If your Wi-Fi was installed before 2021 it needs upgrading and 2025 is going to be the perfect time to do it.

It will come as no surprise that technology is moving on and improving at a rapid pace, Wi-Fi is no exception to that rule. It’s a good thing too, with all the devices that now need a connection, it has to keep up!

Wi-Fi has a series of iterations or standards, you may have heard of Wi-Fi 5 or Wi-Fi 6.

If your Wi-Fi was installed before 2021 you will be running a Wi-Fi 5 (or lower) wireless system. At the time it was the dog’s doodads. BUT Wi-Fi 7 is soon to be ratified, and in comparison makes your wireless system look more like a dog’s dinner.

We’ll leave the technical stuff out for now but the highlights for Wi-Fi 7 (or 802.11be if you fancy its ‘proper’ name) are seriously faster speeds and being able to communicate with a lot more devices at anyone time.

Why does Wi-Fi 7’s advancements matter to my hotel?

More and more guests are using your Wi-Fi to make calls and video calls, these communications just aren’t possible to provide on any sort of scale with Wi-Fi 5 or below.

Your business devices, tablets, PDQs needs quick responses to help your guests have the best experience and help your staff deliver that too them. As more devices and people use your network your OLD wireless network isn’t going to cope.

Why is 2025 going to be a good time to get an upgrade?

Despite Wi-Fi 7 not being completely signed off until the end of this year the bulk of it has been around for some time now and the majority of manufacturers have had their hardware out for a few months already. By the end of 2024 it will be fully ratified meaning manufacturers can make any final adjustments, if they are needed.

That means by the time we hit 2025 we’ll have hardware that’s been tried and tested by the early adopters (kinks worked out) as well as being 100% compliant with the new standard. It also means that you’ll be ahead of the game and get some good years out of the investment.

Wi-Fi 8 is expecting to be ratified in 2028, HOWEVER to achieve the speeds that we are talking about for Wi-Fi 7, 46Gbps!!, both internal and national networks have a long way to go to be capable of doing more than that. So in my opinion 2025 is going to be the perfect time to get your Wi-Fi 7 networks installed and see the best return on your investment.