With the Wi-Fi HaLow’s 9.9 mile range, you could connect to your home Wi-Fi at work, at the grocery store, and even inside your car throughout your ride.
Wi-Fi is probably the most important part of any piece of technology today. It helps devices connect, communicate, update, and be cutting-edge… but the problem with Wi-Fi is that it’s a high-frequency radio wave – that means it doesn’t travel far, and it can’t penetrate walls. It’s why we recommend placing Wi-Fi routers strategically at home so that you get seamless connectivity, but there’s a company hoping to make Wi-Fi so powerful, it passes through walls and can even connect devices nearly 10 miles apart. The Wi-Fi HaLow, developed by Morse Micro, is an upcoming technology that the company hopes will become a part of every device in the future… so that bad internet connectivity is a thing of the past.
Designer: Morse Micro
Without getting into the specifics (because I have no technical background), the Wi-Fi HaLow router (shown above) promises to make internet connectivity seamless over massive distances. It relies on Sub-GHz frequency waves that travel long distances (like AM and FM radio) to transmit internet connectivity, so you could potentially use your home Wi-Fi router within a 10-mile radius of your house.
Morse Micro, the company behind the tech, hopes that this Wi-Fi capability will coexist with current 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz Wi-Fi bands. These existing bands are great for low-latency internet connectivity, but add HaLow to the mix and you get long-distance connectivity too, giving you the best of all worlds. Sub-GHz Wi-Fi won’t ever be as fast as 5GHz Wi-Fi (HaLow has max speeds of 32.5 MB/s), although those speeds are perfect for most everyday tasks like checking email, browsing the internet, or even for IoT devices to communicate with each other.
Sadly, the router isn’t something you can currently just plug into your home. While it does broadcast long-distance Wi-Fi, most devices like your phones, laptops, and smart home tech aren’t equipped to read that frequency band just yet… but Morse Micro is hoping to influence tech companies to adapt their hardware for the future so that instead of dual-band radio antennas, every device will have a tri-band radio antenna for 2.4, 5, and Sub GHz connectivity.
For now, Morse Micro’s working to deploy HaLows in commercial setups like Amazon warehouses (where robots can communicate seamlessly with each other over long distances), along with other industries like security and telecom. Potentially, this technology isn’t too far off. Imagine your lawnmower robot being able to easily connect to your home Wi-Fi without an intermediary hub, or your pool cleaning robot doing the same even if your pool is more than 20-30 meters from your home router.
The devices shown here are engineering samples. Morse Micro is sharing chipsets, dongles, and routers with engineers interested in building the tech into their existing stacks, so that potentially in the future your home Wi-Fi could also be your work Wi-Fi or your car Wi-Fi. And instead of asking your friend to share the Wi-Fi password when you’re at their place, you can just continue using your home Wi-Fi just fine!
