Wi-Fi Alliance® Delivers Wi-Fi 6E Certification Program

Wi-Fi® interoperability in 6 GHz promotes worldwide innovation and diverse ecosystem

Austin, TX (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) - Wi-Fi Alliance® certification for Wi-Fi 6E is now available to deliver interoperability for devices operating in the 6 GHz spectrum. Interoperability certification for Wi-Fi 6E – as part of Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6™ – is introduced as global momentum for Wi-Fi® operation in the 6 GHz band increases daily. Wi-Fi 6E brings the immense benefits of 6 GHz spectrum to consumers, device manufacturers, and service providers as the band is being made available around the world. Wi-Fi Alliance certification helps ensure users receive a secure, reliable, and interoperable experience with Wi-Fi 6E devices.

Following the decision by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission to open 1200 MHz of 6 GHz spectrum for Wi-Fi use, the U.K., Europe, Chile, South Korea, and the United Arab Emirates have also made the decision to deliver 6 GHz for Wi-Fi. Countries including Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Taiwan, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, and Jordan are quickly progressing towards opening 6 GHz for unlicensed operation. Wi-Fi Alliance is delivering on its promise to make certification for Wi-Fi 6E products available as the spectrum becomes available. Multiple product vendors are already announcing Wi-Fi 6E devices that make use of the superwide 160 MHz channels and uncongested bandwidth in 6 GHz to deliver multigigabit, low latency Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ provides a standards-based approach for product vendors to introduce secure and interoperable Wi-Fi 6E products throughout the world, helping to create a diverse device ecosystem.

“Wi-Fi 6E will see rapid adoption in 2021 with more than 338 million devices entering the market, and nearly 20 percent of all Wi-Fi 6 device shipments supporting 6 GHz by 2022,” said Phil Solis, research director at IDC. “This year, we expect to see new Wi-Fi 6E chipsets from several companies, and a variety of new Wi-Fi 6E smartphones, PCs, and laptops in the first quarter of 2021 followed by TVs and VR product announcements midyear.”

Wi-Fi 6E certification utilizes cutting-edge WPA3™ security that continually evolves to address market needs. WPA3 has recently been updated to support even more robust password generation, mitigate additional attacks, and further protect and maintain privacy on Wi-Fi networks. Wi-Fi 6E extends into the 6 GHz band the capabilities of Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6, including orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA), target wake time (TWT), and multi-user multiple input, multiple output (MU-MIMO). These features all benefit from the additional 6 GHz spectrum capacity and the availability of up to seven superwide 160 MHz channels to move more data and deliver high-bandwidth Wi-Fi 6E applications including unified communications, AR/VR, and holographic video. Wi-Fi 6E delivers lower latency to satisfy industrial IoT and enterprise environment requirements. Wi-Fi 6E brings additional capacity, speed, and reduced latency for critical activities such as telecommuting, telepresence, and distance learning.

A new animation highlights the role of Wi-Fi 6E in delivering Wi-Fi innovation.

“Worldwide interoperability for Wi-Fi 6E devices promotes rapid adoption and innovation in 6 GHz,” said Edgar Figueroa, president and CEO, Wi-Fi Alliance. “Users will soon experience unprecedented Wi-Fi that significantly improves applications and delivers new use cases that will change their connected experiences.”

Member companies providing interoperability test bed devices that are among the first Wi-Fi 6E certified products include: Broadcom, Intel, MaxLinear, MediaTek, Qualcomm, and Quantenna.

For more information, please visit: www.wi-fi.org/discover-wi-fi/wi-fi-certified-6.

Industry support for Wi-Fi 6E certification:

“Wi-Fi 6E will dramatically improve the quality of home connectivity for service providers and their customers. Wi-Fi 6E provides more spectrum and larger channel bandwidth with increased capacity to support more devices at far faster speeds. It is a critical and timely development as more people rely on Wi-Fi for working from home, distance learning, telemedicine, home entertainment, and more. Airties is proud to support Wi-Fi Alliance’s new Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 program for the next-generation of 6 GHz devices.” – Metin Taskin, CTO of Airties

“Over the past two decades, we’ve been at the forefront of Wi-Fi innovation and advocacy to meet the business-critical needs of the enterprise. As such, we’re committed to delivering a full portfolio of high performing Wi-Fi 6E certified APs that take advantage of the greater system capacity, lower interference, and increased data rates the 6 GHz spectrum provides. As we continue to invest in Wi-Fi 6E to support outdoor, hospitality and remote deployments, customers will be able to take advantage of the emerging, next-generation use cases for 6 GHz while guaranteeing performance for latency-sensitive, high-bandwidth, and IoT services.” – Gayle Levin, Senior Product Marketing Manager for Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company

“Wi-Fi 6E is the best thing to happen to Wi-Fi since its inception. Wi-Fi 6E will allow enough spectrum for many neighbors’ overlapping Wi-Fi streams to broadcast simultaneously without interfering with each other. For most households this means more reliable and higher capacity connectivity without wires.” – Tuncay Cil, Chief Strategy Officer, ASSIA

