industryopinion
Why it makes sense to start talking to customers
about WiFi 7 right away Rachel Rothwell, senior director UK and Ireland at Zyxel Networks explains why – even though they might not need it right away – it makes sense for resellers and MSPs to start talking to their customers about WiFi 7 almost immediately.
I
f your customers ask you today whether they should buy a WiFi 7 access point, the most sensible answer is: “Not just yet”. There are, after all no laptops or mobile
devices that support it on the market yet. But some customers will want to start testing WiFi 7 right away, so that they can be ready to accommodate the new standard when it does start to become available on new devices. These will start to happen quite soon.
Chipmakers now providing processors that support WiFi 7 to mobile device vendors. The first laptops, tablets and smartphones capable of connecting to WiFi 7 will start to appear by the end of the year and as we move into 2024, there will be many more.
“The first laptops, tablets and
smartphones capable of connecting to WiFi 7 will
Real benefits As that happens, more customers will want to migrate to WiFi 7 – and quite rightly, because it does provide some real benefits for users. As well as being up to five times faster than WiFi 6/6E, the 802.11be standard is much better at supporting high densities of users and giving all of them a speedy, reliable and consistent experience. WiFi7 is ideal for locations where a lot of users are crammed into a relatively small area, such as a conference centre, a sports arena, or a hotel. WiFi 7 does this by making extensive use of the 6GHz spectrum
and a technique called 4096 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), which enables more data to be sent over a single channel, expanding bandwidth. That means much higher transfer rates for rich content such as high definition video. There is a lot more technology I could mention, but the
essential thing you need to know about WiFi 7 is that it is much faster and will give you smoother and much more consistent connections, even in high density environments.
Future proof What WiFi 7 it will also do for everyone who invests in the technology early, is future proof their wireless connectivity. In the fulness of time, WiFi 7 will be what you want to use and what you
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start to appear by the end of the year and as we move into 2024, there will be many more.”
will use, by default, as it’s what your new device will come with and what the network infrastructure is geared-up to support. Zyxel Networks recently became one of the first vendors to launch a WiFi 7 access point. We’ve released thus high performance device to meet the needs of the many customers who will want to start testing WiFi 7 as soon as possible. Let’s be clear WiFi 7 will make a real difference to performance and the reliability of connections in many scenarios. Our first WiFi 7 product (the WBE660S) delivers speeds of up to 22Gbps, and it’s crammed with all kinds of advanced features. The idea of releasing such a powerful device early is to allow customers that want to can make use of WiFi 7’s very high performance the opportunity to test it as soon as possible.
Expanded choice
Over the next year, we’ll significantly expand our WiFi 7 range, providing access points suited to different use-cases and scales of deployment. It’s at this point – when more devices that support WiFi 7 come onto the market – that it will start to make a real difference and a compelling technology for every organisation that wants to future proof its wireless connectivity. Importantly, all our access points will come with support for
our cloud management system, Nebula. This is a key point of note for our MSP partners, as it will enable them to offer remote configuration and management of WiFi 7 access points. The kind of environments in which WiFi 7 will be deployed will be those that need to support high density of connections. For that reason alone, they will be more complex and difficult to manage and in many if not most cases, customers will prefer to put the management of the wireless network into the hands on an expert. While it might not make sense to recommend a WiFi 7 upgrade
to customers just yet, the availability of WiFi 7 access points means that they can start exploring its potential. As more devices that support WiFi 7 come onto the market, it will make more and more sense to upgrade.
November/December 2023 | 15
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