Dubai loves to be the biggest and best at everything, and now that roster of braggadocio includes the world’s fastest free airport WiFi.
According to Dubai Airports, its new superfast WiFi service – aptly named WOW-Fi – serves up speeds "up to a staggering 100Mbps, surpassing all other airports."
Of course, the operative words here are "up to".
But to set things in perspective: 100Mbs is as fast as Telstra's own cable network, and about ten times the average home Internet speed on an ADSL2+ connection.
The sprawling airport – home to Qantas partner Emirates – is being fitted out with over 6,000 new WiFi access points running the same fast 802.11ac technology as most modern laptops, so your own notebook will no longer be forced into the slow lane of older crowded WiFi channels.
Feeding those hotspots is a 5Gbps link, to ensure there's plenty of bandwidth to be shared by the airport's 100,000 users per day.
If you're passing through Dubai and want to tap into the airport's WOW-Fi network and fire up the SpeedTest website, we'd be interested to hear of the real-world results...
David Flynn is the Editor-in-Chief of Executive Traveller and a bit of a travel tragic with a weakness for good coffee, shopping and lychee martinis.
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
02 Jul 2011
Total posts 1374
100,000 people each spending say an average of 3 hrs at the airport..
Qantas - Qantas Frequent Flyer
23 Oct 2013
Total posts 699
Yeh sure they can provide a fast wifi service but Facetime, Skype, VPN's and a range of other websites will still be blocked.
24 Oct 2010
Total posts 2560
We've had a reader run a speedtest last night at DXB on his Samsung Galaxy S6 and send in his result: a solid 76Mbps down and 102Mbps up, with a sprightly 9ms ping.
26 Nov 2016
Total posts 7
Considering that most travellers want to access non-UAE sites, and how's the performance out of the country?
25 Feb 2017
Total posts 6
I was through DXB yesterday and the download speed is considerably faster. I also had no connection issues that had occurred on numerous visits in the past.
31 Mar 2014
Total posts 397
The problem I see is it is only a 5Gbps link provided. That would only give 51 people 100mbit at any one time
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