Comcast Business this week introduced a new Comcast Business Gateway. It’s a Wi-Fi-6-certified device capable of delivering multi-gigabit speeds for Wi-Fi connectivity.
Comcast already has its xFi Advanced Gateway for the home. And the new business gateway builds on that innovation.
However, the home gateway is a Wi-Fi 6E device that can use the newly available 6 GHz band. While the business gateway will use the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands.
Asked why the business gateway wouldn’t tap the 6 GHz spectrum, Christian Nascimento, vice president of product management and strategy at Comcast Business, said, “We went with 2.4 and 5 GHz because we have the ability to support our EPON customers with this device.”
He said when Comcast was designing the device the priority was to be able to connect to Ethernet. “In cases where we would potentially have an EPON option, we have the ability to serve the EPON customer with the same device. It was a question about what was the most efficient way to serve all our customers.”
In terms of its Wi-Fi capabilities, the gateway can connect up to 150 devices.
Nascimento said Comcast is “really a Wi-Fi first environment.” In fact, the company said that it currently counts about 20 million Wi-Fi hotspots. That’s up from about 19 million Xfinity Wi-Fi hotspots in 2019.
The Comcast Business gateway is designed to be flexible whether a company wants to place it in a rack, on a wall or just sit it on a desk.
The new gateway includes security software, but if customers want even more security the gateway also comes with software called SecurityEdge, which was created in partnership with Akamai. Customers who want the added security can subscribe to it, and it will be activated without a truck roll.