VENUE
September
9th - 10th 2026
9:00 - 17:00
Stoller Hall, Hunts Bank Manchester, England M3 1DA
Hotel Indigo discount code link HERE giving delegates 15% off the best flexible rate available on the day of booking.
You can book up to 7 days prior to arrival.
Cancellation period is up to 4pm 28 days prior to arrival.
The rate is marked as 'Your Preferred Rate Imec' inclusive of breakfast.
Located at 6 Todd Street Manchester, M3 1WU the hotel is situated a short walking distance of the venue.
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SPEAKERS
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How This One Shaped My Career
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Quantum computing is set to change Wi-Fi security forever. Lee Wright (CWNE #534) examines how quantum threats could impact wireless encryption and authentication, what risks are real today, and what steps Wi-Fi teams can take to prepare for a post-quantum future.
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We as the herd always discuss Wi-Fi & now we have a chance to discuss another wireless technology & why certain things matter, how do some things work why are we not seeing the Speed's that 5G always seemed to promise
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Brief backstory and a quick run through what you can do with BadgerWiFi-Tools?
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Come share a journey of discovery… to sometimes wild and crazy places we’ve been asked to design Wi-Fi. From above the Arctic Circle, to Antartica. From mountain tops to thousands of feet underground. Poor shanty towns, to billionaire homes. Wi-Fi holds the entire world together. Knowing how Wi-Fi works, and the fundamentals help in all possible situations.
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We've become really good at designing Wi-Fi around Wi-Fi. Channel plans, AP placement, capacity. And we've gone blind to everything else in the spectrum: the microwave, the video camera, the dodgy LED driver, the infrared sensor nobody documented. And with an SK2, you're already capturing it all on every survey. You just never open it. I'll show you what's been sitting in your own survey data, and why it can matter more than you think.
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Every growing business eventually outgrows the Wi-Fi network it was designed around — but few can afford to take that network offline to fix it. This session covers how to spot a network under strain, survey and redesign it in place, and roll out changes without disrupting the people depending on it.
We'll anchor the talk in a real-world case study: a 500-person video and design advertising agency in Manhattan, where the original Wi-Fi was built for a smaller team doing lighter work. Years later, the same footprint houses 4K editors pushing massive uploads to cloud review platforms, creative teams on back-to-back video calls, and a constant churn of freelancers and clients across three dense floors. Coverage looked fine on paper. Performance told a different story.
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Wi-Fi has evolved from autonomous APs to controllers to the cloud, but the next leap is even bigger. The Agentic Age is defined by open data, AI flexibility, and a shift of intelligence and portions of the control plane toward the edge, where decisions can happen faster and closer to the moment of need. This session explores how Wi-Fi is becoming a platform not just for connectivity, but for operational insight, automation, and real business advantage
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Think you know what’s going on with your Wi-Fi? Think again. The 7SIGNAL agent is packed with powerful features that give you deep visibility into the client experience — from connection health to roaming behavior and everything in between. In this session, we’ll pop the hood and show off all the cool things the agent can do to help you troubleshoot faster, design smarter, and sleep better at night. Warning: after this talk, you may never look at Wi-Fi the same way again.
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As someone who spends a lot of time on the train I often find myself frustrated when trying to use my hotspot or train wifi. I want to investigate and evaluate both methods of getting internet to your work laptop. I Talk about how train WiFi works, and evaluate performance (specifically on southeastern). Providing some stats and insights
Investigating the behaviour of mobile hotspots (from mobile phones, tablets, and mobile 5G routers etc) Evaaluate their effectiveness and how they work differnetly depending on which device you use
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For over 25 years, Wi-Fi has been woven into the fabric of how we communicate, work, learn, and experience the world around us. In this session, David Coleman explores what lies ahead, from Wi-Fi 8 and Enhanced Broadcast Services to Wi-Fi sensing and the growing role of AI in shaping how networks are designed, operated, and experienced. As AI advances at a pace most companies can barely keep up with—and begins reshaping society in real time—wireless networking is becoming far more adaptive, intelligent, and strategically important. The real opportunity is not just better wireless, but unlocking the Art of the Possible—redefining what can be achieved as connectivity, context, and intelligence begin to converge.
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What happens when a Wi‑Fi guy dives into Private 5G? In this session, I’ll share my journey, unpack the technology in simple terms, and explore real enterprise use cases and where Private 5G complements existing wireless networks.
