<rant> "Wi-Fi 6E” is not a good branding for what 6GHz provides, in my personal opinion. I hope the Wi-Fi Alliance reconsiders.
I've been discussing Wi-Fi 6E in my organization for over a year-- and nobody can keep that “E” in their heads. They constantly confuse "Wi-Fi 6" as the same as "Wi-Fi 6E" in meetings, products, and strategies. The whole point of the Alliance branding was to make things more understandable to non-technical audiences right? Doesn’t 6 vs 6E fly in the face of that? I’m not good at naming things, so am use to recognizing branding failures like this. I understand most of the underlying technology is the same-- other than 6GHz capability. Most people don't care about the underlying technology unless it accomplishes something they need. 6GHz is a once in a generation differentiator that will enable far more than the changes from 802.11ac to 802.11ax, which was deserving of a new number. Not having that capability reflected in a more differentiated branding is causing and will continue to cause unneeded confusion. I understand the Alliance has already placed a lot into marketing of the term "Wi-Fi 6E", but that's sunk cost. Pick a new branding. Perhaps, Wi-Fi 7. You can leave all 6E materials and just say its the same thing as Wi-Fi 7. Have everything in the futures pipeline do a +1 on their PowerPoints. Will the Alliance incur some ridicule, yes, but less than continuing with 6E in my personal opinion. Do I think this rant will change anything? No. But naming a frustration is sometimes useful for dealing with it. I’m moving on. </rant> -- William Green, Director of Networking and Telecommunications The University of Texas at Austin | ITS | 512-475-9295 | gr...@austin.utexas.edu<https://www.utexas.edu> ********** Replies to EDUCAUSE Community Group emails are sent to the entire community list. If you want to reply only to the person who sent the message, copy and paste their email address and forward the email reply. Additional participation and subscription information can be found at https://www.educause.edu/community
