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WiFi 7: Next leap in wireless technology evolution

The next-generation wireless networking standard will bring substantial improvements when it comes to large-scale networks and high-demand applications.
Paul Stuttard
By Paul Stuttard, Director, Duxbury Networking.
Johannesburg, 06 Nov 2024
Paul Stuttard, director, Duxbury Networking.
Paul Stuttard, director, Duxbury Networking.

WiFi 7 (also known as IEEE 802.11be) is the next-generation wireless networking standard designed to offer faster speeds, lower latency and greater efficiency compared to its predecessor, WiFi 6.

For example, WiFi 7 is promising download speeds of up to 46Gbps, which are around five times faster than WiFi 6. This is thanks to wider channels (up to 320MHz), and higher modulation (4096-QAM), both geared to increase data throughput.

Although these speeds and specifications are theoretical and real-world conditions may vary, WiFi 7 will bring substantial improvements when it comes to large-scale networks and high-demand applications, such as 4K/8K video streaming, online gaming, virtual reality and augmented reality.

WiFi 7 is expected to deliver benefits across various industries, leading to increased productivity, reduced operational costs, new business opportunities and enhanced consumer experiences.

WiFi 7 is expected to open up new markets and opportunities for investment.

It will represent a new horizon for IT professionals to explore in their quest to help organisations innovate more efficiently, create new business models and build profitable revenue streams. WiFi 7 is expected to open up new markets and opportunities for investment.

Key features of WiFi 7 include its ability to aggregate three radio frequency bands at the same time, allowing devices to use multiple frequency bands simultaneously, enhancing speed and increasing throughput through reduced congestion.

In addition, multi-link operation and enhanced channel access mechanisms permit WiFi 7 to substantially reduce latency, making it ideal for real-time applications such as gaming and video conferencing.

Significantly, WiFi 7 includes target wake time, an efficiency feature that allows devices to schedule when they wake up and communicate, saving power, particularly for internet of things (IOT) devices.

Per previous WiFi standards, WiFi 7 is backward-compatible with older devices, ensuring smooth transitions in network environments.

The first devices that operate on WiFi 7 standards are currently arriving in South Africa. For example, the majority of the latest cellphones are already enabled for WiFi 6e, which is able to operate in the extra band that will enable WiFi 7.

WiFi 7 is expected to benefit every sector in SA, especially those specialising in IOT devices, such as the hospitality industry, technology service providers and the industrial sector, which heavily relies on IOT monitoring tools.

According to acclaimed South African nuclear scientist Nomso Kana, who is founder and CEO of a major broadband infrastructure provider, the WiFi 7 standard is expected to help South African businesses “leap into wireless connectivity and thrust the country into a new IOT era”. She was speaking to ITWeb TV about SA’s connectivity landscape.

Kana is also a member of the Presidential Commission for the Fourth Industrial Revolution and holds leadership roles on various ICT company boards.

For Kana’s vision to materialise, local technology providers will have to keep abreast of global developments and bring forward-looking WiFi 7 solutions to market. These include mission-critical and industrial applications, as well as consumer-facing applications such as 4K and 8K video.

This will bring SA into line with the World Economic Forum’s prediction that globally, there will be around 50 billion connected devices by 2025.

Notably, the emergence of ultra-fast WiFi presents an opportunity to offload traffic from SA’s overburdened cellular networks. This is the view of Paul Colmer, executive committee member of the Wireless Access Providers Association.

He says by leveraging WiFi 7 to handle a portion of the traffic, cellular networks can focus on delivering critical services and maintaining connectivity in areas with limited WiFi coverage.

For South Africans, one of the challenges limiting the widespread adoption of WiFi 7 lies in spectrum allocation. While some countries have already opened the entire 6GHz band, SA is still in the process of doing so.

This tardiness, says Vox’s Craig Blignaut, could be seen as “a blessing in disguise”. He notes that SA has often lagged a year or two behind in the adoption of new WiFi standards. Now, with the delay in the finalisation of the WiFi 7 standard, SA will bypass the current top standard, which is WiFi 6e.

“Where WiFi 6e delivers up to 10Gbps of bandwidth, WiFi 7 brings a theoretical peak bandwidth of up to 30Gbps and latency of below five milliseconds,” he says.

“Such low latency enables applications such as real-time automation, where AI and ML [machine learning] can be used to run a factory or manufacturing operation without any data packet losses that can lead to errors.”

In this light, the availability of WiFi 7-compatible devices must be addressed. Manufacturers are encouraged to make more devices readily available to the SA market, while internet service providers and network operators should ideally invest in upgrading their infrastructures to support WiFi 7. This includes deploying new access points and routers.

Looking ahead, by 2030 the global market size for WiFi 7 is projected to reach $24.2 billion at a compound annual growth rate of 57.2%. And, according to the Dynamic Spectrum Alliance − an organisation promoting spectrum sharing − the potential economic benefits of WiFi 7 over the next 10-year period are estimated at $57 billion, making WiFi 7 a key driver of universal economic progress.

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