Wi-Fi 6E promises very-low latency and higher throughput thanks to big spectrum increase

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai made Wi-Fi 6E official. Later this month, at an April 23 meeting, FCC members will vote on the proposed use for unlicensed use of the 6GHz band (5.925–7.125GHz). Wi-Fi 6E is an expansion of the existing Wi-Fi 6 standard into a new and much wider radio frequency band.

The new spectrum offers six times the total spectrum currently available on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. This solves one of today's issues with Wi-Fi. Due to its widespread use, there are more and more cases were many different devices are competing for airtime, a situation that can render current WiFi networks very sluggish.

The spectrum Pai's FCC votes on this month offers roughly six times the total spectrum currently available on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands combined and offers it in a single, contiguous band from 5.925–7.125GHz. This is enough spectrum to offer seven completely non-overlapping 160MHz wide channels.

Each separate channel can provide roughly double to quadruple the maximum performance we see from 5GHz Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6 devices now—and do so without relying on protocol parlor tricks that may or may not actually pan out as well in real life as they did in a test lab.

Switching to Wi-Fi 6E will require new hardware and new devices, as existing products won't be able to support it. Full details at ARS Technica.