Comcast has rolled out its xFi Advanced Gateway, an offering designed to support gigabit speeds over WiFi.
Starting Wednesday, the gateway became available for customers in the MSO’s fastest residential speed tiers, from 300 Mbps and up, including the 26 markets where Comcast has deployed gigabit speeds as part of its DOCSIS 3.1 rollout.
“While there are currently no mass-market WiFi connected devices capable of receiving Gig speeds over WiFi, those devices are coming,” Fraser Stirling, SVP of Hardware Development at Comcast, wrote in a blog post. “In the meantime, the power of the xFi Advanced Gateway delivers ultimate performance to your connected home.”
Gateway specs include an 8×8 antenna array that can leverage 160 MHz channels (compared to between 20 MHz and 80 MHz used in most WiFi routers and gateways on the market). It features Multi-user, Multi-input, Multi-output (Mu-MiMo) technology that enables dozens of devices to be powered without sacrificing performance, Comcast said. The gateway also includes dedicated IoT radios, including Bluetooth LE, Zigbee, and Thread radios, which power things like Nest devices.
WiFi speeds faster than 1.5 Gbps were achieved in lab tests, and the new gateway is capable of going even faster, according to Stirling.
“And while the xFi Advanced Gateway is powerful enough to blanket the vast majority of homes in ultra-fast WiFi, we aren’t stopping there,” Stirling wrote. “Later this month, we’ll begin offering a WiFi mesh option with our forthcoming pods, for homes where a gateway alone is not enough.”
Design was a key focus, according to Stirling, and the company replaced the traditional display of bright blinking lights seen on gateways with one muted and steady blue light.