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See where your Wi-Fi Tools will be going in the coming months and years. Let Jussi, Hamina’s janitor, take you to a guided tour to the FUTURE.
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In this session, you’ll learn the fundamentals of how the Sidekick Spectrum Analyzer works, with a primary focus on the SK2 and a brief look at the SK1.
We’ll explore the basic architecture and follow the RF signal path all the way from the antenna to the FPGA.
What happens when we isolate a Sidekick in an RF chamber and inject known signals into it? Can that help us better understand its internal architecture?
As it turns out, you’re carrying a much more powerful device than you might realize, and many of the limitations come from the software rather than the hardware.
So what if we could observe multiple frequency bands simultaneously with the Sidekick 2, and Sidekick 1 - and use it more like a RF analysis tool.
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For too long, network experience measurement tools have focused on the internet, not your Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi Pros asked for better, and we've been building it. In this session, I'll show how you can use Orb features inspired by the Wi-Fi Pro community: Orb to Orb to measure wireless performance in isolation, Orb MCP for fast and informed analysis, and advanced alerts so you catch issues before your clients call.
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Debunking AI with Algorithms cuts through the hype by showing how today’s AI systems are built on familiar computational ideas, not magic. This session explains the core concepts behind AI in plain language, helping technical audiences understand what these tools can realistically do, where they fall short, and how to use them with confidence.
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Roaming is a client-driven decision, which is exactly why it remains one of the harder problems to get right in enterprise Wi-Fi. This session explores some of the most common contributors to roaming issues, from coverage and cell design to client behavior and the diversity of devices found on today’s networks. We’ll look at why these problems arise, how they relate to one another, and practical ways to approach troubleshooting them.
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LCMI has long been a design philosophy used by Wireless Professionals, but it is only one approach. Let’s explore an alternative approach for modern Wi-Fi networks and the challenges of today’s WLANs – Parallel Reality Architecture (PRA).
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In 2025, I led the rollout of a new Wi-Fi service for customers and colleagues' personal devices across several of the UK's largest retailers. This talk shares the story behind the project—from planning and design to deployment and the lessons learned along the way. I'll cover the technical and operational challenges of delivering secure, scalable connectivity, and the realities of rolling out a service at enterprise scale.
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Many networks apply speed limits believing that this improves QoS by restricting less important devices (eg Guests) this will prioritise critical devices (eg Corporate network). While that might be the case on a full wired network, wireless networks work very differently. While many now acknowledge that wireless devices should not be queued but why should we not queue them.
Though this presentation will not have all the answers, Jono will attempt to present some measurements from wireless packets and show some of the impact caused to the wireless network which happens when applying queues to some users has on the whole wireless network. This presentation will definitely not answer every question but will give something for everyone to think about and hopefully help to explain why guest users should have faster wireless.
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If you already have the right hardware in place, enabling 6 GHz is only a few clicks away. But would it actually work? The short answer is "it depends."
In some cases you onboard so many clients that 6 GHz starts to feel a lot like 2.4 GHz. In others, your clients never move onto 6 GHz at all — either because they don't think it makes sense, or, in more extreme cases, because they aren't even aware it co-exists.
This session shares real-life best practices and considerations for getting it right, drawn from over three years of deploying 6 GHz everywhere from the typical enterprise (open-plan offices with a few thousand wireless clients) to large public venues (Cisco Live, with 20,000+ wireless clients). We'll look at how to convince your executives to adopt WPA3 and 6 GHz, how to build a successful RF profile from day one, and how to make sure clients can actually discover the 6 GHz network.
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Gathering data from Wi-Fi networks may seem like a simple task, but what is different when collecting data from a Wi-Fi HaLow network? I will discuss the considerations when performing such task and I will share how I accomplished a Wi-Fi HaLow survey using the Wavelify application.
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At Wyebot, we see a lot of different Wi-Fi networks, big and small. We've found that most Wi-Fi networks are NOT managed, or even designed, by someone with Wi-Fi experience. In this presentation, we will discuss the most common issues we still see, and talk about how as an industry we can make Wi-Fi better for everyone.
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In Wi‑Fi, it's easy to play by the rules. Create a template and stick with what works. However, creativity can be just as vital in solving real-world challenges. While the laws of physics never change, the opportunities for innovative and unconventional applications are virtually limitless. What happens when we look beyond what we already know and challenge established approaches? Often, the only limit is our own imagination.
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Is spectrum analysis still relevant or are we solving yesterday’s problems.