South Korean telecommunications giant KT said Thursday it is joining hands with Intel to introduce Wi-Fi 7 technology as the first network service operator.

KT and Intel signed an agreement on Tuesday to work together to develop and promote Wi-Fi 7 technology, next-generation Wi-Fi standard, on the sidelines of this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, the Korean telecommunications giant said.

Wi-Fi 7 would pack more data into each transmission and raise the speed significantly and is a more enhanced technology than existing Wi-Fi 6/6E.

“With this collaboration with Intel, KT has a foundation to provide a perfect experience for Wi-Fi 7 that will be applied by sharing KT’s excellent Wi-Fi development and operation expertise. KT will continue to play a leading role in technology,” said Kim Byung-gyun Kim, KT's Device Business Unit senior vice president.

Eric McLaughlin, vice president of the Client Computing Group and general manager of the Wireless Solutions Group at Intel, also expressed excitement to work with KT.

“Our close collaboration and co-engineering to help ensure interoperability and performance with KT’s APs and Intel PC Client devices aims to significantly improve the wireless connectivity experience for our customers,” McLaughlin said.

With its collaboration with Intel, KT said it plans to develop its own Wi-Fi 7 AP, while Intel seeks to develop Wi-Fi7 client solutions. The two companies will run interoperability tests and pursue technology innovation, KT said.

Among other features, Wi-Fi 7 introduces a key technology called multilink operation that aggregates and uses two or more frequency bands concurrently.

This allows KT’s Wi-Fi 7 AP to deliver up to 11.5 Gigabits per second with four antennas, which can be used to build service infrastructure for multi-gigabit broadband utilization. This provides huge capacity to support multiple high-speed devices, massive P2P sharing, teleconferencing and immersive AR and VR experiences.

During the MWC, the world’s largest mobile show, KT presented its next-generation Wi-Fi 7 technology at its booth called GiGA Wi-Fi Premium 7, interoperating with an Intel platform-based PC configured with Intel’s upcoming Wi-Fi 7 solution.

The Wi-Fi 7 standard is expected to be finalized in early 2024.