- The new Wi-Fi 8 gateway will first be deployed to gFiber’s symmetrical 20 Gbps broadband customers
- Qualcomm tech and software are embedded in the router
- The router is designed to be attractive enough that people can put it in the center of their living rooms
gFiber is adding stronger processing and AI capabilities to its newest home router so that people can talk to their routers in natural language to do things like set parental controls or ask questions about their broadband network.
gFiber is embedding Qualcomm Technologies’ Hexagon Neural Processing Unit (NPU) along with its penta-core CPU and Qualcomm’s edge AI software framework into the router.
Gemtek Technology will manufacture the AI-native, Wi-Fi 8, symmetrical 20 Gig broadband gateway.
Even though the IEEE standards for Wi-Fi 8 are not yet complete, Qualcomm has provided gFiber with early access to its chips to preview the Wi-Fi 8 capabilities. “As a value add, Qualcomm offers five antennas with coverage enhancements,” said Andre Rosete, CPE architect with gFiber.
Liz Hsu, senior director for product and billing with gFiber, said the company wanted to embed AI into its router to allow customers to interact with it in a highly personalized way.
But what in the world would people want to interact with their Wi-Fi router for?
According to Rosete, the AI capabilities are “strictly to serve the use cases for the router itself,” for such things as parental controls, guest access, questions about network health and performance, or prioritizing traffic.
“If people have questions about their network, like what are the top applications being used in my home, what are my children using, etc., that can all be determined and answered locally without needing to connect to any third-party service,” said Rosete.
Customers can also ask their router to set up profiles for different people in the home and assign devices to those people. To converse with the router in natural language, consumers will need to use voice commands via an app on their smart phones.
Fierce asked if the router could listen to consumers’ conversations and potentially invade their privacy. But Rosete said the device is not equipped with a microphone, and gFiber has taken care to protect privacy.
The new routers are currently undergoing qualification and testing and they’re expected to be rolled out in 2027 to gFiber customers who subscribe to its 20 Gbps service.
Clearly, 20 Gbps service is a lot of bandwidth, and Rosete said, “We don’t have a huge number of customers on 20 Gig. The users that we have are very tech forward."
Today, the router is typically an ugly box that people try to hide in the basement or in a corner. But gFiber says its new router will be something worthy of sitting in the middle of the living room. However, the company isn’t yet showing a picture of the new router’s design.
gFiber designers worked with the router’s manufacturer, Gemtek, to create the router’s design. Although, gFiber isn’t giving any hints about how the router looks, Rosete said it’s comparable in size to typical routers.
Read more about gFiber and Wi-Fi on Fierce Network
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