MediaTek says it’s testing Wi-Fi 7 technology, first products could arrive in 2023

MediaTek had a lot to talk about near the end of 2021, including the Dimensity 7000 chipset, plans for more MediaTek-powered Chromebooks and Windows laptops, and smart TV hardware. Now the company is working on hardware to support the upcoming Wi-Fi 7 standard, which could start showing up in devices as early as next year.

Wi-Fi 7, also known as IEEE 802.11be, is an upgrade from the existing Wi-Fi 6 (IEEE 802.11ax) standard. The current plan for Wi-Fi 7 adds the ability to utilize 320Mhz channels, 4K quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) technology, multi-user resource unit (MRU) features, and other changes — all while using the same 2.4, 5, and 6GHz bands currently supported by Wi-Fi 6. The new features should result in a theoretical 2.4X speed boost over Wi-Fi 6, though interference from other wireless signals (such as other networks or anything else using 2.4 and 6GHz) will probably cut into that.

MediaTek announced today that it has shown off two demos of Wi-Fi 7 technology to “key customers and industry collaborators.” The company said in a press release, “MediaTek has been involved in the development of the Wi-Fi 7 standard since its inception, and the company is one of the first adopters of Wi-Fi 7 technology. […] Products with Wi-Fi 7 are expected to hit the market starting in 2023.”

The announcement mostly just amounts to MediaTek saying “we’re working on this,” but it does appear to be one of the first public statements from a tech company has made about Wi-Fi 7. Intel’s CTO of Wireless Connectivity, Dr. Carlos Cordeiro, said in a conference last year, “there’s going to be more capacity, again, support for up to 7 gigahertz – and also for the lower bands as well where you could have some IoT applications like sensors that require less bandwidth.”

Even though MediaTek is hoping to ship hardware with Wi-Fi 7 support sometime in 2023, the completed standard for Wi-Fi 7 still isn’t expected until 2024.

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