Something to look forward to: At a company event this week, MediaTek confirmed it would demo Wi-Fi 7 at CES next January, becoming one of the first companies to dip its toes into the upcoming standard. Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E are still pretty new, and consumer adoption of Wi-Fi 7 is a ways off.

PC Magazine notes the confirmation came from a slide during a presentation at the MediaTek Summit on Friday. The keynote mentions that Wi-Fi 7 should increase speeds by a factor of 2.4, compared to Wi-Fi 6E, which the IEEE introduced last year.

"We are going to participate in Wi-Fi 7 technology," said Associate VP for Product Marketing James Chen. "We want to be the leaders."

Chen said that the higher speed applies when using the same number of antennas as Wi-Fi 6E. He also pointed out that Wi-Fi 7 will be better at blocking interference from neighboring networks. Even though MediaTek intends to demo Wi-Fi 7, also known as 802.11be, next year, a paper suggests the IEEE won't finish standards for the technology until 2024. The report also says Wi-Fi 7 could bring speeds of up to 40 gigabits per second.

Qualcomm started talking about Wi-Fi 7 back in 2019 before Wi-Fi 6 was even available. According to CNET, the company's vice president of technology, V.K. Jones, said Wi-Fi 7 could reach speeds faster than wired. Jones also said Wi-Fi 7 would be able to use more antennas than Wi-Fi 6, and they won't need to all be bunched up together at one access point. That could help give Wi-Fi 7 a stronger signal across larger spaces. Wi-Fi 7 may even be able to use the 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz bands simultaneously.