We live in an era of rapid and constant changes within the world of technology. A good example of this has been the emergence of generative models based on artificial intelligence. Likewise, they are of no use to us if we do not have a good internet connection.
A few months away from its arrival, WiFi 7 comes with the promise of taking our Internet connection to the next level and replacing its predecessors, the WiFi 6 and WiFi 6E standards.
The WiFi Alliance has confirmed that the new WiFi 7 protocol will be available before the end of the first quarter of 2024. This technology, which was already introduced last year by Intel and Broadcom, can reach theoretical maximum speeds of up to 46 Gbps. This greatly surpasses the maximum offered by WiFi 6E currently, which is around 9.6 Gbps. However, in order to achieve these speeds, we will have to use the 6GHz band, which is not allowed in some countries due to regulations.
On the other hand, WiFi 7 is capable of switching between the 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz bands, without any interruptions. In addition, it also offers access to a wider bandwidth of up to 320 MHz and with a significantly reduced latency compared to WiFi 6 and 6E. In summary, this translates into improvements in how data is sent and received. The transmission speed is also higher, due to the transition from 1024 QAM to 4K QAM.
Intel plans to launch computers with WiFi 7 starting in 2024, which will be widely available in 2025. Qualcomm has also been actively preparing for the arrival of WiFi 7; the FastConnect 7800 modem or the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC are good examples of this.
