The Wi-Fi Alliance have released details of Wi-Fi 6 certification program, meaning manufacturers of Wi-Fi devices can start to implement the new standards.
Wi-Fi 6 is the first Wi-Fi standard to use the simpler naming scheme (although this is only on the consumer side, it’s still technically IEE802.11ax)
Previous versions of the Wi-Fi standards are going to be retro-renamed Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) and Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n) to help consumers identify which standard devices are manufactured to.
What will Wi-Fi 6 give me?
For the average home user, the main benefit will be speed. Wi-Fi 6 will boast speeds upto 9.6Gbps (the existing Wi-Fi 5 801.1ac is rated at a maximum of 3.5Gbps) Obviously it’s extremely unlikely that you’ll ever connect at those speeds, but we expect average connection speeds to be about 30% – 40% better than on a Wi-Fi 5 router. Remember that the average internet speed to homes in the UK is about 54.2Mbps
For busier locations such as businesses, public hotspots and so on, the benefits of Wi-Fi 6 will be much more dramatic. The main aim of Wi-Fi 6 is to increase connectivity and reliability between router and device, amd be more efficient about how it keeps you connected.
Technology designed for multiple device access such as MU-MIMO and OFDMA is included in the specification, meaning more devices can be connected and receive high bandwidth data simultaneously, and more data can be sent in a single burst. As the number of IoT (Internet Of Things) devices in our homes increase, these technologies will help keep your home Wi-Fi ‘clutter free’
Also, the new Wi-Fi 6 standard is designed to be battery efficient, meaning your mobile devices won’t heat up and drain the battery while you stream from a Wi-Fi 6 access point.
Techspot have a great article here listing the technological developments of Wi-Fi 6, including what is meant by MU-MIMO, OFDMA, QAM, OFDM and many more geeky terms!
What if my device is not Wi-Fi 6 compliant, do I need to upgrade?
Nope. As with all Wi-Fi certified devices, backwards compatibility is built in, so if you’re using a phone that’s Wi-Fi 5 compatible (nearly every recent phone will be) and you connect to a Wi-Fi 6 wireless point, the router will recognise your device’s level of compatibility and use Wi-Fi 5 instead. Likewise if your phone is one of the few Wi-Fi 6 compatible phones, it will identify the compatibility of the Wi-Fi access point and use the appropriate settings.
There are already Wi-Fi 6 compatible phones?
Yes, the Samsung Galaxy S10 was the first Wi-Fi 6 phone to hit the market, Apple’s iPhone 11 will also support the standard. To compliment those, routers from cisco, Netgear, Asus and TP-Link have also been released with Wi-Fi 6 compatibility.
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