Why Wi-Fi 8 Multi-AP Coordination, Wi‑Fi 7 Rollouts And Open RAN Moves Signal A Faster, Smarter Network Future

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Headlines hit hard this week, and we stitched them into a practical roadmap you can use. We start with the fresh demos pointing toward Wi‑Fi 8’s multi‑AP future—coordinated radios, smarter spectral reuse, and AI‑assisted congestion control aimed squarely at dense campuses where roaming and contention burn time and budget. Some features may stay aspirational, but the signal is clear: access points are learning to cooperate, not compete.

From there we ground the hype in what’s shipping. Rogers lit up Wi‑Fi 7 gear in Quebec with TP‑Link and Cisco hardware, Aruba pushed MLO improvements for cleaner onboarding across 2.4, 5, and 6 GHz, and forecasts suggest a meaningful slice of new APs will be Wi‑Fi 7 capable by year’s end. On the carrier side, an MVNO pact opens dual‑SIM handsets and smarter Wi‑Fi‑cellular handoffs for business users. The dream of a seamless hybrid fabric still trips on handoff quirks, but the ecosystem is finally lining up—hardware, firmware, and deployment playbooks.

We also zoom out to the RAN. Deutsche Telekom’s partnership with Rakuten to orchestrate tens of thousands of sites signals that multi‑vendor Open RAN is ready for prime time. Faster provisioning, easier failover, and the freedom to mix Nokia, Ericsson, and Samsung radios—with a Cisco security overlay—give operators levers they’ve wanted for years. At the edge of the home and office, Matter certifications for Nest, Echo, and Eve plus multiprotocol hubs from TP‑Link and Linksys shorten onboarding and normalize WPA3 and segmentation, which is good news for MSPs, MDUs, and smart‑building teams.

Security headlines keep us honest. A fresh warning on evil twin attacks meets urgent firmware from Cisco and Fortinet that adds anomaly detection and automated quarantine. We translate that into action: zero trust on guest networks, continuous AI‑driven threat modeling, and verified patch windows. After a week of DNS and cloud wobbles—yes, everyone still blames “the Wi‑Fi”—we stress tested cellular failover and reviewed playbooks that keep users working and ops sane.

Listen for the quick takeaways, keep what helps, and share what you’re seeing in the field. If this briefing sharpened your planning, follow the show, drop a review, and pass it to a teammate who needs the TL;DR before their next strategy meeting.

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Episode Transcript

SPEAKER_00 (00:30):
Hey everybody, what's up?
It's Drew Lentz, the WirelessNerd, and you're listening to
the Waves podcast.
This week we're going to dosomething a little bit
different.
I've scraped some of theheadlines, I've seen what's
going on.
I know there's so much news thatI want to try a little bit of a
different format.
I want to see if I can gothrough some of the headlines
and then have maybe a featureepisode or talk a little bit
more about some of the thingsthat are impacting our industry.
So first, let's go throughwhat's new, what's now, what's

(00:51):
next.
This is for the week of November1st through November 7th, 2025.
There's a lot of stuff going onwith Wi-Fi 8, and you know,
nothing real, I don't feel likehas been announced yet, but over
the last week, Qualcomm andBroadcom and Intel have done a
lot more acceleration on theirwork with Wi-Fi 8 test silicone.
They've got new partnershipsthat were revealed.
There's been some industrysessions that are going on, and

(01:13):
it includes collaborativeefforts on multi-AP
coordination.
Now that's one of the big dealswith Wi-Fi 8 where all the APs
are supposed to talk together.
And there was even speculationthat like you could even do MIMO
chains where if your client isconnecting at 2.4 on access
point A on one MIMO chain, butit's receiving data from access

(01:33):
point B on another MIMO chain,and they're supposed to work
together.
I don't know.
There's a lot going on with thisand specifically with Wi-Fi 8.
But what Qualcomm, Broadcom, andIntel showed this week was some
actual AP coordinate, multi-APcoordination, and that was with
Qualcomm's reference design, andit was targeting specifically
dense campus environments.
And Broadcom demoed adaptive RFat the IEEE interim.

