Wi-Fi 7 will be the next major version of the wireless standard. And it will be an important norm because it is expected to be a true replacement for Ethernet cabling for broadband applications (Metaverse, Mixed Reality, streaming games, cloud computing…) thanks to increased transfer rates, lower latency, better management of connected devices and spectrum expansion with a greater number of channels.

Groups responsible for the standard such as Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and the Wi-Fi Alliance are working to publish the final specifications of the standard, which will go by the technical name IEEE 802.11be. However, there are already several manufacturers that have moved forward with product launches, TP-Link, Nettgear, Qualcomm, MediaTek and others such as ASUS with new motherboards introduced at Gamescom 2023.

Wi-Fi 7 in Windows?

Windows is installed on 8 out of 10 desktop computers, which is why its support for new standards is so current. Good news is not forthcoming. A user discovered an Intel document that mentions compatibility with Windows 11 and later like Windows 12, but not with the version that has market share. Windows 10.

You already know that Microsoft wants us to migrate to Windows 11 and is using any measure to increase the number of users. Many of us are better off with Windows 10, and that’s where we keep our computers. But we will see if the lack of support for important standards will not force us to change “forcibly” through a measure that would be commercial and not technical, because Windows 10 would be able to operate Wi-Fi 7 perfectly.

Considering that Wi-Fi 7 devices are already on the market and mainstream adoption is expected in 2024 (Intel has already announced deployment next year in PCs), it would be almost two years without support for Windows 10 before its end of life in October 2025.

In case you don’t know, we’ll leave you with a summary of the features we expect from Wi-Fi 7:

• Theoretical data transfer speed up to 46 Gbps. A monumental increase compared to Wi-Fi 6’s 9.6 Gbps.
• Bandwidth 320 MHz (320/160+160 MHz and 240/160+80 MHz) Wi-Fi 6 doubling.
• More efficient use of contiguous and non-contiguous spectrum.
• Aggregation and multi-band/multi-channel operation.
• Quadrature amplitude modulation QAM up to 4094 compared to the previous 1024.
• Doubling the number of spatial streams from 8 to 16 and improving the MIMO function.
• Improved resource allocation in OFDMA.
• Multi-User Resource Unit (MRU) increase the possibility of connecting more devices at a higher speed and with fewer interruptions.
• Improvements to Multi-Link Operation (MLO) technology, which aggregates multiple channels in different frequency bands simultaneously to improve network traffic. Essential for streaming the game.
• Coordination of multiple access points (AP) in coordinated and joint transmission.
• Improved line adaptation and retransmission protocol, especially in hybrid automatic repeat requests (HARQ).