Coming Wi-Fi 8 will bring reliability rather than greater speed

Wi-Fi 8 will be a step change in connectivity, if Intel can be believed, and will be able to adapt intelligently to local conditions to deliver a reliable service without the slowdowns users often experience when the network is congested.

The next-gen release of Wi-Fi is not expected to be available in devices for a couple of years, but the industry seems determined that it will fix the issues that meant previous releases did not always live up to user expectations.

"The focus of Wi-Fi has always been on: how can we make it faster? You'll see that with Wi-Fi 8, that's going to change a little bit," said Intel Fellow and wireless chief technology officer Carlos Cordeiro.

This means that the upcoming standard will not increase the peak theoretical data rate and will not introduce wider channels, or higher order modulations compared with Wi-Fi 7. Instead, the ...