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EE is working with Qualcomm to add Wi-Fi 7 to consumer broadband hubs

theregister.com

51–60 of 124 posts

Re: EE is working with Qualcomm to add Wi-Fi 7 to consumer broadband hubs

#51
In the UK supposedly they are switching off Landlines in 2025, so anyone that still wants a "landline phone" (as opposed to mobile) is going to have to do VOIP

Its going to be a shitshow because everyone's Grandma is now going to trying to get VOIP phones working and domestic routers are just a load of crap that crash all the time.

edit: source: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/uk-transition-from-analogue-to-d...

Re: EE is working with Qualcomm to add Wi-Fi 7 to consumer broadband hubs

#52
post #16
post #6

> Wi-Fi 6's comparable maximum rate is 9.6Gbps. There is no consumer problem of today, no domestic use case imaginable, where 50Gbps works where 10 will not. iphone has just 2x2 MIMO antena so even with WiFi 6 can get only max 2.4Gbps (1.2Gbps per antena - someone correct me if I'm wrong). And those are only max speed in labs in perfect conditions. So there is definitely use case for WiFi 7 in consumer devices e.g. V…

>Higher bandwidth should also make connection more robust Nope. Higher bandwidth could mean two things: Larger channel size: larger channels have a higher noise floor and are are therefore less robust Faster throughput: Faster throughput generally means larger channels (as above) or various techniques to get more bits/Hz (such as more complex modulation), both of which are less robust

I think I read this somewhere but I am struggling to recall where, so hopefully I didn't dream this: I believe the larger channels are much, much larger and include adaptive techniques to dynamically exclude noisy regions within channel. It can afford to entirely sacrifice bands in this way because the channels are much larger.

Re: EE is working with Qualcomm to add Wi-Fi 7 to consumer broadband hubs

#53
post #38

I would rather have ethernet in every room and a less sophisticated/powerful wifi. It seems ethernet is fairly rare even in new construction.

Ethernet is how I see the full ~1Gig for up and down at home. I trust the security of ethernet over wifi more too, although at home I am less concerned on wifi.

Re: EE is working with Qualcomm to add Wi-Fi 7 to consumer broadband hubs

#54

What annoys me is this: I have a TMobile iPhone 15 Pro and three Erro Pro 6 units, all with wired backhaul. Over the wire, my fast.com results repeatedly reach ~1.2 Gigs. Over Wifi, from a foot away, my results are around 650Mbps. The local church recently had T-Mobile install a 5G antenna array around it. I'm about two blocks away. Over 5G, I get 1.4Gigs down, though my walls, through an entire house between us. But…

That’s because iPhones (and all other smartphones) use 2x2 mimo WiFi arrays. The only way you’ll get > 1 GBPS on WiFi is on a device with 3x3 or 4x4 mimo WiFi. 2x2 is used because it’s less power intensive and takes up less physical space in the device.

Are there smartphones with 3x3 or 4x4 mimo wifi?

Re: EE is working with Qualcomm to add Wi-Fi 7 to consumer broadband hubs

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you eccentrically expect to use your telephone line to make telephone calls. In which case you are rather tied to their router to power their propietary VoIP landline service.

Is that different from the landline service they offer directly from the ONT? My Openreach ONT has a telephone jack as well as the RJ45. I've never actually used the telephone jack, but I'd imagine I would get a voip-backed fake dial tone if I did?

I used to have BT Broadband FTTP in a previous house, which had a bidirectional fibre into a box of some sort, which was battery powered, and went into another box which emerged as a telephone jack, and an RJ45.

This was 2016. The battery box was there to provide power and service for a landline in a power cut.

