Virgin Media Community

[Ben_Ferris]

Evening, so I remember reading about WiFi 6 in Feb 2019 and it was starting to make an appearance in commercial use that year apparently. Well i completely forgot about it until I was reading the specs of the new Mac book this evening and it was specifying it was WiFi 6 compatible. Does anyone know when Virgin may adopt and incorporate the new standard into their hardware? I was reading on this site to find out for myself and it said they used the lates technology WiFi 5 (802.11ac), but it’s not latest and the article was at least edited in late December 2020 if not just published then. So I’m just a little confused.

https://www.cable.co.uk/providers/virgin-media/routers/ 

[legacy1]

Likely not going to happen for a year or two.

[mjpartyboy]

Wi-Fi 6 hasn't really been standardized for very long, so I reckon you won't see it in VM's kit until the Super Hub 5 at the earliest, perhaps even the SH6. You can always buy a Wi-Fi 6 router and put the SH into modem mode. A decent dedicated router will likely outperform the Super Hub in this regard anyway.

I forgot to also say that the AC spec is still perfectly good enough right now.

[apcyberax]

Wifi6 or 802.11ax is still very expensive. Currently have it in my Hp elitebook and M1 Macbook.

VM are not going to use it until the price of the hardware comes down. It may be used by 10% of peoples devices right now and VM are not going to pay £20-50 extra for every device for the small uptake.

But as said plenty of Wifi6 routers you can use.

[Tudor]

For most home users WiFi 6 does not really mean a better service. /

[gary_dexter]

I doubt they will. And even if they did you’d be better off getting a better third-party router 

[Ben_Ferris]

Hey, thanks for the info. I was intrigue by this upgrade in wifi standard as I use the Shadow cloud gaming service currently on Ethernet (over powerline) as wifi 5 as it stands can't cope with the sheer volume of data that gets transmitted per hour. Even with the reduced performance of using Ethernet over power its better than the current wifi capabilities of my hub which is less than 10ft away. I'd obviously rather have a direct connection with ethernet but I'm restricted to what I can alter in my apartment    

I'm also acutely aware that the virgin hub is notorious for poor down speeds over wifi anyway, so was surprised to see the spec for the gig hub 4 being the same. It's perplexing as to why Virgin would provide the fastest down speeds only yo be unachievable over wifi on the hardware they provide. I get better download speed on 4g on my phone then i do on my 200mb cable service over wifi.    

[gary_dexter]

Well the Hub4 and Gig1 services were released before Wifi6 was standardised and made available.

[Ben_Ferris]

I was only surprised because Virgin 1 gig service launched in September 2019 the same year the WiFi 6 standard was introduced commercially, and it's not unreasonable to assume there is communication and forewarning before such endeavours between the multiple companies involved. I guess its cheaper to throw away what they've provided now in 2 years time then to have incorporated the technology at an early stage. 

[Sephiroth]

Modem mode and own AX router is the way to go in all affordable circumstances.