Is the expansion speed of WiFi 6 really much faster than 5G?

In daily life, we may encounter the following situation: when multiple people are connected to the same WiFi at the same time, some people watch videos and chat at the same time, and the network is very smooth, but when you want to open a certain web page, it takes a long time to load. When you complain to your friends about the poor network, you will be teased: Maybe you have a bad character, you can't do it.

But is it really because of bad character?

Actually, it is not! This is a shortcoming of current WiFi transmission technology.

From a technical perspective, the transmission technology used by the previous generation of WiFi is SU-MIMO (Single User Multiple Input Multiple Output), which may cause the transmission rate of each device connected to WiFi to vary greatly. The transmission technology of WiFi 6 is OFDMA+8x8 MU-MIMO (Multi-User Multiple Input Multiple Output for Uplink and Downlink). This problem will not occur when using a WiFi router, and other people watching videos will not affect your downloading or browsing the web. This is one of the reasons why WiFi can rival 5G technology and develop rapidly.

It has been two years since the Wi-Fi Alliance launched the next-generation 802.11ax standard and announced that its name would be simplified to WiFi 6. Now, when we mention WiFi 6, we are all familiar with it. Some people say that WiFi 6 has developed rapidly in the past two years, and its expansion speed far exceeds that of 5G.

Whether this is true or not is a matter of opinion. However, at least the development speed of WiFi6 is fast, which is undeniable. So, what is the current status of WiFi6 development? Let's take a look at it below:

The Gigabit Era is Coming, and the WiFi 6 Industry is Entering a New Stage of Development

Some time ago, a piece of news about China Telecom's centralized procurement on China Telecom's official website attracted much attention:

Figure 1: China Telecom's 2020 Tianyi Gateway 4.0 centralized procurement

Source: C114 Communications Network

China Telecom will purchase a total of 27.468 million units of Tianyi Gateway 4.0 (1G-PON) without WiFi, dual-band WiFi4&5, dual-band WiFi6; Tianyi Gateway 4.0 (10G-PON) without WiFi, dual-band WiFi6 and other products. Among them, 14.326 million units are required to support dual-band WiFi6 function, accounting for more than 52%.

This is the first large-scale centralized procurement of WiFi6 products in China!

Of course, China Telecom is not the only one that has plans for WiFi6. In fact, the three major operators have already announced their gigabit plans:

On May 17, 2020, China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom held press conferences respectively, announcing that they would promote WiFi network upgrades and deploy new business models for WiFi 6. China Mobile said it would promote gigabit platform capabilities and clearly stated that it would centrally purchase WiFi 6 equipment in 2020 to realize WiFi 6 commercial use; China Telecom and China Unicom both stated that they would launch the "broadband + 5G + gigabit WiFi" three-gigabit upgrade and clearly deploy WiFi 6.

Application scenarios are gradually improving

WiFi 6 is not only an upgrade to the previous generation of technology, but is also expected to open up new application markets.

(1) Home/Enterprise Office Scenario

In this field, WiFi needs to compete with traditional cellular network technology and other wireless technologies such as LoRa. It can be seen that based on the very good domestic community broadband, WiFi6 has obvious advantages in home scenarios and is very competitive. At present, whether it is corporate office equipment or home entertainment equipment, it is often received through 5G CPE to receive local WiFi signal coverage. The new generation of WiFi 6 reduces frequency interference and improves network efficiency and capacity, ensuring 5G signals for multiple concurrent users and ensuring network stability when conversions increase.

(2) Scenarios with high bandwidth requirements such as VR/AR

In recent years, emerging applications such as VR/AR, 4K/8K have high bandwidth requirements. The former requires a bandwidth of more than 100Mbps, and the latter requires a bandwidth of more than 50Mbps. If the impact of the actual network environment on WiFi6 is considered, it can be comparable to the hundreds of Mbps to more than 1Gbps in actual commercial tests of 5G, which is completely in the high-bandwidth demand scenario.

(3) Industrial production and manufacturing scenarios

The large bandwidth and low latency functions of WiFi6 expand the application scenarios of WiFi from enterprise office networks to industrial production scenarios, such as: ensuring seamless roaming of factory AGVs, supporting real-time video acquisition of industrial cameras, etc. In addition, the device can support more IoT protocol connections through external plug-in cards, realizing the integration of IoT and Wi-Fi and saving costs.

The market and user scale are gradually expanding

(1) Chip

In the past two years, the demand for WiFi chips in the IoT fields such as smart homes and smart cities has increased, and the shipment volume of WiFi chips in my country has rebounded. In addition to traditional consumer electronic terminals and IoT applications, WiFi technology is also highly applicable in new high-speed application scenarios such as VR/AR, ultra-high-definition video, and industrial manufacturing. It is expected that WiFi chips for such applications will continue to increase in the next five years, and the entire WiFi chip market in my country is expected to be close to 27 billion yuan in 2023.

As mentioned above, the application scenarios of WiFi 6 are gradually improving. It is estimated that the market size of WiFi 6 will reach 24 billion yuan in 2023. This means that chips that support the WiFi 6 standard account for nearly 90% of the total WiFi chips.

Figure 2: my country's WiFi chip market size (by sales: 100 million yuan)

Source: Compiled by Electronics Enthusiasts

(2) Router

From the perspective of market segments, the market size of router/gateway WiFi 6 chips in my country was approximately RMB 300 million in 2019, and is expected to reach RMB 4.5 billion in 2023; the market size of medium- and high-speed data card WiFi 6 chips was approximately RMB 530 million in 2019, and is expected to exceed RMB 10 billion in 2023; the market size of medium- and low-speed IoT WiFi 6 chips was approximately RMB 20 million in 2019, and is expected to reach RMB 670 million in 2023; the market size of smartphone/watch WiFi 6 chips was approximately RMB 360 million in 2019, and is expected to exceed RMB 5 billion in 2023.

Table 1: my country's WiFi chip market size by segment (by sales: 100 million yuan)

Source: Compiled by Electronics Enthusiasts

Table 2: Some router brands and models that support WiFi6

Source: IoT Media

(3) Terminal equipment

At present, WiFi technology is still mainly used in traditional consumer electronic terminal devices such as mobile phones, tablet computers, and laptops. In the past five years, the market size of consumer electronic terminal devices has been declining. Taking mobile phones as an example, my country's mobile phone shipments reached a peak in the past five years in 2016, and from 2017 to 2019, my country's mobile phone shipments declined year by year, which had an adverse impact on the WiFi chip market. This can be seen from Figure 2.

At this stage, the distribution rate of Wi-Fi 6 in smartphones and laptops is already very high. The following is the brand and model information of some smartphones and laptops compiled based on network information.

Table 3: Some smartphone brands and models that support WiFi 6

Source: IoT Media

Table 4: Some laptop brands and models that support WiFi 6

Source: IoT Media

Final Thoughts

In the past less than two years, the development speed of WiFi6 has been obvious to all. From new mobile phones of various brands to routers, products supporting WiFi6 technology continue to emerge.

Looking ahead, the golden combination of "5G as the main external and WiFi6 as the main internal" created by operators will greatly improve the user's Internet experience. The widespread application of the 5G era is also promoting the full deployment of WiFi6. On the one hand, WiFi6, as a more cost-effective solution, can make up for the shortcomings of 5G; on the other hand, WiFi6 provides a 5G-like indoor platform, which will stimulate the development of smart cities, the Internet of Things, VR/AR and other applications. In the end, more WiFi6 products will emerge like mushrooms after rain.