My router plugged into that RJ45 with a pppoe client, username "bthomehub@btbroadband.com" and looks like any old password ("BTSux" for example)

Re: EE is working with Qualcomm to add Wi-Fi 7 to consumer broadband hubs

#56
post #6

> Wi-Fi 6's comparable maximum rate is 9.6Gbps. There is no consumer problem of today, no domestic use case imaginable, where 50Gbps works where 10 will not. iphone has just 2x2 MIMO antena so even with WiFi 6 can get only max 2.4Gbps (1.2Gbps per antena - someone correct me if I'm wrong). And those are only max speed in labs in perfect conditions. So there is definitely use case for WiFi 7 in consumer devices e.g. V…

The 2.4Gbps phy rate is nowhere close to usable bandwidth. With wide channels, good reception, not too much interference, and no really old hardware interfering with your connection, you can get over 1gbps on it, but the theoretical maximum is irrelevant to most use cases.

In practice, most people don't have their routers set up for 160MHz bands (because older devices don't support it and will fall back to the much slower 2.4GHz otherwise) and in some areas near radars you can't even use those bands in the first place. However, with modern equipment, you can definitely get plenty of bandwidth over WiFi 6.

The 50Gbps number stated also assumes very wide channels and even more recent devices, if WiFi 6 isn't doing it for you today, WiFi 7 won't be that much better.

Re: EE is working with Qualcomm to add Wi-Fi 7 to consumer broadband hubs

#57

The home upgrade that most folks need is a symmetrical fibre optic of some kind, with open-access [1] and either municipal [2] or non-profit at OSI Layer 1/2, with competition at OSI Layer 3. I think at this point 100Mbps would be the minimum, with diminishing returns once you start getting above 1Gbps (but available with XG(S)-PON(G.98(0)7)/NG-PON2(G.989)/HSP(G.9804) and 802.3ca). It was technically possible to wire…

> It was technically possible to wire up entire countries and continents for electricity and phone service, so I doubt there are any technical hurdles in doing the same with fibre. France is aiming at 100% fiber coverage. I spent some time in a very remote, very rural part of France, far from the closest village... And I had fiber to the home (2 Gbps down // 600 Mbps up).

> […] far from the closest village... And I had fiber to the home (2 Gbps down // 600 Mbps up).

You were probably not surprised that the dwelling you were in had electricity. I think at some point having fibre should also be as unsurprising.

Re: EE is working with Qualcomm to add Wi-Fi 7 to consumer broadband hubs

#58
post #38

I would rather have ethernet in every room and a less sophisticated/powerful wifi. It seems ethernet is fairly rare even in new construction.

To be fair it's a lot less cumbersome to do yourself than a full on electrical installation.

Most diy shops will sell baseboards with precut pockets for cable routing.

For any reasonably hands on technical person it's a 1 or 2 day job ripping baseboards and installing new ones with CAT6 cabling behind.

Of course it's definitely the sort of thing you can only get away with if you own the house.

Re: EE is working with Qualcomm to add Wi-Fi 7 to consumer broadband hubs

#59
post #38

I would rather have ethernet in every room and a less sophisticated/powerful wifi. It seems ethernet is fairly rare even in new construction.

When I built my house in 2014, they told us we got 2 phone jacks that were cat5e that we could convert to ethernet if we wanted. That was the default they provided, we upgraded to 24 ports throughout the house, but I can't imagine this is common.

Two years ago when we were thinking about buying a new house, we toured a bunch of homes that were built in the past decade, probably over a hundred houses. Less than 10 had more than 1 or 2 ethernet ports. Only 2 had ethernet in most rooms.

Re: EE is working with Qualcomm to add Wi-Fi 7 to consumer broadband hubs

#60

Generally I disagree with this sentiment. Do not wait to make a pipe bigger because it is full. We had this issue with phone lines and then CAT5 and CAT still sucks because commercial equipment is so expensive. How can the world innovate in-home technology when it's not cheap and ubiquitous. I can definitely imagine things I can do with that in-house, not just for me but for other adopters.

I agree with you that we shouldn't wait to upgrade until after we are facing constraints, but the current state of home networking is so robust that we're absolutely nowhere close to the pipe being full. I am in no way opposed to the development and deployment of Wi-Fi 7, but I do have a problem with it being marketed as a major upgrade for consumers, when the average consumer is more likely to be adversely affected by worsening radio coverage than benefit from the increased maximum speed.
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