From Tom's Hardware: The Wi-Fi Alliance has announced that the Wi-Fi 7 specification will be finalized by the end of the first quarter, opening the doors to adopting standardized hardware by businesses and enterprises.
"Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 7, based on IEEE 802.11be technology, will be available before the end of Q1 2024," the Wi-Fi Alliance states. "Wi-Fi 7 devices are entering the market today, and Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 7 will facilitate worldwide interoperability and bring advanced Wi-Fi performance to the next era of connected devices."
Wi-Fi 7 is shaping up to be a big deal in wireless connections, offering speeds up to 40 Gbit/s. This could make it a strong alternative to traditional wired Ethernet for most people. It achieves these speeds using three frequency bands: 2.40 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz, using a channel width of 320 MHz and 4096-QAM. Furthermore, Wi-Fi 7 builds on what Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E started, including features like MU-MIMO and OFDMA to speed up connections. All told, this delivers up to a 4.8X improvement over Wi-Fi 6.
While numerous Wi-Fi 7-badged adapters for PCs and routers are on the market today, they follow the so-called 'draft' Wi-Fi 7 specification. This does not make them any worse on the consumer level, and most existing 'draft' devices will support the full standard after a firmware update. But for enterprises residing in fully crowded office buildings, fully ratified devices are a must because they must work over very specific frequencies.
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