The cable industry long ago widened its ambitions beyond video, addicting millions of customers to cable modems and more recently adding voice over internet protocol telephony to its menu. Insiders call this video-voice-data combo the "triple play" strategy. So with a trifecta of moneymaking schemes on its plate, the cable guys must be pretty satisfied, right? Uh, no. "We're all still waiting for that aha moment in which we have a portable device that came from the cable company," said Dale Fox, vice president of digital phone at Time Warner Cable. That's right. The cable industry wants you to chuck your cable -- at least when you're outside the house. The addition of a fourth wireless component to the cable package is now affectionately known as the "quadruple play." At the annual meeting of CTAM, the cable industry's top sales and marketing folks gathered in Philly this week to figure out new ways to get at your wallet. And while the conference focused on many topics, including better customer service, VOIP, video on demand and improving cable-modem speeds, the big buzz was about mobility. After all, customers now want to take their entertainment and communications with them everywhere they go. The last thing cable operators want is to be left out of that party.
The industrial sector is on the eve of a wireless transformation, driven by an urgent demand for greater network capacity, reliability, and deterministic performance. Historically, manufacturers and mission-critical operations have relied on wired networks — favoring their predictability — because spectrum congestion in legacy 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands limited confidence in wireless for operational technology (OT) environments. However, with the introduction and rapid adoption of the 6GHz spectrum, compounded by significant advances in Wi-Fi standards, industrial facilities are now poised to embrace wireless LANs as the backbone for automation and digital innovation. Industrial WLAN Market Development Recent research from ABI Research forecasts that over 70 percent of industrial-grade wireless LAN access points (WLAN APs) shipped in 2030 will support the 6GHz band. This is a leap from 2 percent in 2023, highlighting a rapid and profound technological shift. The market for ruggedized indust...