Wi-Fi 6 Welcomed By Wireless Broadband Alliance

TechInAfrica – The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) has welcomed the official certification of Wi-Fi 6, the latest generation of Wi-Fi connectivity. According to WBA General Manager, Tiago Rodrigues, Wi-Fi 6 will become more mainstream.

“Up until now, Wi-Fi 6 has been the domain of pioneers and pilots, including some of our members like Korea Telekom, SK Telekom, Cisco, and Boingo Wireless. Those pilots and early deployments have been happening for some time, but now with the launch of Wi-Fi 6 CERTIFIED®, a much larger volume of wireless operators and enterprises will be more confident investing in Wi-Fi 6 devices and infrastructure, which ultimately benefits businesses and consumers. This will likely create a virtuous circle, where hardware manufacturers and service providers will likewise become more focused on addressing the growing appetite for Wi-Fi 6,” Rodrigues explained.

These are the advanced capabilities included in Wi-Fi 6:

Orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA): effectively shares channels to increase network efficiency and lower latency for both uplink and downlink traffic in high demand environments
Multi-user multiple input multiple output (MU-MIMO): allows more downlink data to be transferred at once and enables an access point to transmit data to a larger number of devices concurrently
160 MHz channels:increases bandwidth to deliver greater performance with low latency
Target wake time (TWT):significantly improves battery life in Wi-Fi devices, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) devices
1024 quadrature amplitude modulation mode (1024-QAM):increases throughput in Wi-Fi devices by encoding more data in the same amount of spectrum
Transmit beamforming: enables higher data rates at a given range resulting in greater network capacity

Note that it requires the latest generation of Wi-Fi security, which is Wi-Fi CERTIFIED WPA3™.

Phil Solis, research director at IDC said: “Wi-Fi 6 brings greater speeds and more efficiency to Wi-Fi networks, expanding its role as a critical communication platform. Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 drives a higher quality experience for all Wi-Fi’s many use cases, further propelling the Wi-Fi market and ensuring Wi-Fi maintains its strong position as the connectivity landscape evolves.”

The first Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 Smartphone turns out to be Samsung’s Galaxy Note 10. Wi-Fi Alliance expected more leading hones and access points to support the latest generation Wi-Fi. These are the designated products of Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 which encompass the benchmark for certification: