this, and does it solve a problem? Or is it a problem that's being created to be solved by a vendor? That's the other question, right? Like we all know more or less what best practices are, and and equipment manufacturers have their best practices, but is this something that's being put together so that people will move towards a vendor so that they can certify a specific model? I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. So I'm I'm interested to see what Bruno has to say about that and how that's going to go over at WLPC. And again, this is WLPC is just the sounding board for this. You know, it's stuff that's already happening in the industry. So we'll see where that happens. Certified hospitality Wi-Fi, that's Matt Starling. And um, again, not not picking on a vendor, right? But Matt talking about certified hospitality. Matt works for Ekahow, who is owned by UCLA, and they're the ones that are pushing the standardization of designs. Like, well, hold on, man. Are we gonna get is this like a sales pitch? Because I don't want a sales pitch, you know. Anyway, Jeremy Baker talking about common industrial deployments, design and deployment, design and deployment, how to fix your Wi-Fi. There's this trend, right? Of of what is good for design? How are you designing? What tools are you using to designing? Is that solving the problem? What are what are ways to design it? And and that's always been a strong suit of WLPC is people talking about the design side of it. But we're obviously seeing a lot of that in these 10 or I'm sorry, in these 20 and 30 minute sessions. Indoor location update, Bob's gonna give a BLE versus Wi-Fi versus UWE discussion, signal processing, making Wireshark smarter, again, going back to the design and troubleshooting element of it. WLANPI project update, show and tell using a multi-vendor lab, Wi-Fi 7 and public venues, WPA changes. So lots of stuff that's happening on the front, uh, clearly about the design side moving into it. Now, one thing that I'm not seeing in here is the design for Wi-Fi 8 specific networks. And I'm not saying that they're available today and they're not available today, but there's already been announcements of equipment that's coming out, and there's even some things that you know that are being pushed to help drive the industry forward with it. It's like Broadcom, for example, announced that they're making Wi-Fi 8 ready silicone that's out there. They have the BCM 4940 or 49438, it's their accelerated processing unit, it's an APU, right? And that's the term that AMD coined, according to SDX Central here, where it's a chip that brings together CPU and GPU. And this is something that's going to help them push uh 48 multi-gigabit ports on their BCM 56390 switch for specifically for Wi-Fi 8 deployments, they're saying. So it's a good way to start spinning up the buzz machine around equipment that's Wi-Fi 8 ready, right? We're talking about a switch, but it's a Wi-Fi 8 ready switch, just means more power, more connectivity, and multi-gig to support it. Along those same lines, we're seeing groups like is it who is the the big one? Is it Qualcomm? They came out and they're talking about their their stuff that they that they put out there. Anyway, there's a lot happening in the Wi-Fi 8 world, but I don't see a lot of talk on the sessions at WLPC dealing with Wi-Fi 8. I'm looking real quick here, just for what it's worth. No, I don't see I don't see anything talking. Oh, Wi-Fi 8 is dead-ish. Uh-oh, Hinnersteiner. There we go. If you've never heard Jason Hinnert uh Steiner speak, he's one of my favorite people I listen to. He is one of the most accomplished and smartest people that I've met in the Wi-Fi industry. And I love listening to him go because he can just go deep and deep and deep. So I'm curious what he's gonna talk about. He says small enhancements and dubious practical QOE benefit without increasing max half duplex data rates will painfully decrease demand. So Herrensteiner is gonna approach Wi-Fi 8, but I'm curious where the industry is looking at that and how we're thinking about design and deployment specifically for Wi-Fi 8. It's gonna be different than Wi-Fi 7. There's a lot more intricacy in designing for Wi-Fi 8 than there is in 7. So while all these talks are gonna be great for designing for Wi-Fi 7, what are they doing to talk about the future design techniques and deployment techniques and certification and testing and all the stuff, all the things that we're gonna need in order to move into Wi-Fi 8. So that's kind of what's coming up. Along those notes, just some news that is that has been popping up. Here's a here's a fun one. Researchers are warning that Wi-Fi is being quietly turned into a mass surveillance system. So I've covered this so many different times, and it's about using beamforming feedback information to be able to quote unquote see through walls. And there's pictures and there's stuff where you can get these big letters and people can see what the what the image is reflected on, you know, kind of like radar, what it's reflected on using the Wi-Fi signal. But now the the there's an institute of technology that says they've cracked something fundamental about how Wi-Fi works, they've analyzed this, and there's from KIT, they're saying by observing the