Vodafone UK Spotted Preparing Wi-Fi 7 Broadband Routers for Launch
Mobile and broadband ISP Vodafone appears to be preparing to launch a new range of Wi-Fi 7 capable routers and wireless mesh extenders for their fixed line customers in the future, including the Ultra Hub 7 Fibre (FG4278VF), Super Wi-Fi 7 (RP761BVDF) and Ultra HUB7 (DG4278VF). But the details are currently wafer thin.
In case anybody has forgotten, Vodafone only recently introduced a new range of Wi-Fi 6 / 6E capable routers and extenders – the ‘Power Hub‘ router and ‘Super Wi-Fi 6 Booster‘ (here). Prior to this, they had also become the first UK ISP in 2022 to launch a 6E capable router – the ‘UltraHub‘ (here), which is pictured above but only bundled alongside their premium Pro II plans.
However, EE, Zen Internet and BeFibre recently became some of the first ISPs to launch new routers using the latest Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be) standard. This introduces various new 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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The good news is that it looks like Vodafone are preparing to catch up. One of our readers (credits to Scott) recently spotted that the operator has put three new devices through the WiFi certification process between July and early September 2024, including the Ultra Hub 7 Fibre (FG4278VF), Super Wi-Fi 7 (RP761BVDF) and Ultra HUB7 (DG4278VF). But this doesn’t reveal much about their capabilities, other than support for WPA3 encryption and WiFi 7.
The recent certification doesn’t mean that these devices are due for an imminent launch, as there will usually still be development work and testing that needs to be done on the software and production side first. Often such work can take several months, and so a launch is perhaps more likely to occur during 2025 than 2024. The future launch may also be staggered, meaning that we might see the Ultra Hub 7 Fibre launch before the others.
A spokesperson for Vodafone told ISPreview: “We don’t have anything to say on that right now. We will continue to sell our Vodafone’s Pro II Plan, powered by Ultra Hub.”
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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Is there a reason why all the new WiFi 7 routers have this thick shape? EE’s new box, Amazon’s eero, now the Vodafone box, they all aren’t using the classic flat shape but rather have a shape of a cylinder, cube or some other thick figure. Is it the WiFi 7 antenna that requires the box to be this thick?
I suppose because they look better in a house and not pout of place. Remember the Wedge shape thing that Orange had?
That Vodafone one looks nicer than the box thing that my provider supplies.
Okay so this will likely be due to the heatsink as WiFi7 chips get hot
Hopefully it’s better than their disastrous 6E routers. Those things had insane latency, and it was impossible to troubleshoot as it was backed by their cloud service which was constantly messing with settings. Awful product.
What’s with all these weird names “Super WiFi 6e”, “Ppwer hub”
What’s wrong with saying “we offer a WiFi 7 Nokia router now”
@ Three we have suddenly begun reinvesting in our own product lines. Chatter here is the merger is dead.
That doesn’t mean the merger is dead, T-mobile and Orange were still selling products up until the week they merged to become EE, iirc
We were discussing this yesterday at Carphone warehouse.
To counter Andrew’s suggestion, the difference was Three had completed halted, very odd to suddenly restart weeks away from the merger decision.
The newly announced Wi-Fi 7 kit from Vodafone Germany could be a hint as to what’s coming: https://www.teltarif.de/vodafone-ultrahub7-kabelrouter/news/95466.html
It’s a DOCSIS modem over there, but I imagine the specs and design will be quite similar, and the booster will probably be identical.