Have You Heard of My New Band?
If you’ve recently sacrificed your piggy bank to the Wi-Fi gods to purchase a new Wi-Fi 6 router for your home or office, there is new industry buzz out there that may have you thinking you should have waited a bit longer to swing the hammer on Oinkers; FCC approval of unlicensed use of the 6 GHz band for Wi-Fi 6E (‘E’ refers to Wi-Fi 6 being extended to the 6 GHz band).
What is Wi-Fi 6E?
Previously reserved for licensed carrier and government agency use, the United States FCC (Federal Communications Commission) announced in April of this year their approval for unlicensed access to the 6 GHz band. The European Commission is likely to do the same this year for Europe, and the UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom, is in advanced consultation stages to deregulate 6 GHz usage in Britain as well.
Wi-Fi 6E is estimated to bring an additional 1200 MHz (5.925–7.125 GHz range) of spectral capacity to the existing 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands, which currently have a combined usable spectrum of roughly 400 MHz. That’s a 300% increase in usable airwave space.
Will Wi-Fi 6E be faster than Wi-Fi 6?
Wi-Fi 6 specifications are identical to Wi-Fi 6E in every aspect, including highly touted features such as orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA), Target Wake Time (TWT), and Multi-User Multiple In Multiple Out (MU MIMO).
The only difference will be the access of the 6 GHz band with Wi-Fi 6E, and this is the reason why some may consider Wi-Fi 6E to be much faster than Wi-Fi 6.
Wi-Fi 6E will perform much better than Wi-Fi 6 in ultra-dense industrial/enterprise IoT networks because there will be an additional 1200 MHz of wireless bandwidth available to transmit data, and interference from 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands will not affect 6 GHz channels.
Before you make any decisions on upgrading your Wi-Fi, there is one thing that Wi-Fi 6, or Wi-Fi 6E, will not be able to improve: your internet speed. If you have a Gigabit ISP connection, that is your gateway to the Internet and upgrading your access point won’t improve that speed.
If you’ve already upgraded to Wi-Fi 6, you will need to purchase a new access point for Wi-Fi 6E because transmission on the 6 GHz band requires a new chipset. Although there are no Wi-Fi 6E access points available yet as of today, we may start to see them later on this year and Wi-Fi 6E smartphones on the market sometime next year.
Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E: A New Wi-Fi Revolution
To sum it all up, if you live in a densely-populated residential complex where 2.4 or 5 GHz interference is a problem (or you have plans to connect everything including the trash can, egg tray, and Oinkers to your home automation network), a Wi-Fi 6E access point is definitely what you need for disruption-free wireless connectivity. Keep in mind that your end devices will also need to be Wi-Fi 6E compliant to get into the 6 GHz wireless fast lanes.
Since its inception, Wi-Fi has been evolving at every generation to improve data rates and enhance user experience. With OFDMA, MU-MIMO and TWT, Wi-Fi 6 sets a new benchmark for Wi-Fi performance and creates many possibilities for application scenarios. Wi-Fi 6E introduces a new Wi-Fi super highway that will be unhindered by interference from 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz channels.
Currently, D-Link offers a variety of high-performance Wi-Fi 6 access points for your home and later this year, a wide range of Wi-Fi certified EasyMesh solutions will also be available for seamless whole-home coverage. For enterprise applications, Nuclias and Unified Wi-Fi 6 access points will be available soon.
Wi-Fi 6E will also be an important segment for D-Link wireless development, so please stayed tuned for more news on this new band, the 6 GHz.
