Claus Hetting from Wi-Fi NOW has supported Purdicom for a long time, sharing industry experience and knowledge on all things Wifi. We value his opinions, experience and pure dedication to Wifi, so we invited him along to the Purdicom Open Day 2019.

We were delighted when he agreed and will be holding a talk on the ‘Future of Next Generation Wifi’ in the morning from 11:15 am at the event.

As Claus is a leader in the Technology and Wifi industry, we asked him some questions to give us all a bit more insight into his organisation, Wi-Fi NOW and how he found himself giving advice and hosting events around the globe.

Q: Tell us a little bit about yourself and Wi-Fi NOW

‘I’ve been in the mobile technology business since 1996 and I’ve always been excited about the benefits of connecting people. At Wi-Fi NOW we support what is irrefutably the biggest success story in wireless – and that’s Wi-Fi.’

Q: What made you start Wi-Fi Now?

‘I’d organised a number of smaller Wi-Fi events and they had all been excellently well-received. Wi-Fi NOW is really the response to the industry needing an event that brings the Wi-Fi leadership together to move the industry forward, in particular commercially, but also technically.’

Q: Can you give us some insight into your London event in November?

‘Our events are always focused around two key values: innovation and opportunity. Fortunately, we’re never short of that in Wi-Fi – and this time the Wi-Fi industry is entering a phase of unprecedented growth. There will be many topics but perhaps the two most important are Wi-Fi (the new Wi-Fi standard) and 6 GHz (the new Wi-Fi band). We like to call this ‘Route 66’ for short. It’s exciting times for everyone involved.’

Q: How do you think the Wifi industry is going to change over the next 3 years?

‘I think we’re approaching another surge in growth. We will soon have 10 billion devices in operation – the biggest number for any technology that I know of. These need to be replaced with Wi-Fi 6 capable devices, which is a huge business opportunity in its own right.

We will also see more spectrum become available (6 GHz) and this means plenty of new innovation in the home, enterprise, for carriers, cities, you name it… It’s a very exciting time for us.’

Q: What can we look forward to in the future of Wifi?

‘Probably a lot of things we can’t imagine today.

But here’s my vision: I believe Wi-Fi will be everywhere connecting people and machines all the time and most of the time we probably won’t even notice – unless it stops working.

Getting there and exploiting a very long list of opportunities will be our task for the next five or ten years – and there are truly a lot of exciting things to do. Wi-Fi has changed the world and it will continue to change the way our environments interact.’

A huge thank you to Claus for giving us such valuable information into Wi-Fi NOW and the future of Wifi. Claus will be providing valuable insight on the 10^th July 2019 at the Purdicom Open Day, so if you’d like to hear Claus’ talk on the ‘Future of Next Generation Wifi’, please register for a free place at our Purdicom Open Day 2019.