Aruba rolls out enterprise-grade Wi-Fi 6E devices
Aruba on Tuesday announced it's rolling out a set of enterprise-grade Wi-Fi 6E devices, starting with the 630 Series campus access point (AP). The devices mark the first enterprise-grade Wi-Fi 6E devices, which are designed to operate in the newly available 6 GHz band.
Last year, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to open up the 6GHz spectrum band to unlicensed use, making room on the valuable mid-band spectrum range for Wi-Fi routers and other devices. The move amounted to the largest expansion of W-Fi capacity in nearly two decades.
Aruba's new Wi-Fi 6E devices allow organizations to take advantage of the increased capacity and wider channels in 6 GHz. Users can leverage up to seven 160 MHz channels in 6 GHz.
The devices offer tri-band coverage spanning 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz, with 3.9 Gbps maximum aggregate throughput for reduced signal interference. A new ultra tri-band filtering capability also minimizes interference between the 5 GHz and 6 GHz bands.
All of these features should help support high-bandwidth, low-latency services and applications like HD video, videoconferencing, AR and VR or IoT. This kind of support is growing more critical for enterprises, now that the Covid-19 pandemic has sped up digital transformation efforts.
Meanwhile, the market for Wi-Fi 6E devices doesn't just include the US. Aruba notes that since the FCC decision to open the 6 GHz band, 38 other countries have done the same. Market intelligence research firm 650 Group predicts that more than 350 million Wi-Fi 6E devices will enter the market next year. It expects over 200% unit growth of Wi-Fi 6E enterprise access points in 2022.
The Aruba 630 Series APs will be available in the third quarter of this year. The new devices are part of Aruba's ESP (Edge Services Platform), an AI-powered, cloud-native platform for automating and securing edge operations.