Wi-Fi Alliance Start Certifying Next Gen 802.11ax Wireless Kit

After a long wait the Wi-Fi Alliance has today announced that their certification program for final hardware under the new Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) standard has begun and the first products have now been certified, which means we should all soon be able to access even faster wireless network routers, smartphones and other devices.

At present most of the WiFi equipped hardware that you use inside your home will be based off the Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) standard or older, while the new 802.11ax standard has been in-development for awhile. The specification promises theoretical peak data speeds of around 10Gbps (Gigabits per second) via the combined 2.4GHz and 5GHz radio spectrum bands, as well as better management of spectrum in congested environments, faster latency, improved power efficiency and various other changes (see our summary).

Several broadband routers and other devices have already shipped with a draft or uncertified specification for the new Wi-Fi 6 standard over the past year, although these have tended to be quite expensive and the prices don’t usually start to fall until final certified hardware turns the standard into a truly mass market product. Likewise draft kit may have some bugs, unless it’s certified and updated via firmware at a later date.

Speaking of which, the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 is officially the first Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 smartphone to enter the market, while the first products / chipsets designated Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 are as follows.

The First Wi-Fi 6 Certified Products / Chipsets
* Broadcom® BCM4375
* Broadcom® BCM43698
* Broadcom® BCM43684
* Cypress CYW 89650 Auto-Grade Wi-Fi 6 Certified
* Intel® Wi-Fi 6 (Gig+) AX200 (for PCs)
* Intel® Home Wi-Fi Chipset WAV600 Series (for routers and gateways)
* Marvell 88W9064 (4×4) Wi-Fi 6 Dual-Band STA
* Marvell 88W9064 (4×4) + 88W9068 (8×8) Wi-Fi 6 Concurrent Dual-Band AP
* Qualcomm® Networking Pro 1200 Platform
* Qualcomm® FastConnect 6800 Wi-Fi 6 Mobile Connectivity Subsystem
* Ruckus R750 Wi-Fi 6 Access Point

Edgar Figueroa, Wi-Fi Alliance President and CEO, said:

“Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 is ushering in a new era of Wi-Fi, building on Wi-Fi’s core characteristics to provide better performance in every environment for users, greater network capacity for service providers to improve coverage for their customers, and new opportunities for advanced applications. Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 will deliver improvements in connectivity, including in high density locations and IoT environments.”

Vijay Nagarajan, Broadcom VP of Wireless Communications, said:

“Broadcom is thrilled to have three of our best-in-class devices included in the certification test bed for today’s official launch of Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 — the BCM4375, BCM43698, and BCM43684. These Broadcom devices already power 10s of millions of Samsung Galaxy phones and routers around the world.

Capable of supporting up to 160 MHz wide channels, Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 devices offer consumers lower latency, better battery life and as yet unseen throughputs, all of which are critical for 5G services. As the full 6 GHz band is made available for unlicensed use – with multiple 160 MHz-wide channels — the Wi-Fi 6 consumer experience will be turbocharged for the gigabit home and AR/VR.”

As usual the biggest caveat with any new wireless network standard is that you’ll only truly be able to fully benefit when the rest of your network devices support it (i.e. there’s no need to buy an 802.11ax router until your Smartphone, Computers, Routers and so forth are equipped with it too).