Something to look forward to: At a company event this week, MediaTek confirmed it would demo WiFi 7 at CES next January, becoming one of the first companies to dip its toes into the upcoming standard. WiFi 6 and WiFi 6E are still pretty new, and consumer adoption of WiFi 7 is a ways off.
PC Magazine notes the confirmation came from a slide during a presentation at the MediaTek Summit on Friday. The keynote mentions that WiFi 7 should increase speeds by a factor of 2.4, compared to WiFi 6E, which the IEEE introduced last year.
“We are going to participate in Wi-Fi 7 technology,” said Associate VP for Product Marketing James Chen. “We want to be the leaders.”
Chen said that the higher speed applies when using the same number of antennas as WiFi 6E. He also pointed out that WiFi 7 will be better at blocking interference from neighboring networks. Even though MediaTek intends to demo WiFi 7, also known as 802.11be, next year, a paper suggests the IEEE won’t finish standards for the technology until 2024. The report also says WiFi 7 could bring speeds of up to 40 gigabits per second.
.@MediaTek is bullish on #WiFi7 and will be showing demos at #CES2022 and says it will be one of the first adopters but isn’t claiming to be the first. #MediaTekSummit pic.twitter.com/VdOIUCLdJP
— Anshel Sag (@anshelsag) November 18, 2021
Qualcomm started talking about WiFI 7 back in 2019 before WiFi 6 was even available. According to CNET, the company’s vice president of technology, V.K. Jones, said WiFi 7 could reach speeds faster than wired. Jones also said WiFi 7 would be able to use more antennas than WiFi 6, and they won’t need to all be bunched up together at one access point. That could help give WiFi 7 a stronger signal across larger spaces. WiFi 7 may even be able to use the 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz bands simultaneously.
