Wi-Fi 7 was launched at the end of the first quarter of this year
The Wi-Fi 7 standard is new again.
Recently, the Wi-Fi Alliance confirmed that the Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 7 certification standard based on IEEE 802.11be will be officially launched at the end of the first quarter of this year, which also means that although the Wi-Fi 7 standard has not been officially frozen, a series of wireless routers, APs, mobile terminals and other products that have been sold on the market will be crowned as "Wi-Fi 7 supporting". However, there are still doubts about whether Wi-Fi 7 products sold in China support the 6GHz band.
Huawei Wi-Fi 7 router
The Wi-Fi 6 standard, which is currently being popularized in the consumer market, has been using the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz carrier bands, but the 2.4 GHz band has become congested due to the use of other wireless technologies such as Bluetooth, so the demand for radio spectrum resources in the Wi-Fi industry has not stopped.
Wi-Fi 6E (Wi-Fi 6 Enhanced), which was officially commercialized in early 2021, expands the frequency band to 6 GHz, with a spectrum range of 5925~7125 MHz, with a total bandwidth of 1200 MHz. The Wi-Fi 7 technology solution commonly adopted by manufacturers is that the three frequency bands of 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz can work simultaneously to improve broadband, thereby increasing transmission rates and reducing latency.
From a technical point of view, 6GHz, as a mid-band with 1200MHz continuous bandwidth, has both network capacity and coverage requirements, and can provide continuous bandwidth of 100 megahertz, as well as good network coverage, and can also greatly reduce network construction costs.
However, as a precious spectrum resource, countries have different attitudes towards the 6 GHz band, and whether or not to allow Wi-Fi to be accessed as an unauthorized band directly determines the development prospects of Wi-Fi 7 in various countries.
At present, there are three situations in the planning of the 6GHz frequency band in various countries: 6GHz can be used as a license-free frequency band for Wi-Fi, such as the United States; some of the 6GHz can be used as a license-free frequency band, for example, the European Union clearly supports the member states of 5945MHz~6425MHz A total of 480MHz spectrum is used for Wi-Fi, and the third is to use 6GHz (5925~7125 MHz) as a licensed frequency band for mobile networks and other authorized access, and China also adopts this plan.
The Regulations of the People's Republic of China on Radio Frequency Allocation (Order No. 62 of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology), which will be promulgated and implemented in 2023, clearly stipulates that the mobile service of all or part of the 6425~7125MHz frequency band in the 6GHz band is determined to be used for international mobile communications (IMT), that is, the future 5G/6G system.
In the interpretation of the "Regulations", the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology mentioned that the new system frequencies of 6GHz, 26GHz, 40GHz, 70GHz and other frequency bands (international mobile communications, including 5G/6G) are to provide a regulatory status for the use of 5G/6G system frequencies and stabilize industry expectations. It is the first in the world to allocate the 6GHz frequency band to IMT systems, which is conducive to promoting the global or regional consistent allocation of 5G/6G frequency sources, and providing the necessary mid-band frequency resources for the development of 5G/6G.
After the regulations are introduced, there are also questions about whether the frequency band range between 5925~6425MHz in the 6GMHz band can be used by Wi-Fi 7. Among them, 5925~6125MHz has been issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to COMAC as the first enterprise 5G private network occupancy frequency. The remaining frequency band is only 6125~6425MHz, and if this frequency band is divided into unlicensed frequency bands, the bottleneck of Wi-Fi 7 in domestic commercialization will be solved. If it is classified as an authorized frequency band, then the 6GHz band will be completely blocked when Wi-Fi 7 devices are used in China.
According to the Regulations, some frequency bands of 6125~6425MHz are allocated to astronomy, positioning and other services at fixed locations, and have no impact on the commercial use of Wi-Fi 7.
It is worth noting that after the promulgation of the Regulations, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also issued a draft of the "Technical Requirements and Test Methods for the Approval of New Types of Wireless LAN Equipment Using the IEEE 802.11be Technical Standard". According to the draft, Wi-Fi 7 (IEEE 802.11be) devices operate in the frequency bands of 2400~2483.5MHz, 5150~5350MHz, and 5725~5850MHz, which means that only 2.4GHz and 5GHz are used like Wi-Fi 6 devices.
The battle between Wi-Fi 7 and 5G/6G is still a continuation of the battle between Wi-Fi and cellular mobile networks for many years.
According to data from ABI Research, Wi-Fi upload traffic surged by 80% in 2022, and Wi-Fi data traffic has surpassed cellular traffic and has become the access method with the largest contribution to traffic increment. According to a survey by equipment manufacturer Cisco, in 2022, more than 60% of the world's data traffic has been accessed through Wi-Fi.
However, unlike the Wi-Fi industry chain, which is distributed around the world and upstream manufacturers are mostly concentrated in Europe and the United States, China's 5G/6G system industry chain has obvious advantages in the world.
In fact, not only China, but also more countries in Europe and the United States are also inclined to 5G in frequency band allocation. Singapore, India, Mexico have all announced that they are considering broader coordination of the 6GHz range, and the Chilean authority has even reversed the decision to use the entire 6G band for Wi-Fi. In the Middle East, Africa and some CIS countries, there have also been preliminary statements about allocating 6G frequency bands to 5G systems.
Therefore, it is still unclear whether Wi-Fi 7 will be able to use the 6Ghz band in China and more countries in the coming period, even if the standard is completely frozen.
This article is from the WeChat public account "IT Times" (ID: vittimes), author: Lin Fei, editor: Hao Junhui Sun Yan