(01:56):
And so adaptive RF, there's alot of features that are coming
out on Wi-Fi 8.
Some of them seem like theymight not ever work, but some of
them actually seem pretty cool.
Anyway, these developments alignwith IEEE 80211BN and their
proposed standards featuringspectral reuse, real-time device
steering, and the new AI-poweredcongestion mitigation.
Lots of crazy buzzwords going onin there.
Anyway, industry consensus ismoving towards deployment trials

(02:19):
in quarter two of 2026.
Now to talk back about Wi-Fi 7.
On November 3rd, Rogers inCanada publicly launched the
deployment of TP Link and CiscoWi-Fi 7 routers for the Quebec
market with the Archer BE 800and the Cisco Catalyst 9166
showing live speed test resultsin homes and co-working spaces.
Aruba, you know, HPE announced afirmware update for its AP635

(02:41):
with enhancements for multi-linkoperation allowing simultaneous
triband connectivity, so 245 and6 gig for enterprise onboarding.
Forecasts from Light Readingindicate up to 15% of AP
shipments in North America willbe Wi-Fi 7 capable by December,
with increased adoption in youguessed it, retail and education
verticals.
Altice USA filed its quarterthree report on November 4th,

(03:04):
showing a 67,000 decrease inbroadband customers.
This, they say, is attributed tocompetitive rollouts from
T-Mobile's home internet withNokia Fastmile Gateway and
Comcast Xfinity and Mobile'sbundling.
Now on November 5th, Charterannounced a strategic MVNO
partnership with Verizon,opening dual sim Wi-Fi 7
handsets like the Samsung GalaxyS24 Ultra and the iPhone 16 Pro

(03:28):
for enterprise and smallbusiness clients.
This move allows dynamicswitchover and improved handoff
between cellular and Wi-Fi.
And this is relevant for hybridnetworks and remote site
deployments.
Have I seen it working?
No, it doesn't ever work the waythat it's supposed to.
So let's hope that uh thatthere's some light at the end of
the tunnel when it comes tohandoff between Wi-Fi 7, which

(03:48):
has plagued the iPhone 17.
Let's see if there's some helpthere that comes along.
Now, big news from the open RANworld, Deutsche Telekom and
Rocketan have confirmed at the5G RAN Europe event on November
2nd, the Rocketan Symphony willprovide orchestration tools for
its Open RAN project, covering30,000 radio sites across
Germany and Eastern Europe.
This enables mixing Nokia,Ericsson, and Samsung hardware

(04:12):
with Cisco coming in with asecurity overlay and analytics.
Now, this is really cool becauseyou've got multiple
manufacturers all using the sameRAN or operating on the same
RAN.
And initial integration reportsshowed up to 30% faster
provisioning compared to asingle vendor system.
And this is critical for rapidscale and failover management.
So open RAN really taken off.
Some good numbers posted upthere.

(04:33):
On November 4th, the Wi-FiAlliance certified new
matter-ready devices from GoogleNest, Amazon Echo, and Eve
Systems, highlighting bulkonboarding, network
segmentation, and native WPA3support.
TP Link and Links has confirmedfast track launches in both
North America and the EU, butyou got to be careful because
all the stuff that's happeningwith TP Link in North America,
we don't even know if they'regoing to be available in the

(04:55):
United States here before toolong.
But they'll be offering hubs andAPs with multi-protocol support,
reducing their setup times byhalf.
Now, this is really cool,especially when you look at
what's happening with Matter andIKEA in the news today.
IKEA announced a whole line ofMatter products that they're
bringing out there to help driveyour smart home.
Deployment guides released thisweek will detail automated

(05:17):
provisioning for MSPs and MDUoperators from those vendors.
Google issued an updated warningon November 5th regarding
upticks and evil twin attacks onpublic Wi-Fi.
Cisco and Fortinet push criticalfirmware updates for their
catalyst and Ford AP series.
So if you've got those products,make sure you check and see if
there's a software updateavailable.
And they add anomaly detectionand automated quarantine

(05:39):
protocols.
Enterprises responding to thisshould prioritize zero trust cap
and continuous AI threatmodeling and standard operating
procedure in public and guestnetworks.
Now, there's been some issuesgoing on with the cloud lately
and lots of DNS thingshappening, but there was a
downtime incident that led to atongue-in-cheek internal post
encouraging teams to quote filepaper tickets while the Wi-Fi

(06:00):
recovers.
This episode prompted a quickreview of cellular failover and
highlighted the value of robustbackup planning and maybe a
little bit of levity in theknock.
So what did you do to make upfor the downtime?
I know there was a lot of stuffthat was happening between a
number of different carriersover the last couple of weeks.
And even though it wasn't theWi-Fi, everyone was complaining
that the Wi-Fi was down.
Was there anything fun that youdid?
Drop a note in the comments.

(06:21):
Couple of events coming up, theIEEE 80211 working group in
Bangkok, November 9th through14th.
WLPC Express Dubai, November17th and 18th.
WLPC Phoenix, February 18ththrough 20th.
AWS reInvent is coming up herethe first week of December.
Then we've got CES coming up asfall as well as NRF following
CES.

(06:42):
So that's the briefing for thisweek.
Hopefully uh gives you somethingto think about and chew on,
especially if you're working fordeployment and strategy
meetings.
Thanks for tuning into the Wavespodcast for what's new, what's
now, and what's next in Wi-Fi.
Stay informed.
See you next week.