Wi-Fi Alliance promises faster Wi-Fi in new products in 2016

The tech world is ready for better Wi-Fi, and in 2016 we may start to get it. The Wi-Fi Alliance is announcing an update to its certification program for modern Wi-Fi devices, which will require all new products to support faster speeds and for routers to do a better job of handling multiple devices at the same time. Going forward, routers and devices that want to comply with its latest certification program will have to support three key new features: wider channel bandwidth, an additional spacial stream, and perhaps most importantly, MU-MIMO.

That latest one has a horribly convoluted name, but it essentially just means that a router can send data to multiple devices at the same time. That's right: right now, routers are generally sending data to one device at a time. They switch back and forth between our devices fast enough that we don't necessarily notice — only sending a bit to each at one time — but MU-MIMO should deliver a more consistent result for everyone. Newly certified Wi-Fi routers should be capable of sending data to four devices at a time, potentially delivering a faster result when combined with other Wi-Fi improvements. "A given device that supports all these features will be capable of delivering three times the speed of [802.11ac] devices even a year ago," says Kevin Robinson, the Wi-Fi Alliance's marketing VP.