Fritz unveils Fritzbox DSL/Fiber 7-90 with Wi-Fi 7 at IFA

At Berlin’s IFA, Fritz is showing a Fritzbox that is designed not only to transmit faster but also to carry a different name: the company is presenting the DSL/Fiber 7-90 with Wi-Fi 7 and a dual modem for DSL and fiber connections. The redesigned box-shaped enclosure conceals the connections, groups the cables at the rear and can be placed on a surface or mounted on a wall.

The practical core is its range of connection options. The box supports GPON, a passive fiber network, at 2.5 Gbit/s, AON, an active fiber network, at 1 Gbit/s, and DSL at up to 300 Mbit/s. One 2.5-Gbit/s connection can also serve as a WAN port, meaning an input for an external modem.

Fritz quotes a combined gross rate of up to 12.2 Gbit/s for wireless connections. The 6- and 5-GHz bands are each rated at 5760 Mbit/s, while the 2.4-GHz band reaches 690 Mbit/s. The limitation compared with the Fritzbox 5690 Pro: only the 5-GHz band uses four MIMO streams, parallel data streams from multiple antennas. The 6-GHz transmission rate is therefore half that of the top model.

Who would notice the difference? Households with DSL or different fiber connections could use one router for multiple access types instead of planning for an additional modem. The trade-off is the lack of 10-Gbit/s Ethernet ports; the box has two ports each at 2.5 and 1 Gbit/s. DECT for cordless phones, a USB port and connections for smart-home devices via DECT ULE and Zigbee are also included.

The picture is therefore clear: The DSL/Fiber 7-90 targets flexible connections and a redesigned enclosure, not the maximum Wi-Fi performance of the 5690 Pro. Fritz is initially showing it at IFA; the price and market launch are still open. According to heise online, sales could take months to begin, as is often the case with such announcements.