propagation of radio waves, we can create an image of the surroundings and persons who are present. Okay, that's nothing new. The method achieved nearly 100% accuracy across 197 participants in controlled testing, controlled testing, requiring only seconds of signal observation once the machine learning model is enabled. So combination of signaling and machine learning is pretty crazy. So I'm I'm curious also what's happening in the industry with conversations like this. I know at Wi-Fi now they've talked about, you know, quote unquote Wi-Fi radar and Wi-Fi sensing and some of these technologies that are out there. I'm interested to see if 2026 brings any of that into the fold. Speaking of what's happening in 2026, it's you know, I kicked the year off by doing what I what I've always called the technology two-step, which is step number one is fly to Vegas for CES, step number two is fly to New York for NRF. And all combined, I got to see some incredible technology this year. I got to see some some stuff that the ways that people are using Wi-Fi, where it's again, this goes back to the whole conversation about Wi-Fi being plumbing and about us all being you know plumbers of data, where it's more about what people are doing with Wi-Fi than about the Wi-Fi functionality itself. I think we've really moved into a space where functional Wi-Fi is a thing and it's happening and it's growing, which is great, but there's a baseline standard for functionality that wasn't there before. And and you know, one now that we've got more spectrum in in six gig and maybe even more spectrum coming to six gig, that's a whole other conversation. Is Wi-Fi 8 going to add additional spectrum up at the top level of 6 gigahertz? Hopefully, right? Unless you're in a place that doesn't have 6 gig turned on, not like India, who just turned on Wi-Fi or in 6 gig. I've got kids that just got home from school, so if they're screaming in the background, you know what that's like. Anyway, so so now with all of that going on, I've lost my thought, which is uh phenomenal, but that's okay, it happens. So six gig being opened up, there are other things that are happening in that space that are that are really great uh leading into more spectrum. So I'm gonna leave it at that, and maybe I'll think about what was coming up. Oh, what I was talking about was that now it's the utility of Wi-Fi. And so what's going to happen from a utility perspective? Is it you know not Wi-Fi for the sake of connecting? Because now that we've got more bandwidth, now that we've got this this baseline stability from chipset manufacturers and from vendors, I think now it's starting to look at what can Wi-Fi do for you, right? And so that's where my mind was. Sorry for that brain fart, man. I'm just gonna blame COVID. Let's see, what other articles do we have opened up? Qualcomm, the IPQ 5424 embedded router board, supports 22 gigabit triband Wi-Fi 7 and dual 10 gig networking. So Wally's Communication, they are an open Wi-Fi partner, just in case you didn't know that. They produced an embedded router board powered by a Qualcomm IPQ 5424 with a Cortex A55 SOC. And it says in here that they had Wi-Fi 7 connectivity up to 22 gigabit per second, along with two 10 gig RJ45 ports and four 2.5 gig RJ45 ports for wired networking. It's based on the Qualcomm APMI01.2 reference design. The board features 4GB and 8GB of DDR4 memory. Ha! Which means it's gonna be balls expensive. If you haven't been watching the memory market right now, holy mole, I bought my kid a new gaming PC for Christmas, and by the time it showed up, the cost of the RAM in the DRAM inside the computer itself was worth twice what I paid for the entire PC, including a 5060 Ti, which is pretty insane in and of itself. Not the 5090, but can't find those either. Anyway, so this thing's got that Qualcomm reference design with 4G or 8GB of DDR4, 256 meg of NAND flash, 32 meg NordFlash, a USB 3.0 port, a USB 2.0 port, JTAG serial debug ports. So this is a spec design, it looks like, and it's running, it's running pretty nuts, man. 4x4 and 2.4, 4x4 and 5 gig, 4x4 and 6 gig. Oh, that see that one goes uh 5.9 gig all the way up to 7.125 gig. Sweet. A bunch of Ethernet. So really pushing the envelope when it comes to what speeds are available out there. Let's see, what else we got? Oh, this is our this is something I do want to talk about, so I'm gonna wait on that. Also, check this out. I I saw this. Hey, my wireless digest thing, the wireless monitor that I have is it's producing some pretty interesting articles. So uh this comes from the Los Angeles TV and films entertainment lifestyle beauty staff. See, I'm I'm digging deep. Spanks founder joins the National Inventors Hall of Fame and buried in there, you know who else is joining? A lady named Teresa Meng. I've never met Teresa Meng before, but Teresa Meng's groundbreaking research, engineering expertise, and entrepreneurial leadership revolutionized Wi-Fi, making it faster, more energy efficient, and more affordable. So, Teresa Meng, if I don't know you, I apologize for not knowing you, but I'm sure there's someone listening to this who does know you because as the founder of Atheros Communications, she pioneered the integration of all communication functions onto a single CMOS chip, laying the technical