With such a long and rich history, there are many reasons to visit India. Gigantic Infotel, India’s leading and fastest growing broadband service provider, has added one more: Wi-Fi 6, the next generation of wireless connection. In 2019, the company led the commercial deployment of cutting-edge Wi-Fi 6 technology in Delhi and Hariana, in the Ganga Plain. Driven by the global digital wave as well as supportive domestic policies, the wireless broadband market in India has grown rapidly in recent years.

Gigantic Infotel's New Business Model

International Data Corporation (IDC), a leading consulting firm, predicts that by 2022, at least 60% of global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will be digitized. Growth in every industry will be driven by digitally enhanced offerings, operations, and relationships. In order to keep up with this trend, India — the second most populous nation on earth, with the highest GDP growth among major economies — has launched the Digital India initiative and the National Digital Communications Policy 2018.

Against this backdrop, the Wi-Fi market in India is rapidly developing. As it transitions into the mature application stage, users are starting to demand higher speeds and a better Wi-Fi service experience. Since its founding in 2002, Gigantic Infotel has been dedicated to providing innovative, top-quality, and abundant ICT services to users. However, the company’s market performance has weakened over the years due to a fierce competitive environment. To turn things around, Gigantic Infotel introduced a new business model — Wi-Fi as a service — by deploying the most advanced wireless broadband network on a large scale, making optimal use of wired and wireless broadband convergence. This innovative business model provides users with best-in-class broadband access services, enhances the company's competitiveness, and paves the way for more market breakthroughs.

After thorough evaluation of multiple factors, Gigantic Infotel concluded that Wi-Fi 6 is the best option. It is a cost-effective solution that offers mobility, flexibility, and scalability. Indeed, Wi-Fi 6 can empower Indian society to bridge the digital divide, streamline public services, improve public security, and boost economic development. In addition, Wi-Fi 6 helps raise the community awareness of residents and aligns with the pragmatic needs of the Indian market.

Wi-Fi 6, the sixth generation of Wi-Fi, incorporates a large number of key technologies such as: Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA), Multi-User Multiple Input Multiple Output (MU-MIMO), and 1024-Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (1024-QAM). Compared to its predecessor, Wi-Fi 6 delivers a four-fold increase in network bandwidth  and user concurrency, and reduces network latency from 30 ms to 20 ms.

Huawei’s Unique Contributions to the Industry

Decision makers are expected to make the best choice when deploying groundbreaking and innovative technical solutions for their enterprise. Huawei was entrusted by Gigantic Infotel to be a long-term partner to implement the best solutions.

Huawei has long been at the forefront of Wi-Fi 6 technology development. Since 2011, Huawei has been one of the 16 board members in the Wi-Fi Alliance, holding seven top positions in 802.11 standard working groups, including Dr. Osama Aboul-Magd who serves as the chairman of the 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) working group. By the end of 2018, Huawei had contributed more than 240 802.11ax proposals, the highest among all equipment vendors. In 2017, Huawei became the world's first vendor to launch Wi-Fi 6 Access Points (APs), and in 2018 Huawei was the first to achieve large-scale commercial use of Wi-Fi 6. At Interop Tokyo 2019, Huawei's industry-leading AirEngine AP7060DN won the prestigious Grand Prize for Best of Show Award for its ultra-large bandwidth, ultra-high capacity, ultra-low latency, and flexible IoT expansion capabilities.

In addition to providing standard features, Huawei is dedicated to further improve the Wi-Fi 6 experience through innovative technologies, including:

• SmartRadio — automatically detects air interface quality and intelligently optimizes networks, which effectively improves network capacity and enhances user experience. Combined with smart antenna technology, signal coverage distance is increased by 20% while signal interference is reduced by 15%.

• Industry-unique intelligent application acceleration technology — addresses congestion issues and reduces service latency to 10 ms (compared to the industry average of 20 ms) by using a multi-queue packet scheduling mechanism. This reduction satisfies the latency-sensitive requirements of Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), Mixed Reality (MR), and gaming services.

• Lossless roaming technology — achieves stable roaming with zero packet loss through the use of a network topology identification algorithm to quickly find the optimal AP for roaming. In addition, roaming soft handover is triggered by establishing a new link first, before disconnecting the original link.

• Internet of Things (IoT) expansion modules — achieves multi-network integration through modules that can easily extend to a broad set of IoT protocols, such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), ZigBee, and Ultra-Wideband (UWB).

These innovative features are standard in Huawei’s entire series of Wi-Fi 6 APs to provide users with the highest quality experience. In addition, Huawei CampusInsight, an intelligent Operations and Maintenance (O&M) platform, delivers added user experience visibility, automatically identifies 85% of potential faults, and implements root cause analysis.

Wi-Fi as a Service Makes Inroads to a University Campus

Gigantic Infotel’s very first Wi-Fi 6 deployment was in a vibrant private university that was regarded as one of India's best. The continuous transformation of global education has created new challenges for the university's campus network, which is no longer fit for purpose in the digital age.

Education has evolved to become more diverse than ever. From cloud- and mobile-based remote education and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to immersive VR/AR learning, students are increasingly going digital to get their education. To keep up with the new demands, the university needed to reinvent its campus network to provide higher bandwidth, lower latency, higher reliability, and support access for more types of terminals. Through extensive communication, testing, and demonstrations, Gigantic Infotel and Huawei provided the university with critical insights about Wi-Fi 6, which ultimately led to the reconstruction of the campus wireless network, with the deployment of approximately 1000 Wi-Fi 6 APs for the entire project.

Huawei's Wi-Fi 6 solution deeply aligns with campus network needs and is tailored for specific scenarios. For example, smart antenna and radio calibration technologies ensure high bandwidth and low latency in VR classrooms, offices, and libraries. To accommodate high-density areas, such as classrooms, meeting rooms, and lecture halls, unique high-density antenna technology is combined with Wi-Fi 6 APs that offer industry-leading radio and spatial streams. These innovations enable flexible teaching, enhancing the education experience for both teachers and students.

Thanks to its three-radio design and SmartRadio technology, a single Huawei Wi-Fi 6 AP can support 1024 Stations (STAs), allowing more than 200 concurrent users to go online, 50% more than the industry average. Powered by smart antenna technology, Huawei’s Wi-Fi 6 APs expand the coverage area by 40% while reducing deployment costs by 10–30%.

Gigantic Infotel is actively promoting the deployment of Wi-Fi 6 to more universities as well as hotels and shared workspaces in India, moving the country towards the Wi-Fi 6 era. In the near future, Indians will be able to enjoy their favorite shows anytime and anywhere, all at lightning speeds.