EE Confirm Plan to be First UK ISP to Launch a Wi-Fi 7 Router in 2024
Broadband ISP and mobile operator EE (BT) has today confirmed our leak from May 2023 (here) by announcing that they’ve agreed a new partnership with Qualcomm Technologies, which will see their home customers becoming some of the first in the world to gain access to future Wi-Fi 7 technology in 2024.
Despite having only very recently introduced their first Wi-Fi 6 capable Smart Hub Plus (Smart Hub 3) broadband router and supporting kit (here), EE has today said that they intend to roll out new in-home hardware in the future that will feature Qualcomm’s Wi-Fi 7 platform – part of their ongoing plans to deliver best-in-class home connectivity to consumers across the UK.
Wi-Fi 7 brings a number of new and important features, such as using the extra 6GHz channel with 320MHz of channel bandwidth for much broader capacity (Wi-Fi 6E is 160MHz), as well as Multi Link Operation (MLO), which allows data to be sent over multiple bands simultaneously, and 4K QAM, which offers up to 20% increase in peak data transmission performance (plus other enhancements).
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EE claims that the early adoption of Wi-Fi 7 is necessary because of new multi-gigabit FTTP broadband packages (we’re still waiting for EE’s 1.6Gbps product), as well as services such as cloud gaming, immersive AR/VR and 4K/8K video streaming and the average home doubling the number of WiFi connected devices in the next 5 years. In short, data demands are going up, and our home wireless networks need to keep pace.
Overall, this will allow EE customers to benefit from multi-gigabit capable Wi-Fi “throughout the home” (assuming it’s supported by their Mesh system) with faster speed, less interference, more capacity and better performance to support the many high-bandwidth activities of the future.
Marc Allera, CEO of EE, said:
“We have a long history of collaborating with Qualcomm Technologies to create innovation in mobile for consumers – so we’re delighted to evolve this strategic collaboration into our in-home products for the first time. EE broadband customers will be among the first globally to benefit from access to a certified next-gen Wi-Fi 7 home hub – providing them with the cutting-edge of innovation in connectivity.”
The news itself won’t come as much of a surprise to ISPreview’s regular readers because it’s something we’ve already leaked, although precisely when the launch will occur remains unclear. EE’s announcement merely states “2024” and we’ve heard everything from “early 2024” to “June 2024” being mentioned by sources before.
The catch being that the related 802.11be standard isn’t currently expected to be finalised until early 2024, which suggests that a launch closer to June may be more plausible. The new router itself will effectively be the Smart Hub 4, although other than adding Wi-Fi 7 support, the new device is expected to have broad feature parity with the new Smart Hub 3.1 / Plus.
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One of the reasons why BT may be able to bring this all to market so quickly is because they’ve been developing their own in-house Operating System (OS) and Firmware for the new routers, which is known as Project Indigo. As a result, they aren’t as dependent upon the whims of third-parties, although ensuring they have enough hardware supply may still be a challenge.
The other question mark is over who will be able to access the new router. Our sources suggest that it will initially only be available as a “premium product” and that seems likely, since such bleeding edge kit would normally attract a much higher unit cost and that’s not something even big ISPs could easily give away alongside a regular package.
Further detail on EE’s Wi-Fi 7 next-gen home broadband Smart Hub will be announced closer to launch.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Can someone let Vodafone know, still supplying a Wifi 5 router on their 900mbps packages which is an absolute joke, unless you get Pro 2, but it needs Wifi 6 as standard for that speed. I have Pro not even standard and it’s still a poor (for these speeds) wifi 5 one.
I would be wary of the “in house” OS. When the first generation smart hub was released, early versions of the firmware were dreadfully unstable and it was constantly dropping connections and rebooting itself. Given the potential for security issues as well I’d give it 12 months so it can go through a few firmware revisions first.
BT own routers are awful, full of stuff that slows them down or makes then a pain to do anything with. The so-called smart Wi-fi is not samrt at all.
One of the reason I decided to go for a off the shelf router is, so I can change what I like and not limited by ISP rourters. even the one Zzoomm supplies is locked to a certain degree, and it is also so, so, so slow to configure.
If EE was going to change their routers next year, then why bring a new router out this year? Total and complete waste of resources, just to make it sound like their customers are getting something good.
The Wifi 7 standard isn’t even finalised, this is gonna cause issues
not really. I can recall a very long time ago the only finalised standard was 802.11A but nobody apart from Cisco and a small group of others used it with their super expensive Aironet APs everyone else was using an unfinalized 802.11b access point. Phones shipped with 802.11ax before the standard was finalised. Besides which if anything drastic should change they can most likely just push out a firmware upgrade to make it compliant.
Yet BT have still not launched their SmartHub3 with Wifi6 so customers on FTTP with higher speeds are not able to use the full capabilities of their connection. BT have promised this router a number of times but have failed to deliver .