foundation that drove the widespread adoption of Wi-Fi. So Teresa Meng, founder of Atheros, has made it into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. That's pretty cool, man. So congrats on that. That's that's pretty awesome. Like high five across the internet. Appreciate all the work that you did on that chipset. What else do we want to talk about here? Couple things. Oh, Kenneth Fernandez, oh, stand by before I read the comment. Kenneth Fernandez just sent me a message on X, and he's going to comment, and I don't know what it is, but what before I read his message, what I'm going to tell you is that I am so proud of you, dude, for what you have done because you have now gone from being an observer and a user in the industry to contributing something incredible in the industry. And and it's a step that a lot of people have taken. So welcome to the club. There's a bunch of us that are in this club, and we are always so happy to have someone new join. And, you know, whether it's Adrian with Intuit Bits producing software that I really feel like everybody uses, or whether it's Rob Boardman or Blake or someone going out producing, like making something and contributing to the industry, or the Wi-Fi stand and and what came before the Wi-Fi stand, you know, with uh with Sean over at Ruckus. Like, if you if you've ever created something for the industry, you know how cool it feels when people from the industry stand behind what you're doing. And in Wi-Fi, I think everybody, I feel like everyone gives inventors and creators an opportunity to succeed. And so before I read whatever the comment is, Ken, dude, I'm so stoked for what you did. He built an app, and and I'm gonna have to look it up. I have it installed, I have to look it up. But what it does is it's really, really neat. It's called Wi-Fi Check. And here it is, it's running on my phone, right? I think I'm still paying the four bucks a month or whatever for it. But what it does is it does this really cool network connectivity check, and it checks from your phone to your device and then up to the internet. And if you start the speed check, check out it's gonna, it's a little pop-up, it's gonna ask me if I can if I can give it my my area. And look, it's running this test, and it's going from my what's it doing here? It's ticked my iPhone to the router, it's showing my SNR is 29, 33, 28, and it's checking the upload and download to my router. 1.5 gig down, 1.6 gig up. So it's checking what my connection, I'm assuming it's the the file air, and it's checking ping and latency, and then it's checking my connection to the internet all in real time on this app. So it's able to show me what my connection looks like, not just on my phone, but my phone to my router, and then from my router to to the internet. I don't know if you can see that or not, but it's super simple to use and it's super quick. I just tapped on one button, it's very inexpensive, and it tells me I'm on Wi-Fi 7, 80211 BE, 5G, channel 133, 160 megahertz, shows me what my RX and my TX rate are, shows me my SNR. It shows all this information and shows Wi-Fi Suite, excellent, 4.4 times faster than the internet. And dude, I am so happy that you produced this. If you haven't given Wi-Fi Check a glimpse, go check it out. Now I'm gonna I'm gonna look over and see what he said. Okay, he says, he says, You ready for this? He says, You see the cool new tool called Wi-Fi Check for iOS? It lets you check Wi-Fi speed for internet speed and quality. Come on, bro! You didn't have to, man. I'm not even gonna finish watching our reading, but dude, I'm so stoked for you to be contributing to the industry. You've been in the industry for a long time, man. And And I've worked with you for a long time, and so I'm so excited to have you on here. So I'm I'm really excited that you're a part of this, man. New stuff. Oh dude. Check it out. Let me go get something out of my bag. Speaking of new stuff in the industry, like I had to go get my bag because it's in my bag, right? And that's like a true testament to what the product is and what it does, right? You know what I'm saying? I hope you know what I'm pulling out of my bag. It's the new clip. There it is, man. There's a clip from Hamina right there. So the clip is it's the new signal check-in device. The new kit on the block. It's it's smaller than my hand, right? Uh, I do like where someone turned it into a belt buckle. I thought that was pretty funny. But the clip is the latest site survey tool from Homina, and it interfaces with their software on your phone or on your on your Mac, on your iPhone, on your iPad, and allows you to connect with no crazy weird camera adapter. You just plug the USB-C directly into it, and it loads into the software and gives you the ability to go out and do a site survey immediately with a device that has a six-hour battery that just clips onto your belt and it's tiny and it's easy to carry with you. I think that that was one of the biggest takeaways over the last couple days when they did the announcement was how easy it is to take it with you because it, dude, I just had it in my bag, and I got stopped in airport security, and I thought, oh god, they don't know what this is. And it's because I had a screwdriver in my bag. But I got to see this thing on the