At present, many manufacturers have launched products such as routers and network cards that support 802.11ax, and the popularity of Wi-Fi 6 can be said to be quite fast. However, the newer Wi-Fi 6E has slowed down in popularity, which is mainly limited by two factors. One is that there is a serious shortage of related components in supply, and the laws and regulations of many countries and regions have strict restrictions on the use of the 6 GHz frequency band.
According to a report by
Tam Dell’Oro, many business customers may skip Wi-Fi 6E and choose to directly purchase products using
Wi-Fi 7 by 2023. Analysts at Tam Dell’Oro believe that although many manufacturers have launched Wi-Fi 6E-enabled devices in 2021, the supply side is very limited, even only on paper, and no actual products can be bought.
Wi-Fi 6E adds the 6 GHz frequency band to Wi-Fi 6 to increase the data transmission bandwidth but requires more components, such as adding RF front-end modules, and the support of related chips, including power management chips. These additional components are quite important, and supply shortages have directly slowed the adoption of Wi-Fi 6E devices. Therefore, many commercial customers directly request Wi-Fi 6 equipment instead of Wi-Fi 6E in order not to affect product shipments. In addition, restrictions on the use of the 6 GHz frequency band in many regions are also one of the reasons that affect the deployment of related equipment. If the specified procedures are not followed, the use of the equipment will be limited, and manufacturers may eventually choose to bypass Wi-Fi 6E.
Wi-Fi 7 is also known as the IEEE 802.11be EHT (Extremely High Throughput) standard. On the basis of WiFi 6E, technologies such as 320MHz bandwidth, 4096-QAM modulation, Multi-RU, multi-link operation, enhanced MU-MIMO, and multi-AP cooperation are introduced, compared with WiFi 6E, it will have a higher data transmission rate and lower latency. While the final Wi-Fi 7 standard may not be fully established until early 2024, Tam Dell’Oro expects the first Wi-Fi 7-enabled products to appear in 2023.
