Conflicting reports are casting a cloud over the pace of adoption of Wi-Fi 6E, with Intel suggesting that at the end of last year, 160 devices and routers supported the 6GHz technology, while a report early February by market research group Dell’Oro posits that supply constraints are seriously impacting the latest generation of Wi-Fi.
According to Intel, the products deploying the Wi-Fi 6E-enabled technology include laptop and desktop PCs, smartphones, routers, home gateways, enterprise APs, TVs, and PC motherboards.
The chip group is one of the most active proponents of the latest Wi-Fi technology, and other chip vendors competing with it include Qualcomm, Broadcom, MediaTek, onsemi, TI, Cypress Semiconductor (an Infineon Technologies company), STMicroelectronics, and NXP Semiconductors.
If reports from the recent Consumer Electronics Show bear fruit, the number suggested by Intel will increase significantly over the next few months.
Improving specs for Wi-Fi connectivity is also continuing at a steady pace. For instance, at CES, Intel demonstrated its ‘Double Connect’ technology that powers two simultaneous Wi-Fi connections on the same device –one on the 2.4GHz band and the other on either side of the 5GHz or 6GHz band. The company has not commented on the exact performance improvements that could be gained in latency reduction using the innovative technology, but said it would be available on its 12th Gen Core-H series platform, and it will form part of the Intel Connectivity Performance Suite for the Evo and vPro platforms as of the first quarter of this year.
At CES, Intel said it considered Wi-Fi 6E represents the biggest advancement in Wi-Fi for twenty years.
Yet Tam Dell’Oro, founder, CEO and wireless LAN analyst of the eponymous market research group, suggested there may be problems ahead for the technology. She warned that ‘a pin in the balloon’ for Wi-Fi 6E roll-out has become apparent.
“Although manufactures launched Wi-Fi 6E products in mid-2021, products are either not available, or they are in very limited supply,” said Dell’Oro. “Supply constraints have prompted manufacturers to focus on enabling the availability of popular models by redesigning these models with components that are more readily available.”
Dell’Oro said the company’s feedback from systems integrators revealed users are asking for Wi-Fi 6, not 6E. “Therefore, if companies have to prioritize their production, Wi-Fi 6 will be the priority. Wi-Fi shipments in the second half of 2021, excluding China, were significantly limited because of supply constraints.”
She also cautioned that ecosystem players “do not see constrains easing until the end of 2022. With Wi-Fi 7 products shipping as early as 2023, we predict users will bypass 6E.”
To make matters even more complicated and worrying for 6E proponents, Dell’Oro also said that in addition to the supply problems “we have learned that compliance with regulations to operate within the 6GHz spectrum are slowing the deployment process. Compliance processes have yet to be standardized and easy to implement.”
This seems surprising, as late last year, the US Federal Communications Commission’s plans to divide up the 1200MHz of spectrum in the 6GHz for unlicensed use were approved in the country. Until then, Wi-Fi was limited for use over the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. The ruling was widely welcomed by user organizations and silicon and equipment suppliers, since it offers increased bandwidth with less interference than existing generations of Wi-Fi. Proponents also noted that Wi-Fi performance would be enhanced, and the extra space would also improve upload and download speeds.
The reason this approval took so long —the FCC unanimously voted to open up the 6GHz band for unlicensed use in early 2020— is because AT&T challenged the ruling in a federal court case, arguing that the decision failed to take into account potential interference with thousands of microwave links.
Meanwhile, one of the most committed backers of Wi-Fi 6E, the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA), has been working hard with partners trialling the technology in a variety of different end-user scenarios. The trade association also suggested recently there would be some 338 million devices enabled with Wi-Fi 6E in the global market by the end of this year.
One of the trials it has been backing was led by CableLabs and involved Intel who provided the wireless cards. It focused on uplink and downlink coverage in homes and offices at fast speeds, with Asus providing the Wi-Fi 6E access points. The laptops were placed throughout a large, two-story home in a suburban setting, occupied by a CableLabs employee.
The team used 160MHz channels in 6GHz on Wi-Fi 6E and delivered 1.7 Gbit/s downlink and 1.2Gbit/s uplink in locations close to the access point, which the WBA said validated that the 6GHz Wi-Fi technology could maximize performance and experience in the demanding real-world environment of people’s homes.
More recently, late January, the WBA reported that a trial in Turkey led by Turk Telecom —and involving both Intel (with its AX210 160MHz Wi-Fi 6E card) and Broadcom (which provided its compatible evaluation platform for the router)— proved that by opening up the full 6GHz spectrum, it was feasible to future proof a country’s wireless broadband capabilities in the short term by deploying Wi-Fi 6E, and also lay the groundwork for Wi-Fi 7.
Carried out during last December, the trial consisted of a series of scenarios with different tests in both a closed lab environments and over a live broadband network.
Commenting on the trial, Tiago Rodrigues, the Alliance’s CEO, stressed the importance of Wi-Fi 6E deployment in the industry’s shift to an even more connected future. “The bottlenecks we are already experiencing will become a thing of the past, and the potential for seamless convergence with 5G networks will not only provide more monetization opportunities for businesses but establish the building blocks for a truly connected world.”