As I write this, the 2108 Wi-Fi Tek Conference is going on in San Diego. I’m not attending (mostly because Boardman is there) but I am listening to various comments being made about the event goings on though the many channels that all of us WLAN types keep each other updated on. There’s a lot of good chatter, and I wish my CWNP family the best of luck with conference (I am on the CWNE Advisory Board you know… I run in those circles.) One little nugget from Twitter caught my attention, in particular.

I happen to have products from each company, and both are among my favorite tools when it comes to WLAN support. After the tweet, I went and found MetaGeek’s own announcement on the new partnership, which you can read about here.

Now, betwixt you and I- neither company has been especially active of late as far as getting new tools (or even updates to existing tools) out in front of us loyal customers, and I’m glad to see hope of that changing.

I’ve written about Oscium in the past and still think their WiPry 5x is one of the slicker spectrum analyzers out there for those of us that have familiarity with real lab-grade spec ans. I’ve also covered MetaGeek through the years, and was fortunate enough to see their presentations at multiple Tech Field Day events. You won’t find nicer folks than MetaGeek’s current and past employees… must be a Boise thing.

Now back to that announcement of a partnership between MetaGeek and Oscium. We still don’t know a lot, but this is pivotal from the MetaGeek blog:

MetaGeek plans to partner with Oscium for additional hardware offerings moving forward as part of the company’s shift to focus on the software side of their industry-leading Wi-Fi analytics solutions.

Just as Ekahau has realized, you can only take legacy USB adapters so far in the world of 802.11ac (and soon .11ax) wireless support tools. MetaGeek has had profound impact on the WLAN industry with their USB-based stuff, but it also became stunted despite having really effective software pairings (like Channelyzer, InSSIDer, and the fantastic Eye P.A.). Oscium has figured out how to leverage well a range of mobile devices (both Android and Apple) and their latest connectors for use as Wi-Fi support specialty tools.

I smell synergy, baby…

I have seen nothing in beta as for as this story line goes. I’ve had no conversations of late with either MetaGeek or Oscium, so I really can’t give you anything beyond speculation and hope that good things are coming, but I also have a lot of faith in both companies.

I’m looking forward to the end of the year, and whatever announcements these two toolmakers are working on.