The Wi-Fi Alliance plans to finalize the Wi-Fi 7 standard by the end of the first quarter of 2024. It describes the technical side of the latest WiFi version and, above all, brings with it a significant speed boost.

The Wi-Fi Alliance wants to finalize the Wi-Fi 7 standard before the end of the first quarter of 2024. This standard is the successor to Wifi 6 and Wifi 6E and describes the technical protocols for wireless network communication. Wi-Fi is updated approximately every five years, keeping the technology current. Wifi 6 dates back to 2018, although the standard wasn’t really finalized until 2020.

More quickly

Wifi 7, or 802.11be to your friends, is based on Wifi 6 (and the Wifi 6E variant) and, like all other new standards, is backwards compatible. Above all, Wifi 7 brings a speed boost. The maximum theoretical throughput speed of WiFi 6E today is about 9.6 Gbit/s. With WiFi 7 it is almost 40 Gbit/s. The standard uses three frequency bands for this: 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz and the newer 6 GHz band, which has only been used for WLAN since the introduction of WiFi 6E in 2020.

WiFi 7 will also be able to use three ultra-wide channels. Where Wifi 6E couldn’t go beyond 160 MHz, Wifi 7 reaches 320 MHz. There are also some technical improvements such as 4K QAM, which increases the transmission speed.

Availability

Once the standard is finalized, manufacturers can finalize their designs for WiFi 7 routers. There’s a real chance that a WiFi 7 device will emerge in 2024, but in practice it will be a while before the standard is widely available. To use the speed boost, clients must also support WiFi 7. So expect it to take a few years for faster Wi-Fi to become ubiquitous.