--- title: More network for you dollar date: 2026-08-10T00:53:00+10:00 author: Pradhyum Ramkumar canonical_url: "https://celona.io/resources/more-network-for-you-dollar" section: Resources --- # More network for your dollar How Celona Orion gives you a better network for the same or lower price than the leading enterprise Wi-Fi vendor. ![Mehmet Yavuz](https://celona.io/volumes/images/Content/Company/About-Us/Team/_200x200_crop_center-center_none/41973/img_team_mehmet_yavuz_v5.webp) By **Mehmet Yavuz** · Co-founder and CTO · August 10, 2026 / Summary Robotics and physical AI are driving a modernization of the wireless edge. That is especially true for industrial and semi-industrial sites like distribution centers and factory floors, where tough RF conditions force extremely dense Wi-Fi networks, and the cost of pulling cable kills the business case before the network is even switched on. For years that was tolerated as a nuisance: a dead spot occasionally kept someone from connecting. But when you move to automated operations with robots, AMRs and computer vision, reliable wireless stops being negotiable. This paper walks through our pricing philosophy and then uses one real-world site, a 500,000 sq ft warehouse, to compare the three-year total cost of ownership of Celona Orion against the leading enterprise Wi-Fi vendor. The short version comes down to four things: - Private 5G is the natural fit for mission-critical mobility, but a full cutover is not realistic. Some general-purpose devices, industrial printers and laptops among them, have no like-for-like cellular replacement. - That leaves the customer buying and running two networks. Cellular from traditional telco vendors typically runs 5–8× the cost of Wi-Fi for a comparable facility, and needs dedicated fiber, switches, routers and security systems of its own. - Celona Orion removes the second bill. Wi-Fi is included in the private 5G subscription: one 5G AP plus four 2x2 or three 4x4 Wi-Fi 7 APs, hardware, software and support, for one price. - On a 500,000 sq ft warehouse, three-year cost lands at roughly half of Cisco traditional Wi-Fi and under a third of Cisco URWB, and the gap holds even when the Wi-Fi AP counts are matched. / Why choose between Wi-Fi, or private 5G? ## **The false choice** Over the last few years private 5G has emerged as the leading way to deliver mission-critical connectivity for these environments and workloads. Given cellular's advantage in range and mobility, it is the natural candidate for the new class of automated workloads. That does not mean Wi-Fi goes away. A complete transition of a facility from Wi-Fi to private 5G would require moving every device to a 5G-capable version. That is unnecessarily costly, and in some cases there is simply no cellular equivalent for a general-purpose enterprise device. So the customer ends up buying and operating two networks. Worse, cellular from traditional telco vendors is not only expensive, often 5–8× the cost of Wi-Fi for a similar facility, but also demands completely new infrastructure: dedicated fiber, dedicated switches, routers and new security systems. No wonder private cellular has stayed a niche option. ## **Celona Orion** When Celona first emerged, we tackled that problem with an enterprise-grade private 5G solution that works with existing enterprise network and security infrastructure, at a price point comparable to Wi-Fi. It is one of the main reasons the platform has been adopted by over 220 enterprise customers, more than 45 of them F500 or G2K, across manufacturing, logistics, retail, transportation, energy and healthcare. With Celona Orion we take the next step and tackle the cost of running two networks. The way we do it is simple: we include Wi-Fi in the existing private 5G subscription. No extra cost. A single per-5G-radio subscription gives you one 5G access point plus three or four Wi-Fi access points: - **Option 1** — one 5G AP plus four 2x2 Wi-Fi 7 APs. - **Option 2** — one 5G AP plus three 4x4 Wi-Fi 7 APs. You scale as you need: run mission-critical workloads like robotics on private 5G while continuing to use Wi-Fi for existing Wi-Fi-only devices and for future applications best suited to Wi-Fi. #### **"Wi-Fi