Broadcom ships one billion Wi-Fi 6 and 6E chips

This time last year, the hunger consumers and enterprises had for faster, more efficient Wi-Fi had caught fire, driving us to ship more than 500 million Wi-Fi 6 chips shipped.

Twelve months later, this number has doubled, bringing one billion Wi-Fi 6 and 6E Broadcom chips to individuals and enterprises across the world.

We always knew the possibilities for the next generation of wireless were endless. But as they say, it takes a village. We are grateful to our customers and partners for believing in our ecosystem of chips and turbocharging the world of Wi-Fi.

The journey to here

Over the last several decades, Broadcom has been at the forefront of Wi-Fi development and the innovation of Wi-Fi 6 and 6E Broadcom chips is no different. While the first volume shipments of Wi-Fi 6 chips started a few years ago, the path to revolutionise wireless communications and connectivity started much earlier than that.

In 2017, Broadcom spoke of the possibilities of Wi-Fi 6 - offering six times faster upload speeds, four times faster download speeds, four times better coverage and seven times better battery life than the previous Wi-Fi standard. This pipe dream quickly became a reality.

Our partners trusted our vision and robust ecosystem, enabling us to lead the way to launching some of the world’s first Wi-Fi 6 products.

When Wi-Fi 6 chips were first adopted for enterprises and then first-in-class mobile devices, we were convinced our chips would deliver an experience like no other. Operators caught on and these chips became more mainstream - putting them in the hands and homes of millions of people.

This ecosystem of routers, enterprise solutions and smartphones met consumers where they were, but we knew our wireless solutions could bring the industry more with 6GHz. As early as 2016, our engineers began to explore how we could optimise the 6GHz band to increase connectivity speeds and improve capacity, when compared to both 2.4GHz and 5GHz Wi-Fi.

Fast forward to today, Broadcom’s 6GHz Wi-Fi solutions have led the way to a world powered by Wi-Fi 6E. We were the first to deliver a comprehensive ecosystem of end-to-end Wi-Fi 6E solutions from access points (AP) to client devices.

Across the globe, momentum for Wi-Fi 6E continues to grow. In the US, Europe and South Korea millions of devices are already running on 6GHz. Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Malaysia and a host of countries in the Americas have followed suit by opening the band to Wi-Fi technology. Japan, Australia, Colombia and Mexico are poised to open the band this year.

The spark catches fire

The world of Wi-Fi has already begun to convert devices to support 6GHz Wi-Fi and adoption has grown at a faster pace than expected.

This year, Wi-Fi 6E has made its way to a wider range of smartphones, including the Google Pixel 6 and 6 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra and Plus, and access devices from NETGEAR, TP-Link and Comcast, among others.

This rate of adoption is unprecedented. Not only does this reaffirm the belief our partners have in us but it underscores the market need for this new wireless experience powered by Wi-Fi 6E.

A harbinger for what’s to come. With Wi-Fi 7.

A word on Wi-Fi 7

Our team at Broadcom always leads in leveling up our wireless experience and taking it somewhere that seems unfathomable.

As we venture into the next iterations of the internet, filled with immersive experiences, it is easy to see how 6GHz Wi-Fi can be a disruptive enabler. With its emphasis on network capacity,

speed and latency, Wi-Fi 7 does just that. The next generation of Wi-Fi also emerges as the perfect complement to multi-gigabit broadband and is set to power households, as the recent demonstrations of Comcast’s DOCSIS 4.0 showed.

Our goal with Wi-Fi 7 is very simple and holistic. We want to provide technology that connects your homes and offices seamlessly and reliably with tomorrow’s internet.

To this end, we will enable our partners with a full ecosystem of Wi-Fi 7 silicon solutions that can power your whole home broadband needs for the post-pandemic digital economy. This means chips for smartphones, tablets, PCs, routers, enterprise access points and carrier gateways are well on their way to being a part of your living room and office.

Our Wi-Fi 7 solutions will also bring low-latency, high-speed, reliable, immersive experiences that are integral to the next iteration of the internet that some call the Metaverse. Our partners are developing products and applications for this world, making it contextual and augmenting our reality. We are inspired by their boundless ideas and proud to lead the way in developing technology for the next generation of Wi-Fi.

Soon, Wi-Fi 7 will open a whole new world of possibilities, further leveraging the 6GHz band and meeting the world where it is moving.

So, one Billion Wi-Fi 6 and 6E chips? A proud milestone for us. A reminder for everyone that this is just the beginning.