Wi-Fi 7 Officially Launches with Faster Internet Speeds

Wi-Fi 7 elevates wireless experiences and will accelerate emerging use cases with its extreme data speeds and consistent low latency. For decades, Qualcomm Technologies has pioneered critical Wi-Fi inventions while contributing meaningfully to industry standards, and today our Wi-Fi 7 solutions push the boundaries of what Wi-Fi can do. 

Wi-Fi 7 was announced by the Wi-Fi Alliance earlier this week at CES 2024, bringing several improvements to the connectivity standard. In addition to faster speeds — Wi-Fi 7 will be up to four times faster than the previous version, Wi-Fi 6E — customers can look forward to new improvements like Multi-Link Operation, support for 320MHz channels for Wi-Fi networks, and 4K Quadrature Amplitude Modulation. We can expect to see more Wi-Fi 7 compatible routers and devices arrive over the course of 2024.

According to details shared by the Wi-Fi Alliance when it launched the latest IEEE standard on Monday, Wi-Fi 7 — or IEEE 802.11be — supports speeds of up to 40Gbps, which is four times faster than Wi-Fi 6E networks that offer a peak speed of 10Gbps. While Wi-Fi 7 is backwards compatible, it's worth noting that you will only be able to take advantage of the higher speeds if both your router and phone support Wi-Fi 7 connectivity.

Another major upgrade that is coming alongside Wi-Fi 7 is Multi-Link Operation (MLO). This feature is designed to cut down on latency while simultaneously boosting the stability of the Wi-Fi network, by allowing devices on the network to simultaneously transfer information and data over several frequency bands, according to the Wi-Fi Alliance.

Wi-Fi 7 also comes with support for wider channel bandwidth, which in turn boosts throughput on a network. You will be able to take advantage of a wider 320MHz bandwidth — up from 160MHz on Wi-Fi 6E networks. It also uses the new band, just like W-Fi 6E that was introduced in 2021, which will help to cut down on network congestion experienced on older Wi-Fi networks.

Meanwhile, Wi-Fi 7 features another notable upgrade — 4K Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM). On wireless networks, users will see up to 20 percent faster data transfer rates. Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-FI 6E networks offered support for 1024-QAM while decade-old Wi-Fi 5 standard arrived with 512-QAM.

While new Wi-Fi 7 capable routers were announced at CES 2024, it could be a while before new devices that are compatible with the new Wi-Fi standard arrive. Some devices — include those powered by the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 series chip and Intel's latest 14th Gen Core Ultra chips — already support Wi-Fi 7 networks.

Meanwhile, Apple is expected to bring support for Wi-Fi 7 networks with its upcoming devices expected to debut later this year — this include the iPhone 16 Pro models, that are expected to be equipped with the company's next-generation chip. Over 233 million Wi-Fi 7 devices are expected to enter the market this year, according to the Wi-Fi Alliance.

Experience Significant Performance Increase with Wi-Fi 7.

320MHz Channel Bandwidths

Wi-Fi 7 can deliver massive throughput gains thanks to a wider channel and capacity gains from 6GHz spectrum. Wi-Fi 7 can deliver peak rates of over 40 Gbps, a 4X increase over Wi-Fi 6E.

Multi-Link Operation (MLO)

Wi-Fi 7 introduces several multi-link options that can significantly increase throughput and reduce latency. The most powerful multi-link alternative is High-Band Simultaneous Multi-Link, which uses two Wi-Fi radios operating simultaneously in the high bands (5 or 6 GHz), creating one aggregated data pipe to deliver the optimal performance, even in congested areas.

Modulation Evolution to 4K QAM

Wi-Fi 7 is standardizing an advanced modulation scheme called 4K QAM, which can boost the peak rates to increase throughput, and capacity compared to Wi-Fi systems using 1K QAM modulation.

Flexible Channel Utilization

This technology advancement is based on preamble puncturing to avoid channels with interference, resulting in an ability to use wider channels also in the face of interference.

January 10, 2024