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Your wireless internet speeds may soon get turbocharged. The Wi-Fi Alliance has announced that the final Wi-Fi 7 standard will see an official launch in Q1 2024. You can expect an exponential increase in the number of Wi-Fi 7-supported devices as the year progresses.
Wi-Fi 7 will be official in early 2024
Wi-Fi 7 has been in development for the past few years. A draft version of the next-gen wireless standard has been available for some time too. The few Wi-Fi 7 devices that you can buy today use the draft version of the standard as opposed to the final standard. A firmware update should move them to the final version once it is available.
The Wi-Fi Alliance hasn’t specified a date but says, “Wi-Fi Certified 7, based on IEEE 802.11be technology, will be available before the end of Q1 2024.” The organization adds that the next-gen wireless standard will “facilitate worldwide interoperability and bring advanced Wi-Fi performance to the next era of connected devices.”
Theoretically, Wi-Fi 7 can achieve peak speeds of over 40Gbps. That’s more than four times the peak speed of Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E (9.6Gbps). However, the real-world speed will depend on a lot of factors, including the implementation of the support specs by device manufacturers, location, and more. Nonetheless, you can expect massive improvements over the current Wi-Fi standards.
As Wi-Fi Alliance pointed out, Wi-Fi 7 will not only improve the throughput speed but also improve reliability and reduce latency and power consumption. You will get a more stable connection and speed with higher efficiency even in crowded networks. All of this is enabled by the addition of up to 320MHz superwide channel bandwidth, 16 spatial streams, Multi-Link Operation (MLO), and 4096-QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation).
For a quick recap, Wi-Fi 6/6E is limited to 160MHz channel bandwidth, 8 spatial streams, a single access point, and 1048-QAM modulation. Wi-Fi 6 only supports 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands while Wi-Fi 6E supports the 6GHz band too. Wi-Fi 7 doesn’t add a fourth band. However, other upgrades mean it improves your wireless internet in pretty much every aspect.
Devices with Wi-Fi 7 are already here
Devices with Wi-Fi 7 have already started hitting the market, with the volume expected to grow next year. Samsung‘s Galaxy S24 Ultra may boast Wi-Fi 7 support. When connected to a compatible router, the device will deliver unprecedented wireless speeds. It may be a while before all of our household items move to Wi-Fi 7, though. Offices and commercial spaces may be the first to take full advantage of the next-gen wireless technology.
“Wi-Fi 7 brings cutting-edge capabilities to enable innovations that require high throughput, lower latency, and greater reliability across home, enterprise, and industrial environments, including key applications like augmented, virtual, and extended reality (AR/VR/XR), immersive 3D training, and ultra-high definition video streaming,” the Wi-Fi Alliance explains. Stay tuned for the launch of the final Wi-Fi 7 standard.
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