included" versus "add-on"** Throughout this paper, and in the accompanying pricing estimator, "included" Wi-Fi refers to the Wi-Fi 7 access points bundled inside each private 5G subscription: four 2x2 APs or three 4x4 APs per 5G AP, with hardware, software and support all covered by the one subscription. If a site needs more Wi-Fi APs than the bundles provide, the remainder are "add-on" Wi-Fi APs: standalone Celona Wi-Fi 7 SKUs, 2x2 or 4x4, that are also all-inclusive and purchased per AP. In every scenario below the Celona price is bundles plus any add-ons. There is never a separate software or support line item. / Assumptions We use list prices for an apples-to-apples comparison. Many of you hold special discounts with the traditional vendors, and we are glad to engage on your specific situation. We use Cisco as the representative vendor given its market-share-leading position; there may be subtle differences with other vendors, but we expect the trend to hold. Celona pricing includes every component of a complete end-to-end solution: hardware, software and product support. Offer Hardware, 2X2 Hardware, 4X4 Software and Support What the price covers Cisco traditional Wi-Fi $1,677 $3,246 $600 Hardware, software and support billed separately Cisco URWB $2,715 $4,213 $857 Hardware, software and support billed separately Celona Orion $795 add-on AP $1,095 add-on AP Included $13,000 per 5G subscription bundle, all-inclusive: one 5G AP plus four 2x2 or three 4x4 Wi-Fi 7 APs / Modelling ## **How the AP counts in this paper are modeled** / 01### **Calibrated propagation model** Coverage uses an ITU-style indoor path-loss model with venue-specific coefficients, calibrated in two stages: first against professional predictive RF design scenarios spanning 5 GHz, 6 GHz and CBRS, then against many production deployments, including indoor sites across big-box retail, distribution, manufacturing and healthcare. A grid-edge correction accounts for partially wasted perimeter cells, which matters most on smaller sites. / 02### Design Targets Mission-critical robotics Wi-Fi designs target −62 dBm RSSI at the cell edge; standard Wi-Fi designs target −67 dBm. Cisco URWB designs target −60 dBm RSSI at the cell edge, which also aligns with the line-of-sight requirement Cisco recommends. Private 5G designs target −97 dBm RSRP, which aligns well with a high-availability RF design: even if one 5G AP fails, other 5G APs at the site cover that area. / 03### **2x2 versus 4x4 access points** The 2x2 or 4x4 choice is about capacity, spatial streams and MU-MIMO headroom, not coverage. Both classes are modeled with the same cell sizes, so the AP count does not change. What changes is price. It selects the hardware tier for the Wi-Fi vendors and, on the Celona side, which bundle applies: four 2x2 APs, or three 4x4 APs, per 5G subscription. High-density client environments with heavy wireless traffic generally justify 4x4; many industrial deployments are well served by 2x2. / 04### Venue types RF behaves very differently by venue, so the model uses a calibrated propagation profile per venue type. Manufacturing floors, large open halls with long sightlines, propagate best and need the fewest APs per square foot: roughly 7,500–8,500 sq ft per Wi-Fi AP in a mission-critical design. Warehouses and distribution centers, with dense racking, land in the middle at roughly 4,000–4,500 sq ft per Wi-Fi AP. Big-box retail, with merchandising and shelving, is denser still at roughly 2,500–3,000 sq ft. Hospitals are the extreme case: dense interior walls drive the highest attenuation and densities near 1,000 sq ft per AP, consistent with healthcare design norms of roughly 1,000–2,000 sq ft per AP. The same venue profiles drive the private 5G counts, which is why the Wi-Fi-to-5G AP ratio varies by environment: roughly 7–10× in warehouses and big-box retail, and closer to 7× in hospitals, where Wi-Fi and 5G suffer the wall losses together. / Real world example ## **A 500,000 sq ft warehouse, three ways** We use a warehouse and distribution center of 500,000 sq ft to show how Celona Orion pricing compares with Cisco pricing in the pricing estimator. The calculation is run for both brownfield and greenfield