Experts are already working on the development of the WiFi 8 standard, a connection that will become the norm in a few years and will continue to take the capacity of our connections further. Now we discover what the main objective of a connectivity will be in which a sacrifice will be made in relation to speed.
The WiFi wireless connection is something that we use in our daily lives and that is of crucial importance for people around the world. But the truth is that there is less talk about the advances of WiFi than, for example, that of 4G or 5G mobile networks. Of course, this does not imply that WiFi does not also evolve and that it does not receive new versions. The next will be WiFi 8 and its debut is expected to occur in 2028. At the moment it is already in development.
Some clear objectives
The Wi-Fi Alliance and MediaTek team are working behind closed doors to make the next evolution of WiFi provide a major improvement. However, they already comment that they are very clear about what the objectives are going to be. And one of them is not related to speed. The reason for this is that a sufficiently strong speed performance has already been achieved and in this next version they want to focus their energy on other aspects.
Of course, this is not going to mean that WiFi 8 will mean a step backwards compared to the current version. But we can expect that this next version of WiFi, which receives the full name of IEEE 802.11bn Ultra High Reliability, will remain at exactly the same speed as WiFi 7. And that is an indication that it will continue in the 23Gbits/range. or 2,880Mbps x 8. Therefore, the great improvement that occurred when moving from WiFi 6 to WiFi 7 will be maintained, which was an evolution that was marked by the change in the speed performance. But, this time, that aspect will remain stable. There will be no change in speed, but the jump from WiFi 7 to WiFi 8 will mean an improvement in other aspects. For now, experts believe that it is the most appropriate for the WiFi connection to continue evolving.
A different generational leap
From the hand of MediaTek, some of the details of what we can expect from WiFi 8 have been revealed before its launch in 2028. It is possible, from what is said, that we are not going to discover much more about this next generation of WiFi until its launch, so it is advisable to analyze what we know. For example, China has been defined as the main country in relation to the development of WiFi 8 and not the United States as could have been previously imagined.
The reason for this is the enormous amount of Internet access in the country, with 650 million broadband users and an average connection speed of 487.6 Mbps, which represents a significant growth of 18% compared to 2023. Likewise As we said, the WiFi 8 connection will be very similar to the current WiFi 7, also repeating the four frequency bands that it will use: 2, 4, 5 and 6GHz. This lack of changes will not, in any case, be a problem. The reason for this is that the development of WiFi 8 is focusing on perfecting the way in which the devices in our home, both the computer and the mobile phone, will interact with different access points. With current versions of WiFi there are different problems that prevent devices from getting the best out of connections, so work is being done to improve it. One of the ways they are doing this is by polishing the Co-SR (Coordinated Spatial Reuse) technology, which will act on WiFi 8 allowing different access points to communicate with each other. This will make the connection stronger and cause fewer interruptions.
Along these same lines, work is also being done on Co-BF systems and the use of dynamic subchannels. Improvements and the implementation of changes in this technology will be noticed in specific situations. For example, if there are different devices connected to the same WiFi, with WiFi 8 the system will be able to deduce which terminals can download the same file at a higher speed than the rest and will give them more bandwidth to do so. In addition, problems in which WiFi does not operate at its maximum level on a device when it is very close to another terminal connected to the same connection will also be eliminated. Communication between access points will act effectively and resolve this type of previous limitations.
In addition, work is being done on other aspects that, in general, will have the same objective: increasing the stability of WiFi 8 so that the experience obtained is more efficient. There will not be greater speed, but in practice it is most likely that we will notice a noticeable improvement in its use. Of course, you have to be patient, since we were talking about 2028 and, in the end, we cannot rule out that it ends up arriving later. The regulation and approval of these WiFi standards is not fast in view of how WiFi 7 802.11be has not even been approved yet when it was thought that it would be something that would be solved months ago.
