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Long before the Wi-Fi 7 standard becomes complete, which isn't anticipated to happen before 2024, Chinese networking equipment maker H3C has unveiled what it claims to be the first Wi-Fi 7 router on the market.

The H3C Magic BE18000, which was unveiled in June, employs the same 802.11be wireless protocols that Wi-Fi 7 is intended to use. According to H3C, the BE18000 can exploit Wi-Fi 7's newly enlarged 320MHz channels and can operate in the 6GHz spectrum, providing a peak throughput of 18,443Mbps. The router is built around the most recent Qualcomm chipset, which was the first to be created for Wi-Fi 7, which was introduced in May.

Prestandard wireless equipment is hardly a recent occurrence; for several refresh cycles already, access points employing unofficial wireless standards have been released before each official release. Manufacturers of APs and routers are less circumspect, whereas those of endpoints have a tendency to be a little more conservative.

Although no significant endpoint manufacturer has yet included Wi-Fi 7 functionality in its smartphones or laptops, the launching of H3C's router indicates that at least that business believes the major technical elements of Wi-Fi 7 are sufficiently matured to ship a product.

The BE18000 release is in line with predictions made by Qualcomm Senior Director of Engineering Andy Davidson, who told Network World in March that prestandard equipment may start to appear this year due to an increased willingness on the part of end users to adopt new Wi-Fi technology as soon as it is made available for purchase.

Although no significant endpoint manufacturer has yet included Wi-Fi 7 functionality in its smartphones or laptops, the launching of H3C's router indicates that at least that business believes the major technical elements of Wi-Fi 7 are sufficiently matured to ship a product.

The BE18000 release is in line with predictions made by Qualcomm Senior Director of Engineering Andy Davidson, who told Network World in March that prestandard equipment may start to appear this year due to an increased willingness on the part of end users to adopt new Wi-Fi technology as soon as it is made available for purchase.