Charter Leads?

Charter Communications is hot on the 802.11ax path—

it announced the introduction of its next-generation

Spectrum Wi-Fi router featuring 802.11ax on Wednesday

—but wireless operators are mostly watching from the

sidelines when it comes to the latest generation of Wi-Fi.

That’s not surprising given that the nation’s largest

wireless operators are knee-deep in 5G developments

and Wi-Fi is typically used to offload capacity. Still, as

Charter has noted, its Wi-Fi network currently serves

280 million wireless devices, and 80% of the data used

on smartphones goes through Charter’s Wi-Fi network.

Charter is the first U.S.-based broadband provider to

introduce 802.11ax, which increases Wi-Fi speeds, allows

for more concurrently connected devices and better

battery life for those devices, and improves Wi-Fi coverage

in the home. It’s seen as one more way of making Wi-Fi

act more like cellular, which is something the Wi-Fi market

has strived to attain.