“Wi-Fi operation in the 6 GHz band translates to greater network performance with fast speeds and improved security for a host of current and emerging use cases. With the certification availability for Wi-Fi 6E devices, connectivity providers like Boingo can more rapidly bring the promise of next generation Wi-Fi to dense connected environments like major airports, stadiums, military bases and multifamily communities.” – Dr. Derek Peterson, chief technology officer, Boingo

"Wi-Fi 6E ushers in the next 20 years of Wi-Fi. The pristine 6 GHz band with advanced sixth generation Wi-Fi features can now deliver over 2 Gbps to your hands. Digitally immersive AR/VR experiences in socially disruptive applications like telemedicine and education are now a reality with Wi-Fi 6E. Broadcom congratulates Wi-Fi Alliance on this pivotal milestone. We are also honored that the BCM4389, which the FCC recently authorized as the first Wi-Fi device to operate in the 6 GHz band, is in the Wi-Fi 6E certification testbed. We look forward to the exciting products launching this year powered by our full portfolio of Wi-Fi 6E chipsets spanning phones, routers and enterprise access points." – Vijay Nagarajan, Vice President of Marketing, Wireless Communications & Connectivity Division, Broadcom

“We welcome the announcement of Wi-Fi 6E certification. Wi-Fi 6E will ensure a better user experience, providing much needed increase Quality of Service using the additional spectrum. The Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 certification program, with the additional option for Wi-Fi 6E, will ensure interoperability of devices using the 6 GHz band. CEVA has contributed to the incredible growth of the Wi-Fi market, including Wi-Fi 4, 5, 6 and now Wi-Fi 6E. We are proud to have licensed our RivieraWaves Wi-Fi IP and platforms to a number of major semiconductor companies addressing a broad range of market segments including wearables, medical, IoT, smart home, access points and gateways.” – Ange Aznar, VP & GM of Wireless IoT BU at CEVA

“Wi-Fi 6E is not just a major step forward for Wi-Fi, but will be instrumental as we build the Internet of the future. Cisco is proud to work alongside Wi-Fi Alliance to ensure the 6 GHz spectrum is available for unlicensed use, providing a foundation for unlimited innovation. Wi-Fi 6E represents significant advancements in security, reliability and performance, which has never been more important as Wi-Fi traffic continues to grow exponentially.” – Matt MacPherson, Wireless CTO at Cisco

“Wi-Fi is vital to our customers particularly during this time when so many have transitioned to working, learning, and getting all their entertainment at home. With the new generation of Wi-Fi 6E devices, we are excited about the potential to deliver faster speeds and more capacity to take full advantage of the newly available spectrum. We applaud the FCC for enabling the additional spectrum and thank Wi-Fi Alliance for the Wi-Fi 6E certification that will help us deliver even better customer experiences.” – Matthew Zelesko, Chief Technology Officer, Comcast Cable

“Wi-Fi 6E stands ready to transform industries via the widespread availability of deterministic, low-latency, unlicensed-band access using channels 4-16x wider than available in the traditional bands. As ever, Wi-Fi Alliance leads the way in ensuring the entire ecosystem is prepared to support that transformation. We look forward to ongoing collaboration with Wi-Fi Alliance to help drive this next phase of Wi-Fi industry growth.” – Pramod Badjate, Senior Vice President and General Manager, RUCKUS Business, CommScope

“CommScope has been fundamental in helping the world’s service providers deploy Wi-Fi solutions for the last 20 years and 2021 will be no different. We expect to introduce our first Wi-Fi 6E access point and gateways later this year in both service provider and retail markets. The rapid emergence of Wi-Fi 6E based consumer value applications and clients will be key in driving consumer adoption and use of Wi-Fi 6E. We are committed to developing Wi-Fi 6E for whole home meshing networks, deterministic video applications and smart media devices, and new low latency services on these platforms next year. We also expect Wi-Fi 6E to gain market momentum in 2022 as more countries authorize the use of 6 GHz spectrum. Wi-Fi 6E solutions will share the stage with dual-band Wi-Fi 6 to create a toolbox of cost and performance effective solutions for the world’s service providers and retail consumers.” – Charles Cheevers, CTO, Home Networks, CommScope

“Wi-Fi Alliance certification programs are essential to ensure confidence around Wi-Fi device interoperability. New Wi-Fi 6E capability represents one of the single most important advancements in recent wireless history and is critical to helping address the growing demand for capacity, broadband access, and new usages. We are delighted our Intel® Wi-Fi 6E AX210 product will be the first PC client solution to receive Wi-Fi 6E certification, and that its use in the Wi-Fi Alliance certification process will help enable amazing experiences with future Wi-Fi 6E devices.” – Eric McLaughlin VP, Client Computing Group; GM, Wireless Solutions Group, Intel Corporation

