A new type of Wi-Fi has made its way to town — or to CES, at least — and it's designed specifically to accommodate the dilemmas of hooking up a smart home.
Pronounced "halo" (like the Beyonce song), Wi-Fi Alliance's latest innovation, Wi-FI HaLow (a bonafide extension for the soon-to-be-released 802.11 ah standard), is equipped with 900 MHz bandwidth and can purportedly "connect with Wi-Fi's ecosystem of more than 6.8 billion installed devices," according to a press release issued by the company on Jan. 4.
The smart home Wi-Fi service is also supportable by devices equipped for a 2.4 GHz and/or 5 GHz scope, can connect to a cloud via standard IP and can link up to a range of devices, from small battery-powered gizmos to more industrial-style fare.
Wi-Fi Alliance president and CEO Edgar Figueroa was quick to point out the versatility of HaLow, which the Verge nicknamed "the Bluetooth of Wi-Fi," which can hook up to platforms like Apple's popular HomeKit.
"Wi-Fi HaLow is well suited to meet the unique needs of the Smart Home, Smart City, and industrial markets because of its ability to operate using very low power, penetrate through walls, and operate at significantly longer ranges than Wi-Fi today," asserted Figueroa. "Wi-Fi HaLow expands the unmatched versatility of Wi-Fi to enable applications from small, battery-operated wearable devices to large-scale industrial facility deployments — and everything in between."
Despite the perks, there might be some problems: even though Wi-Fi Alliance's new service will have a sizable bandwidth, it won't be any good with file transfers — at least not without some upgrades — and like Bluetooth, it will only serve as a connector, leaving users unable to surf the Internet like on normal Wi-Fi. Despite this, its capacity to connect to so many devices on multiple platforms is impressive in itself.
While all of this seems like exciting news for smart home owners, there's a catch: HaLow won't be available until at least 2018.
Via: The Verge
Photo: swinfinfan | Flickr
