As connectivity requirements for businesses increase, Wi-Fi 6 is rapidly being outclassed by Wi-Fi 7. The differences in wireless standards are becoming increasingly significant, with Wi-Fi 7 surpassing Wi-Fi 6 in terms of speed, reliability, and overall performance, making it the ideal choice for businesses aiming to stay at the forefront of technology.

The Wi-Fi Alliance has predicted that 2.1 billion Wi-Fi 7 devices will exist worldwide by 2028, and that it is expected to replace Wi-Fi 6 in numerous workplaces by 2025. For companies looking to future-proof their wireless networks and meet growing internet requirements, the benefits of making the jump to Wi-Fi 7 are numerous. This upgrade can provide businesses with the tools and infrastructure needed to maintain a competitive edge in a rapidly shifting digital landscape.

What is Wi-Fi 7?

Wi-Fi 7 represents the next evolution in wireless networking technology. It builds on Wi-Fi 6E’s inclusion of the 6GHz band and adds new features tailored for high-density networks. This allows it to offer speeds up to 2.4 times faster than Wi-Fi 6, powering enhanced streaming quality, seamless video conferencing, and large data operations, even in high-density environments.

Wi-Fi 7 also offers multi-link operation (MLO), which improves how devices use bandwidth across three distinct frequency bands. Devices connected to a Wi-Fi 7 network can switch lanes as needed across multiple channels, avoiding congestion and maintaining smooth data flow. This capability ensures that devices enjoy consistent connectivity with fewer dropped signals, and makes it a reliable Internet solution for smart homes, offices, and other environments with high connectivity demands.

How does Wi-Fi 7 Benefit Businesses?

With the significant improvements in speed, efficiency, and connectivity, Wi-Fi 7 is capable of bringing a wide range of benefits to businesses across varied industries.

Enhanced Speed and Performance

Table 1

Wi-Fi 7 doubles the bandwidth available in its predecessor (see Table 1), Wi-Fi 6, reaching up to 320 MHz. This extremely high throughput greatly benefits enterprises engaging in data-heavy activities.

With data transfer rates exceeding those of Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 7 significantly enhances operations such as large file transfers and high-definition video streaming. Businesses that rely on constant video communication or data sharing can experience minimal lag, ensuring continuity in operations. This improvement is crucial for maintaining productivity levels in various industries.

Moreover, Wi-Fi 7’s enhanced speed supports diverse simultaneous connections. This capacity is essential for environments where multiple devices are in constant use, such as co-working spaces or open-plan offices. Such reliability allows ongoing projects to proceed without the hindrance of connectivity issues.

Increased Bandwidth and Capacity

Wi-Fi 7 offers businesses significant improvements in bandwidth and capacity compared to Wi-Fi 6. By expanding the bandwidth to 320MHz, it effectively doubles the available Wi-Fi speeds to individual devices, accommodating more users without affecting performance. This capability is crucial for modern offices where multiple devices need to transmit data while remaining constantly connected.

Enhanced features like 4096-QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation) allow Wi-Fi 7 to deliver higher data rates by encoding more data in the same radio wave. Wi-Fi 7 also introduces Multi-Link Operation (MLO) which enables devices to connect to multiple bands simultaneously.

This feature improves load balancing and reduces congestion, ensuring that high bandwidth applications, such as video conferencing and cloud services, operate smoothly. Businesses benefit from uninterrupted connections and enhanced productivity. Even large-scale environments with numerous connected devices experience minimal interference, as Wi-Fi 7 allocates resources dynamically across the entire channel.

These enhancements to Wi-Fi technology make Wi-Fi 7 an excellent choice for office settings requiring robust and scalable Wi-Fi network solutions.

Reduced Latency for Real-Time Applications

The new standards of Wi-Fi 7 reduces delays more effectively than Wi-Fi 6, making it a crucial development for businesses that rely on real-time applications.

In video conferencing, lower latency translates to seamless communication, minimising disruptions in conversations. Participants can engage in meetings without lag, fostering more effective collaboration and decision-making.

Virtual reality (VR) applications benefit greatly from the enhanced performance of Wi-Fi 7. Lower latency ensures smooth and uninterrupted interactions, which is vital for training simulations and immersive environments. The quick data exchange supports realistic experiences, improves user engagement and satisfaction, boosts performance, and enables real-time adjustments and updated data visibility.

Energy Efficiency

Wi-Fi 7 presents notable advancements in energy efficiency. One key feature of Wi-Fi 7 is its implementation of Restricted Targeted Wait Time (RTWT). This feature allows devices to reduce power consumption by enabling them to “sleep” for longer durations between data transmissions. Consequently, this reduces overall energy use, leading to cost savings for businesses.

Businesses that rely on various connected devices can observe decreased energy demands with Wi-Fi 7. By allowing devices to conserve power, businesses experience lower electricity bills and extended device battery life, which is crucial for portable devices in a corporate environment. This also contributes to a company’s sustainability goal, and is a green practice that aids in meeting environmental accountability standards.

