Want Wi-Fi 7? Try Renting It From Your Internet Service Provider

20.09.2023 - 08:02 / pcmag.com

While your internet service provider can no longer charge you a fee for using your own Wi-Fi router, if you’re like many subscribers, you probably still fork over $5 or $10 per month anyway. It’s true that there are a few benefits to renting over buying your own router or mesh system, including not having to worry about compatibility or obsolescence. 

Now, you can now add Wi-Fi 7 to that list of benefits. With the official capabilities of the new bleeding-edge wireless standard still being hashed out, many companies have already begun launching Wi-Fi 7 products, including Qualcomm, which on Wednesday teased a new Wi-Fi 7 ISP gateway that it says will be available starting next summer to select fiber internet customers.

The new gateway has all the features you’d expect from a high-end wireless router. These include the ability to operate simultaneously on the 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6Hz bands, the latter of which is reserved for Wi-Fi 6E and soon Wi-Fi 7 devices. It also includes support for 320MHz channels and has a maximum throughput of 33 gigabits per second (Gbps) across all bands. 

Compare those specs with a mainstream Wi-Fi 6 router, which only operates on the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, and is typically limited to total throughput of 15Gbps or less.

The Wi-Fi 7 router portion is only half of what the gateway can do, though. The other half is for your ISP, with support for internet plans of up to 10Gbps, or 10 times faster than the gigabit fiber and cable plans that ISPs commonly advertise today. 

Charter Communications expects to roll out the new gateway starting next year to customers of its Spectrum internet service—ranked third in PCMag’s survey of the best ISPs—the company announced Wednesday. Across the pond, British Telecom also plans to offer the gateway to EE customers in 2024. Neither company offered details on pricing.

The new Qualcomm gateway is an attempt to fix a conundrum that many households face: They pay for fast internet, but can’t always take advantage of it because of Wi-Fi connectivity issues or routers that don’t provide enough signal strength to cover the entire home. 

“Wi-Fi often times is a black box” that ISPs have no control over if the signal is going to a modem and then a customer’s own router, said Ganesh Swaminathan, Qualcomm’s general manager of wireless infrastructure and networking. 

Gateways combining the ISP connection and a Wi-Fi router aren't new; they have attempted to solve this problem for people who rent them by placing the router and the network interface in a single device, where tech support teams can better troubleshoot any issues. The benefit of a gateway, Swaminathan said, is that service providers can “extend into the home for seamless end-to-end traffic