Wi-Fi 6 and 5G

First up, wireless technology – especially Wi-Fi 6 – will get into the enterprise through the employee door and through enterprise access-point refreshes. The latest smartphones from Apple, Samsung, and other manufacturers are Wi-Fi 6 enabled, and Wi-Fi 6 access points are currently shipping to businesses and consumers.

5G phones are not yet in wide circulation, although that will begin to change in 2020, athough mostly for consumers and towards the end of the year. Oswal wrote that Cisco projects more people will be using Wi-Fi 6 than 5G through 2020.  

2020 will also see the beginning of a big improvement in how people use Wi-Fi networks. The potential growth of the Cisco-lead OpenRoaming project will make joining participating Wi-Fi networks much easier, Oswal said. OpenRoaming, which uses the underlying technology behind HotSpot 2.0/ IEEE 802.11u promises to let users move seamlessly between wireless networks and LTE without interruption -- emulating mobile network connectivity. Current project partners include Samsung, Boingo, and GlobalReach Technologies.

2020 will also see the adoption of new frequency bands, including the beginning of the rollout of “millimeter wave” (24Ghz to 100Ghz) spectrum for ultra-fast, but short-range 5G as well as Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS), at about 3.5Ghz. This may lead to new private networks that use LTE and 5G technology, especially for IoT applications.

“We will also see continued progress in opening up the 6GHz range for unlicensed Wi-Fi usage in the United States and the rest of world,” Oswal wrote.

As for 5G services, some will roll out in 2020 but “almost none of it will be the ultra-high speed connectivity that we have been promised or that we will see in future years,” Oswal said. “With 5G unable to deliver on that promise initially, we will see a lot of high-speed wireless traffic offloaded to Wi-Fi networks.”

In the long run, “In combination with the improved performance of both Wi-Fi 6 and (eventually) 5G, we are in for a large – and long-lived – period of innovation in access networking,” Oswal wrote.