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Wi-Fi 6 will upgrade your workhorse wireless network

• https://www.cnet.com

5G is great, but it's a big Wi-Fi upgrade that'll likely help you out sooner with faster speeds and longer range at home, school and work.

We get it. 5G is a big deal. But honestly, you likely use Wi-Fi networks as much or more with your phone and PC, so tune out the 5G noise for a moment and appreciate what's coming with Wi-Fi 6.

"While 5G is getting much of the limelight, Wi-Fi 6 will have a bigger impact in our connected lives -- and sooner," said FeibusTech analyst Mike Feibus.

Wi-Fi 6, the consumer-friendly new name for the tech standard actually called 802.11ax, won't just boost data-transfer speeds -- though it'll do that, by a factor of three or so. It'll also reach into corners of our house farther away from network gear, better handle the crush of people at airports and stadiums, and sidestep interference from your neighbors' noisy network. On your phone or laptop, it should save your battery life, too.

No wonder wireless chip designer Qualcomm is betting big on Wi-Fi 6. The company on Tuesday showed off a quartet of processors that'll bring Wi-Fi 6 to a new range of network equipment -- and a number of partnerships designed to telegraph its clout with the technology. 

"Wi-Fi is ubiquitous and widely accepted," said Rahul Patel, leader of Qualcomm's Wi-Fi chip division in an exclusive interview with CNET ahead of Qualcomm's Wi-Fi event. But with more devices in our houses, and activities like gaming and streaming video putting new demands on networks, there's a network traffic jam, he said.

"Cord cutting is real. What was typically one TV in the average home is now five or six different screens," Patel said. "There's a tremendous amount of content sourced through the home that wasn't before. There's a congestion problem."

Upgrades -- if you pay

One of Wi-Fi 6's biggest advances is OFDMA -- orthogonal frequency division multiple access, if you must know -- an efficiency-boosting technology purloined from mobile networks. Another is MU MIMO, short for multiple user, multiple input, multiple output. And then there's 1024 QAM -- quadrature amplitude modulation -- which bumps up data rates by 30%.

Check my colleague Ry Crist's Wi-Fi 6 explainer for all the details. But here's what it boils down to, compared with Wi-Fi 5, aka 802.11ac:

Double the range -- though Qualcomm has built-in mesh networking technology that'll let multiple wireless access points cooperate to bathe your house in Wi-Fi radio signals.


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