Many of this year’s new phones, laptops, TVs, routers, and more will come with support for Wi-Fi 6E,
Wi-Fi 6 and previous generations of Wi-Fi use the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz radio bands. A “Wi-Fi 6E” device is one that is capable of also operating on the 6 GHz band,
This new upgrade to Wi-Fi is like expanding your wireless connection from a two-lane road to an eight-lane highway. It’s the biggest upgrade to Wi-Fi in 20 years, and connections should be faster and a lot more reliable because of it.
The Wi-Fi Alliance, is starting to certify the first wave of products with support for Wi-Fi 6E. Phones, PCs, and laptops with support should reach the market in the first months of 2021, according to the IDC research group, and TVs and VR devices with support are expected to arrive by the middle of the year. Intel announced that it will have WI-Fi 6E chips available in January 2021, The new Snapdragon 888 processor chip includes support for Wi-Fi 6E so it should be present in many of this year’s top Android phones. It’ll be some time before most new devices are shipping with Wi-Fi 6E, even by the start of 2022, IDC only expects 20 percent of shipping Wi-Fi 6 products to also support Wi-Fi 6E.
Wi-Fi 6E devices will be backward compatible with Wi-Fi 6 and previous Wi-Fi standards. But, to take advantage of those new 6 GHz channels in Wi-Fi 6E, you’ll need to be using devices that support it. In other words, you’ll be using Wi-Fi 6E once you pair a Wi-Fi 6E-enabled client device (like a laptop or smartphone) and a WI-Fi 6E-enabled access point. With Wi-Fi 6 devices and a Wi-Fi 6E-enabled router, none of your devices will communicate over Wi-FI 6E. They’ll all be using Wi-Fi 6 on the typical 5 GHz or 2.4 GHz channels.
Wi-Fi 6E relies on a huge expansion of the wireless airwaves available to consumer devices .Existing Wi-Fi devices operate on two spectrum bands, 2.4GHz and 5GHz. Wi-Fi 6E adds a third — 6GHz — and there’s a lot more of it, thus quadrupling the total amount of airwaves used for typical Wi-Fi. We can have larger, higher-speed connections, and the airwaves are less likely to be congested. In an apartment building, for instance, your neighbors’ Wi-Fi networks might interfere with your own. With Wi-Fi 6E, there’s a lot more bandwidth to go around, so there’s less of fighting over the exact same airwaves.
Though the US has approved use of 6GHz airwaves, communications regulators in other countries also need to approve the spectrum for Wi-Fi use, The UK, EU, South Korea, Chile, and United Arab Emirates have all given a green light on allowing 6GHz usage for Wi-Fi, while regulators in Brazil, Canada, Mexico, and Japan are among others where progress is being made.
