Wi-Fi 6E, are you okay?

2022.02.23

Recently, IT analyst firm Dell'Oro Group released its latest report shows that the development of Wi-Fi 6E is not optimistic, mainly due to two factors, one is the supply of related components in a more serious shortage, in addition, many countries and regions of the laws and regulations on the use of 6 GHz band has more stringent restrictions. The report shows that many commercial customers may skip Wi-Fi 6E and choose to directly purchase products using Wi-Fi 7 by 2023. Analysts believe that although many vendors are launching Wi-Fi 6E-enabled devices in 2021, there is very limited supply, or even just a paper release, to buy actual products. As a result, the lifespan of WiFi 6E is likely to be very limited. Wi-Fi 6E adds the 6 GHz band to Wi-Fi 6 to increase data transmission bandwidth, although more components are needed, such as additional RF front-end modules, and related chip support, including power management chips. These additional components are quite important and the supply shortage has directly slowed down the popularity of Wi-Fi 6E devices. Many commercial customers are directly requesting Wi-Fi 6 devices instead of Wi-Fi 6E in order not to affect product shipments. Wi-Fi 6E's 6 GHz band enables higher concurrency, lower latency and higher bandwidth, operating from 5925 MHz to 7125 MHz. With this available 1200 MHz spectrum, Wi-Fi 6E devices will be able to operate on seven additional 160 MHz channels, 14 additional 80 MHz channels, 29 additional 40 MHz channels or 59 additional 20 MHz channels. The Wi-Fi 6E devices will be able to operate on 7 additional 160 MHz channels, 14 additional 80 MHz channels, 29 additional 40 MHz channels or 59 additional 20 MHz channels. However, there are restrictions on the use of the 6 GHz band in many regions and the standards for the 6 GHz band have not been standardized, which is one of the reasons why the deployment of the devices in question will be limited if they do not comply with the prescribed process, and vendors may eventually choose to bypass Wi-Fi 6E. WiFi 7 , the future is here Wi-Fi 7, also known as IEEE 802.11be EHT (Extremely High Throughput) standard, introduces 320MHz bandwidth, 4096-QAM modulation, Multi-RU, multi-link operation, enhanced MU-MIMO, multi-AP collaboration and other technologies on top of WiFi 6E, compared to WiFi 6E will have higher data transfer rates and lower latency. While the final Wi-Fi 7 standard may not be fully established until early 2024, it is expected that the first Wi-Fi 7-enabled products will be available in 2023. "Wi-Fi 7 will be a major upgrade," and if supply constraints ease as expected and Wi-Fi 7 is available in 2023, "who cares about Wi-Fi 6E?"