In this new ongoing series, the WBA will be featuring interviews with the distinguished members of our Board of Directors. These interviews will contain answers to questions about a variety of topics, including the WBA’s many initiatives, the state of the ecosystem, and much more.

For this installment, we spoke with Cole Reinwand, Vice-President XFINITY WiFi at Comcast. Cole shared his thoughts on two of the WBA’s major initiatives – Next Generation Wi-Fi Program, and the Public Advocacy Program.

On the WBA’s Next Generation Wi-Fi Program:

As one of the largest WiFi network operators in the world, the Next Generation Wi-Fi Program is a vital initiative for Comcast. The program provides a superb forum to collaborate with other industry thought leaders to create a framework which will transform WiFi networks from their early localized LAN roots, into a broad carrier-grade experience. Important aspects of the program include user experience elements such as service discovery, network selection and secure authentication, as well as network management functions such as provisioning, configuration and radio resource management, and integration requirements including policy enforcement and roaming and interconnect specifications. Next Generation WiFi is a sweeping program that presents a new vision for how operators will deliver outstanding wireless broadband experiences through WiFi.

Comcast is also a strong supporter of the WBA’s work on Wi-Fi Device Requirements, another track within the Next Generation Wi-Fi Program. Non-SIM devices represent a significant part of the WiFi ecosystem and the WBA has recognized the need to develop industry standards and specifications that consider the unique requirements that these devices, such as tablets, readers, cameras, IoT devices such as sensors or meters, and wearables may present. The important work on the Wi-Fi Device Requirements topic will assure that a wide variety of consumer electronics can take advantage of Next Generation WiFi networks. Comcast, along with other WBA members, are now leading the industry to implement secure authentication mechanisms and encrypted connections to their networks today, and it will be essential to ensure that these security benefits extend to all devices in the future.

On the WBA’s Public Advocacy Program:

Wi-Fi has become an indispensable part of the connectivity fabric, already shouldering a massive load of the world’s wireless data traffic, and predicted to bear even more in the future. It is imperative that the industry examine ways to enable more unlicensed spectrum and to make more efficient use of the spectrum bands that are already allocated. Comcast is supportive of the WBA’s Public Advocacy Program to support WBA member agendas globally on spectrum, security, privacy and regulatory policies. Comcast is also supportive of WiFiForward, a group of like-minded companies, organizations and public sector institutions that are working to encourage policymakers and regulators to protect WiFi and to strengthen WiFi spectrum allocations, enable use of new frequencies for WiFi use, and to create more transparent and predictable rules for WiFi spectrum.

Learn more about Comcast’s XFINITY WiFi here.