X-ray, and I asked the the guard there. I turned on the bright light there. I asked the uh the TSA agent, I was like, Hey, do you see anything weird with that little device in the corner? You know what he said? He said, No, and it actually looks really well designed. It doesn't look like there's any of the uh the you know the electronics are out of place. So I was like, Oh, cool, I'll pass that on. So kudos to you guys for making this. This is really neat. Keith just did a whole podcast about this. I was gonna do a breakdown and talk about a little bit, but I think in you know next couple weeks everybody's gonna see one. So these are really, really great. If you have any questions about the Hamina clip, let me know about how it works and whatnot. It is a fantastic tool and it worked so well. I like one of the great things about it was I took it and I plugged it in, right? No one told me, no one gave me the the 411 or the no one dropped any hints on it. I took it, I plugged it in. I was like, oh my god, it works! I have it plugged in. It's working on my laptop. This is phenomenal. And one of the coolest things is that if I'm using you know other tools, if my VPN is connected because of the way that those tools communicate with the software, they do it on a on a on a 192 address or on a private address because of the server that runs on the on the device. And I always have to disconnect my VPN to use my tool or connect my tool and then you know how disconnect my tool so I can use my VPN. It's like totally confusing. And the first time I plugged it in, I was like, wait a minute. I wonder, I wonder if it's gonna have that same problem. And then I got a software update, and they said, Hey, is is your device plugged into your laptop? I said, It is, and they said, Unplug it. And I said, Stupid, unplug it. Like, how's that gonna work? Because it's Bluetooth. So, and the machine automatically found it. I didn't have to go in and scan or do anything, it just found it and it added it onto my device list. And next thing you know, it's connected wirelessly, and I unplugged my USB, and I was like, wait a minute, now I don't have to disconnect from my VPN because I'm using the tool and I'm able to do a survey with it. So I I joke that that's one of the goofiest things about it, but it's something that truly affects me every day when I'm doing a site survey on a deployment, and I'm still connected to the corporate VPN. So great job on that, man. Great job. So so what a cool month for tools. We've got we've got Wi-Check in there, and then we've got the new Wi-Fi check, and then we've got the new Hamina clip. So very cool. Ookla has their new thing also that has been showing up all over the internet, and I haven't seen it. The little speed test box thing, and you know that that jives with the whole idea that they want to do design and validated design and standardized for design, and like that there's a push, there's a push there, right? And we'll we'll figure out where that goes. But anyway, let's see. Sam Fergie says, Hey Drew, nice to see you live. Cool stuff. When are we gonna get the Eero drone that follows you over the air? Loki excited to have a little Eero or whatever it should be called, hovering around in the home when I'm switching from rooms to rooms. Right, man. Listen, hey, speaking of, uh dude, this is like like you can't joke. You could stick this thing, it's not that heavy. You could stick this thing on a drone and be doing side surveys with it. Keith is saying Wi-Fi check. I like the difference between wired and wireless. Very useful test. Quite interested to figure out how you're doing that. Well, you're all in the chat. Keith says we've got the humming eclipse brackets. Yes, okay. So if you're paying attention to LinkedIn, boardman, I'm talking to you. I don't know what that little goofy thing that had the little magnetic circle in the back is, but there's some really cool clips come in. Keith is gonna be uh showing those eclipses. Works with Adrian's Tools. That's right. It does work with Adrian's Tools, and you're right, it is BLE, not Bluetooth. Yes, so so these things are are if you look at WLPC, I'm sure you're gonna find a lot of a lot of knickknacks and whatnot floating around. What else is going on? State of the industry type of stuff, man. You know, NRF was was great, and I felt like I don't know, man, I felt like a curmudgeon there. I felt like because I was walking around and I got to the point where and I saw it more there, I think, than than than what I saw at CS. I had limited exposure to CES. I didn't I didn't really go see a lot this year. But what I saw at NRF, there was so every dude, there were so many booths that were talking about AI this and AI that and AI this and AI that it was like, dude, if it even says AI, I don't want to hear like I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear the pitch. I'm just not interested in someone who is using that term so much. I want to hear what is your what is your solution gonna do for me. I don't care how you do it, I don't care if it's AI or if it's machine learning or if it's you know programming or if it's in Perl. Like, what do I care? Tell me what you're gonna do for me. Tell me the business outcomes that I'm gonna get. Tell me what's in it. Don't tell me