By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman
Wi-Fi 8 is now officially a hot topic and regardless of what you think of the rush (by some) to get there first, now might be a good time to dig into what Wi-Fi 8 is all about. Intel recently published a comprehensive and easily accessible white paper outlining Intel’s vision for future Wi-Fi 8 technology. You can download it here.
Before we say anything else about Wi-Fi 8, let’s be clear: Despite the fact that some are rushing to get Wi-Fi 8 technology to market early, certification of actual Wi-Fi 8 products is not expected to happen before end of 2027 or early 2028, which means Wi-Fi 8 realistically is still a couple of years away. This is consistent with the 4-5 year generational cycle for Wi-Fi. That – of course – does not mean that Wi-Fi technology vendors such as Intel are not working full speed ahead on the new standard.
They certainly are – as evidenced by Intel’s recently released Wi-Fi white paper (available for download here). The white paper reflects what has so far been agreed in the Draft 1.0 version of IEEE 802.11bn (technically and according to IEEE rules the name is still P802.11bn since it is as yet not an approved standard). The author of the paper is Carlos Cordeiro – Intel Fellow & Wireless CTO Client Computing Group – and he says progress is excellent but that there’s still plenty of work to do.
“Within the IEEE 802.11 working group we’ve had almost 9,000 comments to the first draft, which sounds high. And it is high, but this is normal at this stage of the process. It’s an exciting process because we truly believe that Wi-Fi 8 will be – exactly as we’ve laid out – ultra-reliable,” Carlos Cordeiro says.
It’s all in the paper but in essence the Wi-Fi 8 value-proposition includes optimised networking, determinism, stronger security/privacy, and – of course – AI enablement. We look forward to bringing a lot more updates on Wi-Fi 8 as the work expands and the standard matures.
/Claus.