Cost Saving

Businesses can experience significant cost savings by adopting Wi-Fi 7 technology. The increased capacity of Wi-Fi 7 allows for more devices to connect simultaneously, reducing the need for additional infrastructure investments while simplifying network management and monitoring. Businesses spend less on IT personnel and service outages while ensuring smooth operation. The ease of managing a Wi-Fi 7 network, without the need for frequent upgrades, translates into lower hardware and maintenance costs. This makes this technology a strategic investment for companies aiming to future-proof their connectivity infrastructure.

Backwards Compatibility

One of Wi-Fi 7’s key benefits for businesses is backwards compatibility. This feature ensures that devices can operate efficiently, even if they follow older Wi-Fi standards. Making the switch does not render an existing Wi-Fi router inoperable. New Wi-Fi 7 routers can seamlessly communicate with Wi-Fi 6 and other earlier versions. This is an important factor for companies planning gradual upgrades to their infrastructure, allowing them to manage costs effectively and in distinct stages. This compatibility creates smooth transitions and results in lower downtime.

What Makes Wi-Fi 7 Better than Wi-Fi 6?

Wi-Fi 7 is superior to previous Wi-Fi standards in terms of the following metrics:

Table 2

Speed Improvements: Wi-Fi 7 offers a significant boost in speed. While Wi-Fi 6 can reach maximum speeds of 9.6 Gbps, Wi-Fi 7 is expected to achieve faster speeds of up to 46 Gbps. This increase supports high-bandwidth applications like 8K video streaming.

Frequency Bands: Wi-Fi 7 continues to build on the advances of its predecessors by optimizing performance on both the 5GHz and 6GHz bands. This enhances network capacity and reduces congestion, facilitating better performance in dense environments.

Better Latency: It is also expected to offer reduced latency compared to Wi-Fi 6, making it ideal for real-time applications such as online gaming and video conferencing. Reduced latency improves responsiveness, creating smoother and more seamless user experiences.

Enhanced MU-MIMO: Wi-Fi 7 supports more simultaneous connections with improved multi-user multiple input, multiple output (MU-MIMO) technology. This allows for more effective use of available spectrum and greater overall network capacity, supporting more devices without compromising performance.

Wi-Fi 7 is designed to cater to the increasing demand for faster, more efficient, and reliable wireless communication, making it a powerful option for future-proofing networks.

SPTel’s Managed Wi-Fi 7 Services Can Deliver More than you Expect

SPTel’s team of IT specialists are certified to deliver high performance managed services such as Managed Wi-Fi 7 services, supporting end-to-end management and deployment of low-latency Wi-Fi 7 devices. Our Managed Wi-Fi 7 services take the hassle out of network management and enable organisations to take advantage of these new Wi-Fi 7 functions without having to worry about complex network infrastructure and management. Rest assured SPTel’s team of experts will recommend the best Wi-Fi solution and set-up for your office while helping you maintain, monitor, and manage your wireless network infrastructure.

With SPTel’s connectivity solutions running paired with our Managed Wi-F- 7 services, customers can benefit from a network solution that is:

1. Secure – SPTel’s Internet solutions come with DDoS attack detection in built so you will always be alerted to attacks. You can also choose to mitigate such threats on-demand so you will never be caught off guard. Learn more about our cyber security solutions here.
2. Scalable – SPTel’s network is highly flexible and can support bandwidth upgrades on demand, turned on in 2 minutes, to flex as your business grows.
3. Reliable – SPTel’s unique fibre pathways mean less reliance on shared infrastructure, providing your organisation with network diversity for mission critical applications.

Enhancing Application Performance with End-to-End QoS

One of the key considerations for upgrading to a Wi-Fi 7 solution would be to improve application performance. However, application performance is not impacted by Wi-Fi alone. Your network and compute solution all play a part. That is why at SPTel, we can provide you with end-to-end QoS assurance for devices connected by our Managed Wi-Fi 7 solution.

SPTel’s network can deliver <1ms latency, island-wide. This is the lowest latency that any telco can achieve in Singapore. This will immediately give application performance a boost, especially when paired with a Wi-Fi 7 router. In addition, customers can make use of SPTel’s Edge Cloud for compute resources that are closer to their data source (vs. public cloud), to improve responsiveness for critical applications. SPTel’s Edge Cloud can deliver up to 2x more responsive performance than public cloud, enabling customers to benefit from a high performance and scalable cloud solution that does not rely on on-premise servers.

Finally, when you choose to partner with SPTel for your network infrastructure management, we can deliver QoS management across your entire solution, from your network to compute and Wi-Fi 7 end point. This will provide prioritised routing for critical applications and ensure end-to-end ultra-low latency performance.

Take the Leap Towards Wi-Fi 7 With SPTel

Wi-Fi 7 represents the next generation of wireless technology, offering unprecedented speed and reliable connections. This advancement significantly enhances online experiences in the business landscape, and is critical for environments with dense device requirements, like smart homes or offices.

SPTel is well-positioned to assist organisations and individuals looking to upgrade. For more information about Wi-Fi 7 offerings, reach out to us today for tailored advice and solutions.