Samsung announced on Monday that it's developing 60 GHz Wi-Fi technology that will provide networking speeds of up to 4.6 Gbps. Currently, the fastest speed consumers see on Wireless AC devices is 1.3 Gbps on the 5 MHz band.
According to the company, 60 GHz Wi-Fi technology isn't fully commercially adopted because of poor data performance and signal loss due to the inability to fully penetrate objects. However, Samsung reveals that its 60 GHz technology takes advantage of millimeter-wave circuit design, a wide-coverage beam-forming antenna and "high performance modem technologies" to improve the coverage.
Samsung reports that the new technology "removes the gap between theoretical and actual speeds" by eliminating co-channel interference. The signal quality is enhanced thanks to its micro beam-forming control technology, which takes less than 1/3,000 seconds to optimize the communications module. The company also mentioned that it has developed a method for connecting multiple devices simultaneously to this 60 GHz network.
"Samsung has successfully overcome the barriers to the commercialization of 60 GHz millimeter-wave band Wi-Fi technology, and looks forward to commercializing this breakthrough technology," said Kim Chang Yong, Head of DMC R&D Center of Samsung Electronics.
For now, the 60 GHz spectrum band is unlicensed, but the spectrum is expected to be commercialized by next year at the earliest. Samsung indicated that the first applications to take advantage of the speeds will be telecommunications equipment, Samsung Smart Home devices, the Internet of Things and more.
The thing to keep in mind here is that faster networking speeds don't mean a faster Internet. This just means that users can toss files around the network a lot faster. For instance, a 1 GB file can be pushed from one device to another in about 3 seconds. While that sounds amazing, it doesn't mean users can download a 1 GB file from Google Play in 3 seconds on a typical broadband connection in the home.
Naturally, to get 4.6 Gbps on a network, you'll need a router supporting the standard as well as devices like PCIe cards for desktops and USB adapters for notebooks. With Wireless AC just now starting to creep into smartphones, tablets and other devices, it may be a while before we see Samsung's technology saturate the market.
Follow Kevin Parrish @exfileme. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.