that, oh, it's AI. Like, I don't care. And so I saw some great stuff, but I was I was really trying not to be upset by the overuse of AI. But but what I did see that it coincidentally is AI powered at NRF, and and I love NRF, right? Because that's to me, that's where that's where the stuff, like that's where the rubber hits the road. Because we all use Wi-Fi at home and we all use we all use Wi-Fi in enterprise and business, whatever. But when we have to interact with it daily as a consumer, and when our wives and husbands and daughters and sons and cousins and grandparents, they're interacting with technology day to day when they go to you know, the freaking where did I eat lunch? Chick-fil-A, Chick-fil-A, they go to Chick-fil-A, they interact with with the technology and what we do by virtue of being there. And so being able to see where that was going was interesting. So at FS Tech, the food service technology event that happened and at MurTech Executive Summit, and now again at NRF, there's this there's this vibe that's coming out where people are talking about the ways that they're leveraging AI to customize experience for end users. You know, no, when you walk up, if you've opted in the menu board knowing which sandwich you eat, knowing what type of food you like, and not just outright saying, Hey Drew, you always get the cheeseburger, here's a cheeseburger, but using that information to craft a menu that helps you figure out different things on the menu that you may have not seen or things that they're trying to advertise or push, that it's it's using your information to help make help guide you into decisions that they consider better decisions for you for whatever that reason is. And there's so much of that, so much of that that's happening where people are trying to finally figure out well, now that we've got stability in the Wi-Fi industry from a from you know, from a chipset perspective, from a vendor perspective, now that we know that we can get this data, now that we can understand this data and location data, how do we merge that together? And finally using something that can interpret all of that and correlate that is the key, right? Big data was the term a bunch of years ago. And it's like, all right, everybody's got big data, but who knows what to do with it. And we're finally at this point now where you're seeing some vendors that are stepping up saying, Oh, I know exactly what to do with that big data. And you know what, this AI thing actually isn't that bad. Let me try and crunch it together. And holy moly, now I've got this outcome that can help drive business decisions and transactions and help to the bottom line. And I think that that's what I saw a lot of at NRF. And and maybe it was painted in different ways, maybe it was painted with AI, or maybe it was painted as a, you know, as a as a different service. But what I started to see underneath all of it was people that were starting to move in that direction. And so the criticality of the network that's that's connecting the devices and also receiving information and telemetry from consumers and from users and pulling that in is huge, right? So our networks have never been more critical in the Wi-Fi space for for both of those reasons. And I think that's where I'm curious to see what are the what are the technology advancements that people are receiving information from client devices? Like, like where's that going? Because right now it's always been about how well are we connecting devices to the network, but but now it's like how are we interpreting data from those devices to help drive that? So interesting thought, but that's that's what I saw a lot of at NRF, and that's where my mind keeps going. There's also the idea that it just needs to work and it needs to be cheaper, and it needs to be effective, and it needs to do exactly what it's supposed to do, and nothing more, and nothing less, and just get the job done. And I'm seeing that that's such an interesting trend to watch because that's really, I think, throwing a monkey wrench into the whole idea that, well, here's the widget that has all of the options. You know, not everybody wants all the options, and so people just have to have to let it work. Speaking of, there's uh this idea that people are combining technologies 5G and Wi-Fi. Charter popped off a couple like a week ago and said that they're they've got a new thing they're calling invincible Wi-Fi. And you know, obviously, not just in the in the residential space, but in enterprise space, they're saying that they're they're gonna ramp up wireless backup and call it invincible Wi-Fi with their Wi-Fi 7 router. And like Comcast, Charter was tight-lipped on the their new MVNO contract, but people have been signed some pretty dope contracts apparently with Verizon. But they're talking about how it's not just this Doxis 4.0 upgrade, but now they're combining 5G cellular connectivity and backhaul with battery backup into their systems in people's homes and businesses. And that's why they're calling it invincible, like the network that never goes down because it's got the ability to fail back over to their MVNO through Verizon or Timo or whoever it is. Now we're starting to see the resiliency piece come out, right? It's not just about having good connected devices