Wi-Fi 7 is coming soon: you are not ready for such speeds

Published on 05/05/2022 at 15:50

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While Wi-Fi 6E has just made its appearance in our homes with the new Livebox 6 from Orange and Bbox fiber from Bouygues Telecom, the next generation, Wi-Fi 7, is already on the way. , since it is expected for 2023, the day after tomorrow. What will this change for us?

What to expect from the IEEE 802.11be standard, the future Wi-Fi 7?

With each new generation of Wi-Fi, since its creation in 1997, it’s the same catchphrase, “the revolution is underway”, “you’ve never seen this”, “the speeds of the new Wi-Fi are incredible ”. All this is true and these statements will still be valid when the 802.11be (Wi-Fi 7) protocol is released, scheduled for 2023, and which will follow the 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6 and 6E) that we currently use.

The calendar may surprise, as Wi-Fi 6, and even less Wi-Fi 6E, is weakly established in our daily lives. We had to wait almost 8 years between the official release of Wi-Fi 5 and that of Wi-Fi 6 and therefore less than 3 years to already see a successor to this unloved Wi-Fi which tries somehow to to exist.

After MediaTek, which gave demonstrations with great fanfare at the start of the year to customers and collaborators, it is Qualcomm, the other networking giant, which is slowly starting to tease the benefits of Wi-Fi 7.

Unsurprisingly, Wi-Fi 7 will use all the spectrums of current Wi-Fi, namely the 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz and finally the 6 GHz bands that have recently been used with Wi-Fi 6E. Theoretically, according to the specifications unveiled by the Wi-Fi Alliance, the body that manages Wi-Fi standards for the entire planet, Eventually, Wi-Fi 7 will be able to reach speeds of up to 46 Gbit/s. But at first, Qualcomm and MediaTek announce realistic and achievable speeds of the order of 30 to 33 Gbit/s. “The revolution is on”.

When will we see Wi-Fi 7 in our smartphones and homes?

While we had to wait almost 8 years between the release of the very popular Wi-Fi 5 and that of Wi-Fi 6, we realize on a daily basis that most of our devices are still confined to Wi-Fi 5, if it’s not downright Wi-Fi 1 or 2 for certain home automation devices such as light bulbs or connected sockets.

So why accelerate the release of Wi-Fi 7 so much? As always, we hear about major technological advances that will allow revolutionize medicine, telecommuting, virtual reality, cloud gaming, automotive, 8K streaming and finally, the famous Metaverseso dear to Mark Zuckerberg and the big players in Tech.

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In addition to speeds 2.5 to 5 times higher than current Wi-Fi 6, the strength of Wi-Fi 7 will be to offer twice the bandwidth of what we know today, passing over channels of 160 MHz to 320 MHz while being able to handle up to 4 bands of 80 MHz each.

In short, all this is a bit technical, but what you should remember is that Wi-Fi 7 should arrive very quickly, large-scale tests are increasing and Mediatek, like Qualcomm, announces the availability of chips for in 2023 and the marketing of equipment at the end of 2023 at the start of 2024.

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