The newly-announced alliance between Juniper Networks and Ruckus Wireless underscores the importance of Wi-Fi in enterprises, where employees increasingly work and access cloud applications on mobile devices.
Wireless hotspots that can deliver hundreds of megabits per second in real-world bandwidth will become more common as operators increase their investments in Wi-Fi networks.
Wi-Fi may carry many voice calls within the next few years, but the technology required to make those calls is still young in some ways.
The NBASE-T Alliance -- a recently formed umbrella group of networking industry players dedicated to keeping standard Ethernet cabling relevant -- announced a dozen new members on Monday, including big names such as Intel, Qualcomm and Brocade.
Last December customers were peppering wireless LAN vendors with questions about whether to upgrade to the pre-standard-but-certified 802.11ac products flooding the market or hold off until 2015, when more powerful "Wave 2" Gigabit Wifi gear was expected to become prevalent.