deployments, with multiple options. ### **Brownfield option 1: general-purpose 5 GHz Wi-Fi today, add robotics** INDOOR · WAREHOUSE / DISTRIBUTION CENTER · 500,000 SQ FT · 4x4 WI-FI · 6 GHZ AT 80 MHZ · BROWNFIELD, 67 EXISTING APS This case assumes the customer is running general-purpose best-effort Wi-Fi, modeled at −67 dBm, and wants to add robotics, AGVs or other mission-critical applications. The comparison shows what that upgrade really costs each way. Here is how the calculator inputs look: ![Preview](https://celona.io/volumes/images/Resources/_1556x572_fit_center-center_70_none_ffffff/preview.webp) The tool estimates **67** existing Wi-Fi APs from the path-loss model and the −67 dBm criterion for this use case. Every parameter above is configurable, so you can tailor it to your own site. For this configuration, here are the APs each offer requires: ![Brownfield option 1 offer](https://celona.io/volumes/images/Resources/_1556x358_fit_center-center_70_none_ffffff/brownfield-option-1-offer.webp) #### Cisco traditional Wi-Fi, when adding robotics The main challenge mobile robotics introduces into a Wi-Fi network is holding a consistent connection while moving between access points. Designers answer that by making cells denser, so the device is always close enough to an AP for a good connection. Often that is still not enough: you also have to tune handover behavior on each device, which is more art than science. We are restricting this article to price points, not the effectiveness of the technologies, so we follow industry design guidelines for density and use them for the pricing. With the inputs above, the calculator recommends **141** Wi-Fi 7 access points across the 2.4, 5 and 6 GHz bands, and cabling for **74** new AP locations (141 total minus 67 existing). #### Cisco design with URWB To work around the mobility problem, Cisco offers a proprietary solution called CURWB, Cisco Ultra-Reliable Wireless Backhaul. To keep this article's scope on pricing we will hold our opinion on proprietary technology in these scenarios; spoiler alert, we believe in standards-based solutions. Per the published design guidance, additional APs are required to maintain line of sight to each robot. Our models, at a −60 dBm RSSI design target, end up requiring **183** APs, and cabling for **116**new AP locations. #### Celona Orion The Celona approach is to satisfy the robotics requirement on the private 5G network and still provide full Wi-Fi 7 coverage for everything else. Private 5G coverage for the robotics application on this facility takes **15** 5G access points. With robotics moved to 5G, the Wi-Fi layer no longer needs mission-critical densification: a standard-coverage design predicts roughly **78** Wi-Fi 7 APs at 6 GHz, against the 67 Wi-Fi 5/6 APs assumed at 5 GHz today. That means: - 15 Celona private 5G APs, whose bundles include 45 Celona Wi-Fi 7 4x4 APs. - 33 add-on Celona Wi-Fi 7 APs. - Cabling for 11 new Wi-Fi AP locations, plus the 15 new 5G AP locations. The calculator assumes existing APs are already connected to PoE switches, so the Wi-Fi 7 upgrade reuses cabling wherever it can. ![Brownfield 1 3yr tco offer](https://celona.io/volumes/images/Resources/_1316x913_fit_center-center_70_none_ffffff/brownfield-1-3yr-tco-offer.webp) Cisco traditional Wi-Fi, at $704K, runs more than twice the Celona offer at $320K. Cisco URWB, at $1,152K, runs more than three times it. Here is the breakdown: ![Brownfield 1 3yr tco by cost](https://celona.io/volumes/images/Resources/_1556x520_fit_center-center_70_none_ffffff/brownfield-1-3yr-tco-by-cost.webp) The reason the converged network avoids the large Wi-Fi densification is that it uses the right technology for the right use case: 5G carries the robotics workload, and Wi-Fi carries every other device. Installation is modeled at $1,500 per new AP location and $750 per existing location; the pricing estimator lets you change any of those numbers. You might think the gap is mostly down to the higher Wi-Fi AP count on the Cisco side. It is not. The gap holds even when the Wi-Fi AP counts are matched, which is the next case. ### **Brownfield option 3: dense 5 GHz Wi-Fi for critical apps today, upgrade to 6 GHz** INDOOR · WAREHOUSE / DISTRIBUTION CENTER · 500,000 SQ FT · 4x4 WI-FI · 6 GHZ AT 80 MHZ · BROWNFIELD, 121 EXISTING APS Here the customer already runs a dense 5 GHz network optimized for mission-critical robotics, modeled at −62 dBm, and wants to upgrade to Wi-Fi 7 at 6 GHz while continuing the robotics application. ![Brownfield option 3 deployment](https://celona.io/volumes/images/Resources/_1556x572_fit_center-center_70_none_ffffff/Brownfield-option-3-deployment.webp) The model predicts **121** Wi-Fi 5/6 APs at 5 GHz today; moving to 6 GHz operation adds about 15% for **141** Wi-Fi 7 APs. URWB still needs **183** APs because of the −60 dBm RSSI requirement. ![Brownfield option 3 offers](https://celona.io/volumes/images/Resources/_1556x322_fit_center-center_70_none_ffffff/brownfield-option-3-offers.webp) Both the Cisco traditional offer and the Celona offer deliver the same 141 Wi-Fi 7 APs here, so the only interesting question is cost. Cisco traditional still runs 1.5× the Celona offer, and URWB 2.5×. ![3 year TCO](https://celona.io/volumes/images/Resources/_1316x910_fit_center-center_70_none_ffffff/3-year-TCO.webp) ![3year tco by cost](https://celona.io/volumes/images/Resources/_1556x506_fit_center-center_70_none_ffffff/3year-tco-by-cost.webp) ### **Greenfield: deploy wireless for robotics from scratch** INDOOR · WAREHOUSE / DISTRIBUTION CENTER · 500,000 SQ FT · 4x4 WI-FI · 6 GHZ AT 80 MHZ · GREENFIELD The greenfield case is a simple variant of the first one. The comparison logic is the same, but no existing cabling can be reused by either option. Celona's Wi-Fi layer can again be sized to a standard-coverage design, **78** APs at 6 GHz, because robotics runs on private 5G from day one. The Cisco options must still be designed to mission-critical density: **141** APs, or **183** for URWB. Cisco options still cost more than twice as much. ![Greenfield 3 year tco](https://celona.io/volumes/images/Resources/_1316x908_fit_center-center_70_none_ffffff/greenfield-3-year-tco.webp) ![Greenfield 3year tco by cost](https://celona.io/volumes/images/Resources/_1556x522_fit_center-center_70_none_ffffff/greenfield-3year-tco-by-cost.webp) /Conclusion ## **The right technical decision and the right economic decision** There are many technical advantages to a converged network, and we would never recommend a solution to a customer merely because it is cheaper. The point of this article is that the economics agree with the architecture. We believe Celona Orion represents disruptive innovation: a better network that costs you less. Across every scenario we modeled on the same 500,000 sq ft site, the converged network came in well under a Wi-Fi-only design, while also delivering private 5G for the workloads that need it: - Brownfield, adding robotics to general-purpose Wi-Fi — $320K against $704K for Cisco traditional and $1,152K for URWB. - Brownfield, matched at 141 Wi-Fi 7 APs — $443K against $663K and $1,112K. - Greenfield — $371K against $754K and $1,202K. Your situation will have variances: a different vendor, different requirements, other variables. So, in the spirit of full transparency, we are opening the pricing model. The wireless pricing estimator lets you enter your own venue type, site area, 6 GHz bandwidth, use case, greenfield or brownfield, and even your own per-AP prices, and make the comparison yourself. / Related resources ## Go deeper More resources on private wireless for the enterprise. [Product Documentation NEW ### Solution Brief: AerLoc One identity, one security model across every radio, security built into the converged wireless fabric. Aug 2026 ](https://celona.io/resources/solution-brief-aerloc) [Product Documentation NEW ### Solution Brief: Robotics OEM Give any robot or edge AI device intelligent, multi-network wireless - without building a wireless team. Manufacturing · Aug 2026 ](https://celona.io/resources/solution-brief-robotics-oem) [Product Documentation NEW ### Solution Brief: Orchestrator AI Unify private 5G, Wi-Fi, public cellular and satellite into one agentic operations fabric - where engineers and AI agents work side by side. Aug 2026 ](https://celona.io/resources/solution-brief-orchestrator-ai) [Access all Resources ](https://celona.io/resources)