Back in January, Morse Micro achieved a world record of WiFi range using the HaLow (802.11ah) standard, by conducting a video call over a distance of 1.8 miles through a high-interference San Francisco beach area and proving it worked— and now, in the rural Joshua Tree National Park, they've broken the world record again, almost five times over, with a distance of 9.9 miles, or 15.9 kilometers.
The connection speed of the earlier San Francisco beach test ranged from 11 Megabits per second at 500 meters to just a single Megabit per second at then-maximum 1.8 mile range. Meanwhile, the throughput of HaLow in this new testing topped out at 2 Megabits per second at 9.9 miles — likely a best-case scenario considering how little interference there is in a rural area like Joshua Tree National Park compared to a place as densely-populated as a San Francisco beach.
As noted by Morse Micro in their video, this seems to correspond to the theoretical maximum HaLow range of 15.9 kilometers — and starts making HaLow seem a lot more sensible for outdoor work including farming without needing to rely on expensive cellular data or poor cellular coverage. In urban scenarios, it's most likely an unnecessary technology due to the abundance of cell signals and existing hotspots — or at least, so prone to interference that it's only available in a much more limited form.
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But considering how much range even the San Francisco beach testing achieved while maintaining usability... even "just" two miles of Wi-Fi range is quite generous when one compares it to the standard router range. And if you're doing a lot on wireless data, it's typically best to be tied to a home Internet provider and Wi-Fi rather than a cellular provider that can and will charge you for consuming too much data.
Overall, this seems an impressive showing by Morse Micro. A new world record with Wi-Fi 802.11ah, or HaLow, that's unlikely to be beaten anytime soon is always nice to see. Maybe one day these maximum-range HaLow networks can get even faster— who knows? For now, all we can do is wait and see.
Like last time I covered HaLow, though, I do hope to see its adoption become more commonplace — and could see particular utility for HaLow with public Wi-Fi hotspots and the such.
