Wi-Fi 6 Rollout Expected to Pick Up Steam

Wi-Fi 6, now about 2 years old, should start getting wide adoption among ISPs starting by year's end, with it becoming relatively commonplace in households toward Q2, said Patrick Moreno, Zyxel Communications product marketing manager, during a webinar Thursday. He said many providers remain "in the discovery phase" about Wi-Fi 6. He said the latest generation of Wi-Fi has speeds 30% to 40% faster than Wi-Fi 5 and increased capacity for more connected devices, plus lower latency for time-sensitive applications. He said Wi-Fi 6 routers will be backward compatible for Wi-Fi 4 and 5. A variation -- Wi-Fi 6E, which came out earlier this year -- adds the 6 GHz band, which will help alleviate congestion in the crowded 2.4 GHz band and the starting-to-crowd 5 GHz band, Moreno said. He said 6E gateways and extenders are in development.