with quality connections, it's about having multiple connections into that. And you're gonna see even more of that, right? Starlink did what Starlink does, Amazon Leo is about to do that. Bezos just talked about this other thing that he's doing with Blue Origin. The the L the Leo space and the satellite space is going to contribute to all this because you know you can hear the marketing now. Why connect to Earth when you can connect to space? You know, why trust you know networks on Earth when what happens when there's a hurricane? It knocks out all the power, but power doesn't go out in space. You know, like there's there's so much of this resiliency talk that's coming out that again, it drives the idea that people are using these networks and connecting to these networks not just to provide the connectivity, but to actually leverage the data from the network to do something. So that's happening. Nothing, nothing major there. What else are we talking about on here? Let's see. Oh, this one's interesting. Speaking of charter, you know, trying to dominate the network and own the network. And there's this isn't there's no there's no proof, I guess, of this, but on January 20th, representatives of the Wireless Internet Service Provider Association, WISPA, met with policy advisors at the FCC on a Gomez to discuss a concern about charter communications. And the letter to the FCC, WISPA wrote, quote, Charter has apparently adopted an internal policy to not renew contracts for upstream wholesale services with wireless internet service providers and not to enter any new contracts with services for those WISPs. So now you've got, if if there's truth to this, it's Charter saying, hey, you know what? We're not going to give wireless ISPs connectivity anymore. And that affects wireless ISPs and their ability to deliver connectivity to rural America, right? Now, if your only upstream providers charter and they've cut you off, how are you, as an ISP, supposed to support these rural areas? And one might think that the only thing that they could be gaining from this is, I don't know, maybe a partnership with Starlink or Leo or you know Hughes or whoever it is. I don't know, but that's not called out in here. But the Wisp of space is something that's going to get rocky this year. It it you know, my 2026 prediction is it was already a little bit crunchy with what's happening with satellite, right, affecting that marketplace and getting into that marketplace and giving people options in the marketplace. But now, if you've got upstream providers that are cutting it off and you've got Wisps that can't exist because they don't have a pipe, are the WISPs going to get their pipe from the low-earth orbiting satellite systems, or are they gonna go into direct competition form? So, along with that is another article that I was reading about, and it was talking about eliminating bulk pricing, bulk Wi-Fi pricing for MDUs and residentials, because there's all these rules, there's all these laws and stuff they're coming out saying if you own an apartment complex, you have to give everyone the ability to choose their own internet service provider versus versus what the FCC has allowed so far, which is letting letting the property management group control that. Anyway, that being said, y'all, it is I've I've gone over my allotted time. You know, I try and keep these things a little, you know, not too long, and I've gone right right at 40 minutes, but it's been it's been a minute, and it's good to be back on the mic and think out loud. I appreciate everyone jumping on and getting interactive with me. And let me know, let me know what you thought what your thoughts are about one, about staying with video, or two, going back to audio only. And then I really want to know what your thoughts are on the AI generated podcast. The first episode of that will be coming real soon now. I'll put one together and and publish that, and I'll make sure that everyone knows it's AI only. Anyway, looking forward to seeing you. I will have an update next week. Next week's gonna be a fun one. I'm doing some really cool stuff. There's there's hey, good to see you too, Texas Flyboy. Showing the idea behind the secret sauce might allow people to trust the results a little bit more. Yeah, well, yes, let's that's what that's Keith talking to Ken about what he's doing in the background on how he's doing speed checks on Wi-Fi checks. So pay attention to the comments. Good to see you too, Keith. Man, I can't wait to see everybody at WLPC. It's it's gonna be a fun show. If you're if you play golf and you're gonna be out there, we've got a golfing event happening on Monday. If you're not part of it, send drop me a message, slide in those DMs. Anyway, have y'all y'all y'all self a wonderful week. I am going on a date with my daughter in 30 minutes. So I'm gonna go make pasta with my with my daughter and enjoy my evening. But I don't want to I don't want to finish today without popping off on an episode. So thanks for listening. I I can't tell you how much I appreciate everybody who listens, especially when you come up and you give me a high five or you make fun of me or whatever it is, in your own in your own gentle way, showing your appreciation for me, bender. Anyway, take care. We'll see you guys next.