Wi-fi 6 factory trials hit record speed of 700Mbps

Researchers have hit speeds of 700Mbps in the first real-world trial of Wi-fi 6.

The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA), an industry group promoting Wi-fi use, claims it achieved 700Mbps while testing the new technology in the Mettis Aerospace factory in Redditch.

They performed a variety of intensive tasks designed to test the true potential of Wi-fi 6 (technically called 802.11ax).

These included streaming 4K video from a webcam, sending large video files across a network, making a video call on a phone, and measuring machinery on a tablet using virtual reality (pictured).

Tiago Rodrigues, head of WBA, said the tests marked “a significant milestone for the adoption of Wi-fi 6”. He explained that the Mettis factory was chosen because it’s an “especially challenging environment for wireless communications, with furnaces, presses and heat, a lot of moving heavy machinery and the presence of dust and in-air particulates”.

He added: “If Wi-fi 6 can deliver highly reliable, high quality and high bandwidth communications in this type of factory environment, then it can deliver it almost anywhere”.

While the theoretical top speed of Wi-fi 6 is 10Gbps (10,000Mbps), this will be much slower in real-world environments like homes, businesses and factories.

However, this is dramatically faster than Wi-fi 5 (802.11ac), which is what your current router probably uses. This has a theoretical maximum of 1.3Gbps, but in reality peaks at about 200Mbps.

The main benefit of Wi-fi 6 is that it splits the signal across multiple devices, keeping speeds fast in homes where two or more people use the internet simultaneously, particularly when streaming high-definition video.

It should become widely available to the public in 2020, when manufacturers release routers and computers that work with the technology.