Samsung has announced that it's developed new technology that boosts Wi-Fi data speeds by five times compared to current hardware standards—and it could feature in devices as soon as next year.


The company claims that the the new Wi-Fi standards allows it to boost speeds from 866 Mbps up to 4.6 gigabits per second. If you want a more tangible take on those speeds, they mean that a 1GB movie could be transferred between devices in under three seconds, or that uncompressed HD video could be streamed in real time.

To do all this, the new Wi-Fi standard works at 60GHz—a jump from the conventional 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz signals that devices normally use. In the past those frequencies have been shunned because the high frequencies attenuate quickly, meaning that coverage in a house can be patchy, BUT Samsung claims it's cleared those issues with new transmitter an antennae designs.


It's not clear exactly when the new standards will hit consumer hardware, though Digital Trends reports that it could be in "audiovisual devices, medical devices and telecommunications equipment" as soon as 2015. We sure hope so.

Image by when i was a bird under Creative Commons license

