Industry Impact award winner: Facebook

Wi-Fi Alliance^® welcomes 2020 honorees into our Wi-Fi Alliance Hall of Fame. This series highlights the companies and individuals who have brought invaluable contributions to the Wi-Fi^® industry, and have demonstrated extraordinary commitment to advancing the Wi-Fi Alliance mission to “connect everyone and everything, everywhere.” Wi-Fi Alliance recognizes Hall of Fame honorees in the following categories: Industry Impact, Mission Specialist, and Quality of Service. Read more on this year’s winners.

The Industry Impact award recognizes outstanding member companies who have provided sustained service to Wi-Fi Alliance and made significant contributions to our mission and the Wi-Fi industry over the last year. Companies receiving this year’s award have had a material impact in gaining 6 GHz unlicensed spectrum for Wi-Fi, enabling Wi-Fi 6E to become a reality.

Why does Facebook care about Wi-Fi?

Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. Our connectivity efforts are focused on bringing more people online to faster speeds. Facebook has consistently recognized that Wi-Fi is a critical cost-effective technology for connecting the world at scale. To that end, Facebook has actively invested in a number of products that use Wi-Fi in new ways and has participated in advocacy efforts that led to the largest allocation of mid-band Wi-Fi ever, 1.2 GHz (Wi-Fi 6E). Facebook offers Wi-Fi ecosystem solutions, such as Express Wi-Fi, for connecting the unconnected. Facebook’s AR/VR team is also investing in new categories of Wi-Fi devices with Portal and Oculus. And Facebook is actively partnering on global community-led open source initiatives such as the “Open Wi-Fi initiative” from The Telecom Infra Project (TIP).

What does Facebook see as the main reason for Wi-Fi proliferation around the world?

Because Wi-Fi is open and available to all, it has served as a foundation for innovation. Wi-Fi has been so influential and widely adopted thanks to a few fundamental and distinct advantages – open and unlicensed spectrum, ubiquitous availability, and a large competitive supplier base to help drive low costs and continuous innovation in Wi-Fi standards. These advantages lead to rapid adoption across consumer, enterprise, and service provider segments around the world. Wi-Fi is everywhere and ubiquitous.

“We are thrilled with Wi-Fi Alliance’s recognition of Facebook’s contribution to the 6 GHz outcome. We firmly believe that Wi-Fi is a central part of how increased demand for internet access and data-intensive content can be achieved. Working with other like-minded companies, we’re excited to continue expanding low-cost, high-quality access to the internet. We are thrilled to be working with Wi-Fi Alliance and its members to make wireless connectivity faster, and better than ever.”

What is Wi-Fi’s biggest impact on the world?

Wi-Fi has become an essential need of everyday life. We rely on Wi-Fi to learn, work, shop, access entertainment and connect with friends and family. This has never been more true than during the last few months. As social distancing restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic were put in place around the world, ABI research reported an 80% surge in Wi-Fi originated traffic. With so many people working remotely around the globe, many workplaces are now relying on at-home Wi-Fi to power their workforces and keep their businesses going.

What does Facebook believe is one Wi-Fi technology that will transform the Wi-Fi experience?

Facebook has been a proponent of very low power (VLP) devices based on Wi-Fi 6 that will revolutionize portable connectivity and make it ubiquitous. Facebook believes that with VLP devices all kinds of new use cases like augmented reality, in-vehicle use cases, and remote collaboration will become mainstream.