By Claus Hetting, CEO & Chairman WiFi NOW
Wi-Fi deployment announcements happened on both sides of the Atlantic this week with Charter (Spectrum) arguably becoming the highest profile service provider to launch a Wi-Fi 7-based gateway and service for home broadband consumers since France’s Free earlier this year. Meanwhile Swisscom has launched their new Wi-Fi 7 router as one of very few in Europe and the first CSP in Switzerland.
This week Charter became the first tier one cableco in the US to begin deployment of a Wi-Fi 7 home gateway and service. The new gateway is the first to serve both consumers and businesses, Charter said in a press release here. Competitor (or frenemy) Comcast announced their plans for a DOCSIS 4.0-based Wi-Fi gateway in February of this year but have – as far as we know – not begun rollout.
Charter says the new gateways initially will be offered to new or upgrading subscribers on Spectrum’s ‘Internet Gig’ residential and business plans, which offer up to a gigabit per second of data rate. Charter doesn’t specifically state this but it appears the new gateway runs on the company’s recently rolled out fibre network as opposed to legacy DOCSIS cable.
In a related announcement some months ago (read more here) Qualcomm and Charter unveiled a partnership to bring Qualcomm’s Wi-Fi 7 technology to Spectrum customers. Spectrum says it began its Wi-Fi 7 deployment to customers in the Greensboro, North Carolina, area in early November.
Visiting (or resident) Spectrum Mobile subscribers will (with a Wi-Fi 7-capable handset) autoconnect to the new Wi-Fi 7 home broadband service with speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second, the company says. This is important because Charter uses its extensive, high-quality home & business Wi-Fi footprint to deliver plenty of low-cost data (more than 90% of the total, to be exact) to Spectrum Mobile subscribers. This reduces reliance on 5G networks and associated costs.
Swisscom introduces Switzerland’s first Wi-Fi 7 service
Meanwhile on the other side of the Atlantic, Swisscom has become the first Swiss operator (and one of very few in Europe) to introduce a Wi-Fi 7 home gateway product. Swisscom says the tri-band ‘Internet-Box 5 Pro’ offers a total Wi-Fi data rate of up to 18.3 Gbit/s. The power consumption of the new gateway can be reduced by up to 98% using power-save mode scheduling, Swisscom says in a press release here.
Home broadband customers choosing Swisscom’s fibre-based 10 Gbps ‘blue Internet L subscription’ will receive the new gateway at no additional cost with the box valued at 349 Swiss Francs (about US$395), the company says. A 10 gbps service from Swisscom starts from 39.90 Swiss Francs (US$45) per month for 12 months then rises to 89.90 Swiss Francs or about US$100 per month. The new gateway is powered by software from smart home platform provider SoftAtHome.
/Claus.
