Cisco Aironet 1700 Deployment Manual page 49

Faster PHY rate 1.3 Gbps over the typical 450 Mbps of 802.11n.
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Introduction of faster modulation 256 QAM over the 64 QAM of 802.11n – This creates many new data rates similar to
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802.11n but in many cases faster rates with single stream and multiple stream devices.
Ability to bond 80 MHz channels versus 40 MHz bonding of 802.11n – This can greatly enhance the throughput of devices
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that only support 1 spatial stream by extending the usable bandwidth of the device (often portable battery operated devices
lacking multiple radios) spatial streams.
Explicit Compressed Beam Forming – This is similar to what was proposed in 802.11n and is a method whereas the client
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can take advantage of sounding mechanisms to essentially tell the Access Point how to better beam form the signal back
to the client. This functionality only works with 802.11ac clients and is supported with the Cisco Wave-1 module but this
does not negate the value of Cisco ClientLink which is still used by the primary 802.11n radios as ClientLink benefits all
802.11a,g, and n clients.
With regard to Cisco products, the 802.11ac module in the AP 3600 is a 5 GHz only module because 802.11ac does not
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scale well in 2.4 GHz due to the limited channels and bandwidth limitations (it is not practical to bond channels in 2.4
GHz) in an enterprise deployment and non-standard "turbo modes" don't scale.
Understanding 802.11ac (wave-1) Elements:
Figure 65 1 Spatial Stream MCS Rates for 801.11n (left) and 1 Spatial Stream MCS Rates for 802.11ac
Cisco Aironet Series 1700/2700/3700 Access Point Deployment Guide
Cisco Aironet Series 3700 Access Point