scte PRESENTS scte PRESENTS
Testing and Measurement OPEN SESSION Q&A
SCTE President Dr Anthony Basham steered a wide-ranging discussion that flipped the “test and measurement” conversation
towards the customer-facing reality of broadband performance – especially in the home. Wi-Fi, he noted, has been a
recurring industry pain point for years. “When did we last talk about Wi-Fi? … 2018… We actually had it in 2010 as well,” he said, arguing that every cycle returns to the same complaints: “Why doesn’t it work behind the wall? What happens when I shut the door? Why have I only got 10 meg when I go outside?”
Bridge Technologies chairman Simen Frostad offered a rare note of optimism, describing a recent office upgrade to Wi-Fi 6E/7 access points. “We now have Wi-Fi which is impressively good,” he said, crediting modern capabilities such as beamforming
antennas and better use of spectrum. The caveat, he added, is that enterprise-grade deployments don’t always translate neatly into typical home set-ups.
Harmonic’s David Whitehead agreed the technology is moving, placing Wi-Fi’s improvements in the same evolutionary context as DOCSIS and PON. “There have been technological advances with Wi-Fi to make it better and give better coverage,” he said, noting
how access technologies keep iterating: “We’ve gone through GPON, XGS, 25G, 50G.” He also highlighted how long-lived “legacy” platforms can be, pointing to the shift from “everything’s going to be fibre within five years” messaging to expectations of “DOCSIS until 2040”. A recurring thread was education: how to set realistic expectations about what broadband and Wi-Fi can do, and what users are actually buying. One audience member pointed to the gap between consumer assumptions and physics: “If you stand out in your garden, in your Anderson shelter, you don’t expect to get any Wi-Fi.” Another speaker offered a practical example from a golf round: a friend bought a “Wi-Fi 7 router” for “£300” while only taking a “150 meg service”, then discovered speeds of “12 meg” in a back bedroom. The story underlined how placement, extenders and mesh design can matter more than the headline kit.
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MARCH 2026 Volume 48 No.1
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