INVESTOR FAQs

KPMG LLP, Chartered Accountants

Computershare Investor Services Inc.

“MLO is a ‘marquee feature of Wi-Fi 7…” — XX, VP of Broadcom’s Wireless Connectivity Division

 

“Multi-link is probably the biggest differentiation from a product perspective…” — XX, VP and GM of Maxlinear’s Broadband Group

 

“… MLO offers the single biggest improvement to Wi-Fi…” — XX, CTO of Wireless Connectivity at Intel

 

What is MLO?

Multi Link Operation (MLO) enables simultaneous access across multiple bands and offers a way to increase capacity and lower latency.

If it sounds familiar, it should.

MLO is based on the same basic principle as Dual Channel Wi-Fi(tm), our co-innovation with CableLabs.  The basic principle is simple; by using more channels, latency can be reduced and performance improved.

Unlike MLO (proposed in Wi-Fi7), Dual Channel Wi-Fi is not limited to ‘two’ channels, but can support multiple aggregated channels — offering a much more robust platform for delivering latency sensitive applications.  Targeting residential applications, Dual Channel Wi-Fi helps alleviate Wi-Fi congestion by allocating one, or more, concurrent channels to the downstream data of selected applications, improving both overall Wi-Fi performance and customer satisfaction.

Dual-Channel Wi-Fi is arguably more robust than MLO, as it can be harnessed to provide congestion-free downstream traffic based on the type of traffic or application and is not merely a flavor of Ethernet aggregation.  Most importantly, Dual Channel Wi-Fi is available today and can be implemented on existing Wi-Fi solutions without having to replace all your devices.

Remarkably, using Spectrum Slicing, Dual Channel Wi-Fi, as well as MLO, can be implemented ‘in-band’ which means existing devices can also benefit, allowing you to force multiply your Wi-Fi performance without replacing all of your network devices.

For more information on Dual Channel Wi-Fi visit: https://edgewaterwireless.com/spectrum-slicing-explained/dual-channel-wifi/

What does MLO mean for Edgewater?

• Validates the need for more channels
• Expands market opportunities for our Wi-Fi Spectrum Slicing

As with Dual Channel Wi-Fi, MLO — and any application requiring more channels — validates Edgewater’s Spectrum Slicing approach.  Our patented approach delivers the highest channel density in the industry.

Spectrum Slicing is the ONLY solution to offer multiple, concurrent channels — in band and in the same coverage area — which opens up opportunities for our approach in new and existing Wi-Fi applications.  Applications requiring more channels expand our addressable market.

Thankfully, real-world data from homes was used and we did not have to physically deploy in each home as it would be costly. The real-world data clearly showed each device added to the Wi-Fi Access Point negatively impacted performance.

Think of today’s Wi-Fi as a single-lane road shared by all traffic or devices.  Traffic congestion is happening in the home, today.

Edgewater’s Spectrum Slicing approach adds physical Wi-Fi capacity or channels.

We’re the multi-lane highway of Wi-Fi.

10G is the cable industry’s vision for delivering a remarkable 10 gigabits per second to homes in the U.S. and worldwide.  It’s the cable industry’s one-up to the mobile industry’s 5G buzz.

Cutting through the marketing hype, getting a 10 gigabit connection to everyone’s home requires many different technologies — from fibre optic networks running from the cable co’s main office right up to your home to software and applications running on the network.  It’s why there have been and will be quite a few technologies announced over the upcoming years.

It’s an exciting initiative, and we’re happy to be part of it.  Driving increased bandwidth to home users creates a massive tailwind to our Wi-Fi Spectrum Slicing approach — lower latency is essential to better performance in the home and we’ve proven a 50% reduction to latency compared with the legacy, single-channel Wi-Fi architecture used by ALL other competitors.

There are tons of new technologies associated with 10G — a complete re-invention of the cable standard (i.e. the wire that terminates to your house) with DOCSIS4.0 to Coherent Optics (which offers a massive leap in fibre optic speeds) to applications like Dual Channel Wi-Fi™ — which we co-innovated with CableLabs.

