By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman
Semiconductor giant MediaTek may be going about its Wi-Fi business quietly but make no mistake: The company is now reporting a slew of new deals with many more coming, all powered by MediaTek Wi-Fi 7 Filogic chips. The company says Wi-Fi 7 adoption will accelerate into 4Q2024 and 2025 with many new MediaTek-powered gateways to be launched by Tier-1 service providers across the globe as well as a long list of Wi-Fi 7-enabled smart phones and notebooks.
Worldwide Wi-Fi 7 adoption is racing ahead and one of the companies leading the charge is Taiwan-based semiconductor giant MediaTek. The company doesn’t make a lot of noise about it but is clearly among the Wi-Fi 7 chipset leaders if not the outright leader as far as new Wi-Fi 7 smartphones, notebooks, gateways, and repeaters are concerned. The outlook for the rest of the year looks very promising, MediaTek says.
“We’ve clearly hit the sweet spot with our Wi-Fi 7 chipset features and price points. The Filogic 680 powers Wi-Fi 7 Gateways such 5G CPEs available today from AT&T, Verizon, and Wi-Fi 7 Ethernet Gateways from Lumen in the US and Optus of Australia. Both Filogic 660 and 680 chips will also be powering new fiber gateways for many Tier-1 operators in North America, Europe, and Asia this fall and throughout 2025,” says James Chen, VP Product Technology Marketing at MediaTek.
MediaTek also points out that the Filogic 680-powered “AT&T Internet Air for Business WiFi Extender” constitutes the first time that a major US operator has included an extender (mesh unit) as part of its broadband offering. Broadband service provider Lumen now also offers a mesh unit in the form of the wall-pluggable W1701K, also powered by the Filogic 680 (read more here).
MediaTek says the Filogic 660 is the only dual-band Wi-Fi 7 chipset on the market that allows selection of any two bands for simultaneous operation. Devices can be configured as 4×4, 3×3, or 2×2 according to the ISP’s design preference. Both FiLogic 680 and 660 support zero-wait DFS for better utilisation of the 5GHz band. Both even include a fifth antenna for better range, MediaTek says. MediaTek’s naming convention is such that Filogic 860 includes a host CPU plus the Filogic 660 Wi-Fi chip. Similarly, Filogic 880 includes the Filogic 680 Wi-Fi chip plus host CPU.
More than twenty phones launched with MediaTek Wi-Fi 7 technology
Meanwhile market adoption of Wi-Fi 7 PC clients is also picking up, MediaTek says. The company’s Filogic 360 platform is already powering HP and ASUS laptops including the HP Omnibook Ultra, which is one of the first AI PCs on the market.
At least another fifteen MediaTek-powered Wi-Fi 7-capable PCs are either launched or in the pipeline to be launched in 4Q2024, the company says. Filogic 360 Wi-Fi 7 chips are designed to power notebooks, tablets, gaming consoles, TV streaming sticks, wireless speakers, and more.
Smartphone Wi-Fi 7 adoption is also accelerating with more than twenty phones now featuring MediaTek’s Wi-Fi 7 technology. “All MediaTek Dimensity 9300 SoC chipsets now include our Filogic 380 Wi-Fi 7 chip, which is 2×2 triple-band selectable. supports 360 MHz channels in the 6 GHz band, and is fabricated in a 6 nm process for the best possible power efficiency,” says James Chen. For a provisional list of currently available Dimensity 9300 phones also see here.
/Claus.
