Ubiquiti announced its latest generation of UISP PtMP and PtP products back in October 2024 and it has taken a little while for them to materialise. Wave MLO looks to be a completely new generation for Ubiquiti, built upon WiFi 7 as opposed to the custom silicon approach it tried with LTU.

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At this stage, it isn't clear if Ubiquiti is going to focus more on Wave MLO going forward and leave LTU as it is. In recent years, airMAX AC has seen less and less attention for example, with no new products and only sporadic software updates focusing on stability and security.

What is WaveMLO?

One standout feature from WiFi 7 is MLO or Multi-Link Operation. This allows clients to make multiple connections to the access point and use either 2.4GHz, 5GHz or 6GHz depending on its needs. For example, a laptop connecting might decide to use 6GHz for receiving and 5GHz for transmitting. This decision is based on things like latency, throughput, or connection stability.

When it comes to Wave MLO, Ubiquiti seems to be going back to using 802.11 based standards, but quite likely heavily modified for outdoor wireless use over long distances.

Wave MLO devices are available in three variations so far. These include the Wave MLO5 and Wave MLO6 access points, which support 5GHz and 6GHz respectively. There is also a station CPE device which looks to resemble the Wave Pro 60GHz, but this isn't on sale yet and no specifications are known. Although unannounced, it is very likely that Ubiquti will expand out its line of CPE devices in time.

As of writing, only the Wave MLO5 AP is on sale, retailing for $499 in the US. This has the exact same form factor as the existing LTU Rocket, meaning existing antennas such as the UISP Horn and UISP Dish will work without any issues as well as the legacy airMAX dishes and sectors.

Specs

The specifications on paper for the Wave MLO5 are quite impressive. As mentioned, the form factor is the same as the LTU Rocket, so thankfully existing antennas will work. Ubiquiti is suggesting 100km+ of range and up to 5Gbps+ of throughput. However, as of writing MLO operation is limited to 20km, with future firmware updates increasing this in the future.

The Wave MLO5 also has two network connections, with a single 10GbE RJ45 port with PoE and one 10G SFP+ port. The PoE too is also quite flexible, accepting both 54V and 24V PoE, meaning existing setups and powering from the UISP Switch devices is possible.

Currently, this platform looks to be only supporting PtP connections, with the understanding that PtMP support should be opened up in the future. Although this is yet to be confirmed.

The channel width and modulation support is quite impressive on paper. The Wave MLO5 has two radios, which are needed to support the MLO feature. Radio 1 supports up to 160MHz channel widths and radio 2 goes up to a huge 240MHz. In terms of modulation, it goes up to 4096QAM.

To put this in perspective, the LTU Rocket currently supports up to 100MHz channel widths, as does the airFiber 5XHD.

Like all other Rocket based products from Ubiquiti, the Wave MLO also has a GPS connector on the top. It isn't clear at this stage whether this platform will support GPS Sync for time based frames, meaning frequency reuse is possible on one tower.

What is also important to remember, is when using 6GHz outdoors in the United States, there is a requirement in place to have GPS enabled and working on the antenna. This is the case for 6GHz used with WiFi 7 in Ubiquiti's UniFi APs for example.

Future

Many people don't realise this, but Ubiquiti has had a long and varied history when it comes to manufacturing outdoor wireless equipment. In fact, it is what got the company started in the first place. It has had airMAX, airMAX M, airMAX AC, LTU and now Wave MLO for all of its PtMP based devices. It is interesting to see a company so focused on UniFi, still divert some attention on to the WISP and ISP market.

Hopefully we see some CPE devices in 2025 and the Wave MLO6.

HostiFi

HostiFi provides hosting for both Ubiquiti and TP-Link software-defined-networking (SDN) applications, with servers for UniFi, UISP and Omada. We also offer network consulting, with HostiFi Pro.