For more information on 10G, check here

With members that include some of the biggest cable operators on the globe, like Comcast and Liberty Global, CableLabs is the broadband industry-supported non-profit technology research and development organization that drives innovation and scale of commercial and residential specifications and subsequent products across the world.

Check out their growing list of member companies:  https://www.cablelabs.com/about-cablelabs/member-companies

Celebrating its 30^thanniversary in 2018, CableLabs has grown to include two other subsidiaries: Kyrio, which accelerates and deploys new network innovations into the ecosystem through their extensive testing facilities; and UpRamp, which identifies and guides startups that hold promise for the industry and introduces them to industry leaders. Edgewater Wireless is an UpRamp company and continues to collaborate with the CableLabs family.

Edgewater Wireless has strong linkages to CableLabs, as it was part of the 2016 cohort for the organization’s first-ever UpRamp “Fiterator” startup accelerator program and they recognize the benefits of our revolutionary Wi-Fi Spectrum Slicing approach.

Driving growth & adoption!

More developers accessing the Dual Channel Wi-Fi software will help drive growth and adoption of the standard – globally – in an industry that added 3 billion new devices in the last 12-months.

The more channels used by standards like Dual Channel Wi-Fi, the more critical it becomes to increase channel density. Edgewater’s patented Wi-Fi Spectrum Slicing approach delivers the highest channel density in the industry.

Not all home devices are set up for Dual Channel Wi-Fi yet, but that doesn’t pose a problem. By moving the downstream data onto the secondary channel, using at least one dual-channel device, airtime is freed on the primary Wi-Fi channel. The result is that all the older devices’ performance improves.

5G is the term for the Next Generation of mobile standards, which will enable faster speeds with lower latency and will usher in a host of applications in communications, entertainment, business, transportation and the connected home. Several companies across the globe are getting ready to deploy 5G technology over the next few years.

According to the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) and leading global service providers, the emerging 5G standard will incorporate a number of technologies, and Wi-Fi will be at the foundation given its enormous installed base, particularly indoors.

The WBA is the Wireless Broadband Alliance, a global organization of some of the world’s largest broadband and mobile providers, as well as related tech companies including Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), Huawei Technologies, Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) and Intel (NASDAQ: INTC). The organization was founded in 2003 to resolve business issues and enable collaborative opportunities for service providers, enterprises and cities, enabling them to enhance the customer experience of WiFi and significant adjacent technologies. WBA members represent more than 2 billion subscribers and operate more than 30 million hotspots globally.

The WGC is the Wireless Global Congress, the WBA’s semi-annual conference. At the most recent Congress, Edgewater Wireless participated in a working group which included Comcast, BSG Wireless, Global Reach and CableLabs, that successfully demonstrated a secure, seamless handoff from mobile networks to WiFi networks without phone user involvement. This was an industry first and a high-profile milestone for Edgewater Wireless as the industry prepares for the commercial and residential availability of 5G technology. We’re working with industry giants that are developing applications on our platform and selected us to be the access point company in the demonstration.

Additionally, Edgewater Wireless CEO Andrew Skafel presented the company’s revolutionary Wi-Fi Spectrum Slicing technology during the Congress’s Innovation Segment, shared a use case from the hospitality industry and had the opportunity to talk to senior-level technology executives from several multinational companies.

The audience at the demonstration with Comcast and Nokia were top-level industry technology leaders who are responsible for driving Wi-Fi innovation and 5G success at their respective companies, both in the commercial and residential markets. Edgewater Wireless’s Wi-Fi Spectrum Slicing technology is the very first of its kind and the demonstration positioned the company as a leading-edge innovator in a very high profile setting.  We are part of a global industry and the demonstration reaffirmed Wi-Fi as the foundation of 5G, upon which myriad applications, will soon ride. Edgewater Wireless is the first and only company to deliver multiple, concurrent channels of transmit and receive from a single Wi-Fi radio. Not only is this essential to  successful 5G rollout, it’s what we’re already doing right now.