To make things even more annoying even if out of contract BT won’t let you switch to EE unless putting in a partners name
I don’t understand why BT are not allowing their customers to switch to EE. As I understand it the whole idea is to switch domestic customers to the EE brand leaving BT as their business brand. As I understood it BT haven’t launched smart hub 3 because they wanted it to be EE branded.
BT have already released the Smart Hub 3, however as BT are now just concentrated on commercial side, they have released the BT Business Smart Hub 3.
Read page here:
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2023/07/isp-bt-launch-uk-business-smart-hub-3-router-and-complete-wi-fi-plus.html
EE now as the brand for normal customer, residential etc, have also started sending out their Smart Hub Plus as already mentioned.
“We should also add that new customers ordering FTTP broadband are now being sent EE’s latest WiFi6 Smart Hub Plus (SmartHub 3) router, which was soft launched back in June 2023.”
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2023/08/broadband-isp-ee-quietly-launch-uk-digital-home-phone-service.html
The higher speed tiers won’t be out until next year as the trial testing has been extended until end of this year, so technically with the new Smart Hub Plus from EE being released for those new speed tiers, it would be great to see BT and EE release a new wifi 7 enabled hub for when these new tiers are open to public.
Wow! Steals the march on Netomnia’s monster only wifi6E.
Mind you, do the sell many Wifi6 phones yet?
I don’t give much thought to WiFi standards and routers, but they’ve recently piqued my interest because of the publicity around some CP’s looking at using WiFi for last mile connectivity. IX Wireless are saying they’ll use the 802.11axR2 (WiFi 6)standard as part of their last mile access technologies, so are these routers aimed at FWA connectivity? The majority of home users won’t want to replace all their devices, or purchase dongles to utilise the new frequencies/bandwidths available with WiFi 6 or 7, so is it a stretch to think that FWA would be the most likely use for these new routers, possibly in rural areas?
Good news. Though one would have thought BT itself would have launched a Wifi 7 router first before the EE brand?
As much as I am not a fan of BT’s antics or customer service over the years, I prefer it as a brand than EE.
EE will be the consumer-only side of BT soon. Rebrand is already in progress.
EE are making it difficult to get the newer routers unless your on full fibre. I just want better range.
New standards for the new EE/BT router scheduled for 2024 release could plan and work with Everyone TV to provide a better customer experience with higher resolution and sound quality than Freeview/Freesat platforms.
Hope they also have 2.5GbE on there as well. New motherboards have started to come with it as standard.
Also hope WiFi 6/7 isn’t too impacted by older devices, though speed probably isn’t the most important aspect there.
2.5G Ethernet ports are god, but not good for the long term. They need to fit 5 gigabit Ethernet ports. Internet speeds are slowly getting better. Costs will eventually go down for faster than 1 gigabit and we have seen 3 gigabit availability at least in London.
I hope these speeds will be seen across the UK soon.
For the people complaining about old WiFi for their fibre connections. Is there a reason you haven’t purchased a WiFi 6 or 6e standalone router and put the smart hub into bridge mode?
You can pick up some really good routers for not too much money and if you have gigabit connections then you’re already the key market for these products. ISP supplied routers are usually pants and this has always been the case.
You have long been able to change the supplied BT or EE Hub to a third party one and just run it using BT or EE PPPoE details for fibre connections or PPPoA for ADSL.
Although many Joe public users are happy with the bog standard router supplied, or haven’t got any inclination of the need to use third party etc for better returns etc.
As for bridging, normal residential hubs from BT or EE won’t allow you to do that as the feature is locked out.
Only on BT Business hubs is the option open to be used.
What percentage of population will benefit from this fast broadband speeds? 1-2%?
You will actually be quite surprised as to how many will benefit from faster speeds, it will be much more than just 1 to 2 percent.
Although you are right in thinking that most joe public users won’t actually need it and some will just be upgrading for the sake of it and wanting higher speed.
Most home devices are still limited to 100mbs like smart tv, sky, freesat, xbox etc, so they won’t get any benefit from being on a higher tier.
This benefits for examples those users who have or use home networks or work from home and use cloud etc as their pc motherboards from the past year or so that now come with standard 2.5gbs internet port and will mean that they can now transfer and receive data much quicker.
A download speed of 1gbs is old nowadays and most people will be expecting up to 10gbs speed, of which other third party fibre installers are putting in some places.
The UK is so behind with download speeds, 10gbs is minimum in other countries and in one country you now have public getting a 50gbs download, that is not business either that is straight up home use lol
Where is 10G the minimum speed available, please, and how do the speeds outside of the country compare to inside it?
Generally regarded ISP supplied routers to be the equivalent of a modem, and only used where a separate ONT isn’t provided.
A 2.5G lan port 2 go with the 2.5 wan port too me is an essential. I use digital voice which complicates using a third party router. Link aggregation could work for me but not for everybody. i would also like to see vlans and a return to seperate ssid for 2.4g radio.