First unveiled at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the Beacon 10 includes a 10G WAN interface to pair with 10 GBS fibre modems for multi-gigabit services to the home.
The ‘E’ in Wi-Fi 6E means faster speeds and lower latencies, which Nokia said is key given the widespread roll-out of 10G fibre powered by XGS-PON which requires upgrades to home and business Wi-Fi to deliver super high speeds to enabled devices.
Wi-FI 6E devices have access to the 6GHz airwaves as opposed to previous devices which are imited to the 2.4GHz and 5GHz spectrum. The jump from 5GHz to 6GHz has quadrupled the amount of airwaves (14 additional 80MHz channels, and seven additional 160MHz channels) available for routers and smart devices to ensure less signal interference.
Additionally announced at MWC, Nokia has upgraded its Nokia WiFi Cloud Controller to act as a User Services Platform (USP) controller. USP is the industry standard protocol to manage services and configurations in network devices, either remotely by a cloud application or locally by a mobile app.
Nokia’s USP agent in the Beacon 10 is based on the open-source OB-USPA so it can be managed by any USP controller, including the Nokia WiFi Cloud Controller. Alongside this, the Beacon 10 supports the latest, fully integrated cybersecurity application from F-Secure which is delivered as a containerized application.
F-Secure is the first partner to fully leverage Nokia’s application ecosystem to bring its cybersecurity solution to Nokia broadband devices using this innovative and open environment.
Dirk Verhaegen, vice president of broadband devices at Nokia, said: “We are proud to introduce Nokia’s first Wi-Fi 6E product for premium, high-performance Wi-Fi in the home and office.
“Not only does it offer faster speeds, but it also supports 3rd party applications and a USP agent to be fully compatible with multiple controllers, making it much easier for operators to manage. Third party apps and USP are both of strategic interest to Nokia and we will include them in all new broadband devices we introduce, as well as retro-fitting to select existing equipment.”