“We have been waiting for this moment for over a decade! The opening of a new band, 6 GHz, is going to be a game changer for people, enterprise, a wide swath of industry sectors. Faster speeds, lower latency, higher capacity, are just some of the benefits of using Wi-Fi 6E certified networking products. At Linksys, we believe the combination of Mesh and Wi-Fi 6E will truly unlock the full power of Wi-Fi 6E into seamless and fast connectivity to all corners of the home and businesses. Our first Wi-Fi 6E product, the Linksys AXE8400, to launch in Spring of 2021 has already been recognized by CES Innovation Awards for its ability to manage the congestion of tomorrow’s traffic. By 2024 the average home is expected to have 44 connected devices and Wi-Fi 6E future proofs these capacity needs.” – Dave Stritzinger, General Manager, Linksys

“MaxLinear is proud to be part of the Wi-Fi 6E certification testbed from Wi-Fi Alliance and also an enabler of Wi-Fi 6E infrastructure for countries that have already enabled 6GHz. We expect Wi-Fi 6E to transform communication networks and extend the user experience by enabling faster speeds, higher capacity and lower latency with no congestion from legacy devices when operating in the newly available 1200 MHz of spectrum in the 6 GHz band. The announcement shows our unwavering commitment to the development and enablement of innovative solutions that drive next generation communication systems.” – Doron Tal, General Manager Broadband Access at MaxLinear

“MediaTek has one of the broadest portfolios of Wi-Fi connectivity solutions, and we will continue to expand our portfolio with Wi-Fi 6E certified solutions as part of the Wi-Fi Alliance’s new Wi-Fi 6E certification program. At MediaTek our goal is to give our customers the best, newest technology and bring consumers even faster and more seamless connectivity. Currently, MediaTek’s Wi-Fi chipsets are found in hundreds of millions of smartphones, smart TVs, tablets, routers and IoT devices from the industry’s top brands. Our solutions support new unlicensed 6GHz band, and the latest Wi-Fi features for enhanced performance (1024-QAM and OFDMA), the highest capacity (MU-MIMO) and longer battery life (TWT) and deliver the highest level of security (WPA3).” – Alan Hsu, Corporate Vice President & General Manager, Intelligent Connectivity BU, MediaTek

“With their ability to access the uncongested 6 GHz band, Wi-Fi 6E certified devices will unleash a game-changing boost in capacity and performance for both home and enterprise Wi-Fi deployments. With our new Wi-Fi 6E tri-band chipset, NXP is proud to play a key role in enabling the first wave of Wi-Fi 6E solutions, which will lay the foundation for a wave of new and exciting use cases and devices.” – Larry Olivas, Head of Marketing for Wireless Connectivity Solutions at NXP Semiconductors.

“ON Semiconductor has been an early supporter of Wi-Fi Alliance’s testing and certification programs. As Wi-Fi 6E availability ushers in the benefits of the 6GHz spectrum, innovative applications will leverage this high-performance connectivity with greater capacity, increased speed and lower latency for the home, enterprise, industrial and automotive markets.” – Irvind Ghai, vice president of marketing, Wireless Connectivity and Signal Processing Division at ON Semiconductor

“Applying the already transformative characteristics of Wi-Fi 6 into the 6 GHz band brings massive opportunities to consumers and businesses by evolving capacity, latency, and overall performance. This Wi-Fi 6E certification program is a critical milestone to make 6 GHz operation a commercial reality for users around the world, and Qualcomm Technologies is ready to support at scale with client and networking solutions set to deliver powerfully immersive experiences as we transition into a bold new era of wireless connectivity.” – Rahul Patel, senior vice president and general manager, Connectivity and Networking, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc.

“Samsung is proud to work together with the Wi-Fi Alliance in support of the Wi-Fi 6E launch to create a faster and smoother connected experience. As a leading innovator of mobile experiences, we were among the very first to offer Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 products and look forward to introducing new Galaxy devices able to take advantage of the increased speeds, reduced latency and expanded bandwidth that comes with connecting to frequencies in the 6 GHz band very soon.” – JM Choi, VP/Head of Group/Convergence R&D Group, Samsung Electronics

About Wi-Fi Alliance®
Wi-Fi Alliance® is the worldwide network of companies that brings you Wi-Fi®. Members of our collaboration forum come together from across the Wi-Fi ecosystem with the shared vision to connect everyone and everything, everywhere, while providing the best possible user experience. Since 2000, Wi-Fi Alliance has completed more than 50,000 Wi-Fi certifications. The Wi-Fi CERTIFIED™ seal of approval designates products with proven interoperability, backward compatibility, and the highest industry-standard security protections in place. Today, Wi-Fi carries more than half of the internet’s traffic in an ever-expanding variety of applications. Wi-Fi Alliance continues to drive the adoption and evolution of Wi-Fi, which billions of people rely on every day. www.wi-fi.org.

© 2021 GlobeNewswire, Inc. All Rights Reserved.