802.11ac Wireless Standard Predictions
17th April 2011.
As wireless technology is becoming more ubiquitous, demand for the mobile internet experience is ever increasing. It seems every device now comes with wireless built-in from mobile phones and e-book readers, to fridges and cars. But where is it all going?
The market research firm In-Stat believe that we will all be demanding ever faster wireless and that the next WiFi standard (802.11ac) will be installed in over 1 billion devices by 2015.
We feel this may be a little optimistic for two reasons. Firstly the wireless ac standard is not defined yet. A draft proposal is anticipated towards the end of this year, so even if manufacturer's take us once again into the murky world of draft standards you won't see any of these devices until 2012 at the earliest. Secondly, many retailers are still selling wireless G devices. Unfortunately most consumers are not aware enough of wireless technology to know what the latest standard is or demand it, and so if retailers can clear their warehouses of older kit at full price, they will.
802.11ac is certainly an attractive standard, Gigabit wireless would be a great proposition, but if we're predicting the future here, then for my money there are different things I'd like to see first. I would prefer rock solid wireless stability, with less interference. I'd like routers that don't overheat and are whisper quiet. I would like the ability to take my wireless devices away from my home network and have them automatically and seamlessly switch to a 4G network of equivalent speed and back again when I return. I'd like to see most folks getting somewhere near the speeds they should from their routers and internet connections.
Once all of that is sorted I'd begin to look at the step up from the theoretical 600Mbps limit of 802.11n to the 1000Mbps of 802.11ac.
Still, as the Rolling Stones sang, you can't always get what you want. So we'll just have to look forwards to the wireless ac routers rolling off the production lines in 2012 and hope that some router manufacturer out there decides to go a step further than just a speed increase.
