It's like presenting the aggregated speed of all switch ports in an ethernet switch, without telling you how many ports there are or what the internal switching speed maximum is. "Here! Buy this 44gbit switch!" and then connect your equipment to find out the fastest link speed you'll get is 1gbps.
A better comparison would be the limits for a single strand of fiber optic cable.
For example Ubiquiti lists their Unifi U6+ at 1.2gbit and the U6 Pro at 4.8gbit. But the speed these two products will achieve in a home or small office is exactly the same. The Pro has some more range (bigger antennas), but both will get you about 700mbit in ideal reception no interference conditions because they're based on the same WiFi 6 standard.
Edit: And they know it, both products have a 1gbit physical port that is enough to serve "4.8 gbit wifi"
2.4 ghz and 900 mhz are not "old" or "outdated." It's all rf spectrum. The lower frequencies are valuable for range/penetration.
We should weigh research on directed rf radiation higher. We can run a lot more devices with better UX if we can avoid blasting radiation in all directions.
There are systems that try to do this today, but they are not seamless. The switchover is noticeable most of the times, and sometimes your device won't ever come back to the faster frequency. I suspect that is because the standard itself doesn't treat this behavior as a first class citizen. Manufacturers are building custom solutions.
Sure, the maximum numbers are based on almost ideal conditions but we'll get there soon enough. There will be further advances in technology, likely optical. I fully expect that a Terabyte/second will seem slow in a decade or two.
WiFi 6 with a 2023 macbook does not practically deliver 1gbit, even with zero other networks nearby and the macbook 3ft from the access point you'll get something like 700mbit. One factor is that Apple devices so far don't support 160 channel width, only up to 80. But even with a 160 channel you wouldn't make the advertised "5gbit" because that's the aggregated speed across all frequencies and streams, which cannot be combined.
Not to mention governments are opening up 1200MHz of spectrum on the 6GHz band (Wi-Fi 6E and 7) which is helping in heavily congested areas on its own.
Just don't come with metallic objects nearby.
Recently got myself a 6E and reckon that’ll be enough for a while
...
IEEE: "Now introducing WiFi 6E!"
Lol
