Adopting 802.11ac Standard Saves Money, Adds Value

One thing that always surprises me is how more luxurious hotels frequently charge for wifi. When I travel on business and stay at hotels that cost $200-$400 per night (before discounts), it often costs either a per diem or flat rate to connect to the (frequently) slow network. But when we go on vacation and stay at less expensive Holiday Inns or similar establishments, the network capabilities are included.

During our recent company meeting, the hotel's wifi was included if you joined the hotel chain's loyalty program, one surefire way to force folk to enroll! Definitely smart marketing and a great way to add people to your database. 

YEs today everyone including local churches are providing free wifi it seems to have become a commodity and genaral expectation. I am still amazed in southern europe particularly spain & italy that wifi is still not the norm outside of the big metro cities.

Whenever we stop for a meal with my daughter's travel softball team, invariably at least one of the girls (12-14 years old) asks for the restaurant's wifi password. On the rare occasions when they don't have wifi, the girls are amazed. Nowadays, it's as much a part of the hospitality industry as flatware, menus, and plates. Same at many other businesses, too, and any technology that can inexpensively bolster their networks and the number of users is good news.

Agree. Tablets and phones and ultrabooks that do not have Ethernet ports made the wireless network overloaded for may organization, they need more speed. 11ac may help to easy down the problem.

That allows a BYOD device to directly attach to the house network? That is not happening. There are all sorts of user authentication and authorization requirements in place. In almost all cases BYODs are attaching to the guest network. 

Agree. At the same time, even though they are in the office/desk they still use their tablets or cellphones. That overloads existing WiFi network.  1/10 G is only in wired part of network, wireless network has grown without anybody knowing it. We need more capacity for wireless LAN.

The personal mobile device has become such a part of the landscape that we are now seeing a BYOD (bring your own device) trend in the enterprise. Many of the new smartphones and tablets are dualmode— supporting both cellular and Wi-Fi services—and have the ability to attach to an 802.11 wireless corporate network and fulfill many of the computing needs of an individual's workday responsibilities. As a result, in addition to carrying a corporate device, such as a laptop, many employees are choosing to bring to work one or more personal mobile devices to conduct their daily business tasks while also managing their personal lives. This growing demand for corporations to allow employees to use their personal mobile devices for work-related tasks is being referred to as the "consumerization of IT." IT managers are being challenged with new network design requirements brought about by this phenomenon.

Our society is becoming more mobile every day: approximately 85% of Americans have a cellular phone, and some 38% of those have smartphones. For the workplace, IDC projected that by 2013 there will be 1.2 billion mobile workers, making up nearly 35% of the workforce and using some 470 million smartphones. It seems that in every area of our lives, the ability to communicate untethered
is becoming more important, and people are using these devices to make calls, send email, and access the Internet and social networking applications on a daily basis. For most working adults, their phone or tablet has become an indispensible tool they carry everywhere—even to work.

The 802.11ac standard addresses these new business requirements to achieve the goal of higher data rate and greater link reliability by sophisticated RF architectural enhancements that include:

Wider channel support – 802.11ac mandates support of 80MHz wide channels with optional 160MHz wide channels to achieve higher data rates than are achieved with 802.11n.