IEEE 802.11ac-2013

[16] Subsequently in 2016, Wi-Fi Alliance introduced the Wave 2 certification, which includes additional features like MU-MIMO (downlink only), 160 MHz channel width support, support for more 5 GHz channels, and four spatial streams (with four antennas; compared to three in Wave 1 and 802.11n, and eight in IEEE's 802.11ax specification).

[18] New technologies introduced with 802.11ac include the following:[13][19] The single-link and multi-station enhancements supported by 802.11ac enable several new WLAN usage scenarios, such as simultaneous streaming of HD video to multiple clients throughout the home, rapid synchronization and backup of large data files, wireless display, large campus/auditorium deployments, and manufacturing floor automation.

[21] With storage locally attached through USB 2.0, filling the bandwidth made available by 802.11ac was not easily accomplished.

160 MHz channels are unavailable in some countries due to regulatory issues that allocated some frequencies for other purposes.

[29] Redpine Signals released the first low power 802.11ac technology for smartphone application processors on December 14, 2011.

[35] In April 2014, Hewlett-Packard started selling the HP 560 access point in the controller-based WLAN enterprise market segment.