Wi-Fi 7 is one of the key areas of investment in new connectivity technologies over the next decade, according to a survey of service providers, technology vendors, and enterprises. The global survey, commissioned by the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA), also finds that 33% of survey respondents already have plans to deploy Wi-Fi 7 by the end of 2023.
The report, WBA Annual Industry Report 2023, reveals that Wi-Fi 7 will “supercharge” current Wi-Fi capabilities with new technologies, such as multilink operation and time sensitive networking, which are both suited for Industry 4.0 applications, while leveraging the 6-GHz spectrum dynamically with automatic frequency coordination.
Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7, also known as extremely high throughput Wi-Fi, with support up to 30 Gbits/s throughput and about three times faster than Wi-Fi 6, are expected to drive new business opportunities over the next decade, including industrial IoT (IIoT). The report finds that Wi-Fi meets a lot the demanding requirements for a variety of current and emerging IIoT applications and lessens the cost of obtaining more information about their processes.
Over 46% of survey respondents reported that they are more confident about investing in Wi-Fi than they had been a year ago, while 28% said there was no change. In addition, 40% said that smart cities would be a top three location for Wi-Fi traffic growth in the coming year, surpassed only by transportation hubs. Fifty-eight percent said they are involved in a city-wide public Wi-Fi deployment, or plan to in the next 1-2 years. Of those, 36% have already rolled out services, and 44% will do so by the end of 2023.
(Source: Wireless Broadband Alliance)
The survey finds that Wi-Fi 6E is the de facto industry standard. Fifty-three percent of survey respondents said they have already deployed Wi-Fi 6E and 44% said they are working on plans to adopt Wi-Fi 6E in the next 12-18 months.
WBA said Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 is driven by increasing data-intensive, low-latency applications and use cases with applications ranging from smart cities and immersive technologies such as the metaverse to Industry 4.0. “Newer Wi-Fi technologies offer better scheduling and greater interference management, which respondents to the survey now see as essential in supporting high-quality video, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and other advanced consumer experiences,” said WBA, in a statement.
This goes hand-in-hand with a focus on the quality of experience (QoE) for end-users. Ninety percent of service providers, equipment manufacturers, and enterprises rank it as a key differentiator in monetizing their Wi-Fi services and 61% identified services such as high-definition video streaming, AR, VR, and potential metaverse applications as key revenue opportunities.
In addition, there is growing usage of WBA OpenRoaming, which reached one million hotspots in early 2022. Sixty-two percent of survey respondents report they will have already deployed Passpoint/OpenRoaming technology or are planning to deploy the technology by the end of 2023. Twenty-five percent are expected to deploy the technology by 2025. Fifty-one percent of companies adopting OpenRoaming said the key driver was improving the overall customer experience.
“OpenRoaming enables users to connect automatically and securely to millions of Wi-Fi networks around the world without the need for logins, registrations, or passwords, facilitating “always on” connectivity. Passpoint technology removes the friction usually associated with onboarding and offboarding between hotspots,” said WBA, in a statement.
Other key findings support the need for convergence between Wi-Fi and cellular technologies for a seamless user experience. Seventy percent of survey respondents in enterprise markets said Wi-Fi and 5G will coexist, with 61% claiming convergence would support enhanced flexibility for enterprise services. In commercial applications, 53% of survey respondents said that convergence between licensed and unlicensed technologies was critical or important today, and 67% that it would be critical or important to their future strategies.
The 2023 Wi-Fi Market Report, written by Maravedis and Rethink Technology Research, and published by the Wireless Broadband Alliance, is available for download. The report also covers emerging trends and business models in key vertical markets such as retail, aviation, hospitality, smart transportation, health care, and general industry as well as technology trends and developments.
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