One key finding from the latest cross-industry survey by the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA), the global industry body dedicated to improving Wi-Fi standards and services, is that 83% percent of service providers and equipment manufacturers and enterprises worldwide will have deployed Wi-Fi 6/6E, or plan to do so before the end of 2022.
The findings, released by the WBA as part of the WBA Annual Industry Report 2022, highlights how 6 GHz spectrum will enable Wi-Fi to support even more users and new use cases, such as time-sensitive networking (TSN) for Industry 4.0 applications.
Fifty-eight percent of WBA survey respondents said 6 GHz was "critical or very important to their strategy." WBA holds that this outlook reflects the rapid growth in both global harmonization and device selection, as encapsulated by the following facts:
- 41 countries, representing 54% of world GDP, have authorized 6 GHz for use.
- More than 338 million Wi-Fi 6E devices will enter the market this year.
- Nearly 20% of all Wi-Fi 6 device shipments will support 6 GHz by 2022.
The new report includes updates on a variety of technologies, amendments and initiatives, including 5G convergence and Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be). Also known as Extremely High Throughput (EHT), Wi-Fi 7 is projected to support up to 30 Gbps throughput, about three times faster than Wi-Fi 6. WBA expects Wi-Fi 7 devices to make their market debut in 2025.
The report also quantifies global momentum for WBA OpenRoaming, which enables users to connect automatically and securely to millions of Wi-Fi networks around the world, without the need for logins, registrations or passwords. Survey respondents said roaming is the second most-important Wi-Fi capability for commercial success, especially for smart city environments.
WBA added that 40% of respondents said they have implemented Passpoint/OpenRoaming, such as Adventist Health hospital campuses in the US, or plan to do so before the end of 2022. Meanwhile, the survey data showed that 70% of respondents involved in a city-wide public Wi-Fi network, or who plan to be, will support city-wide roaming, joining several municipalities across Europe that have implemented it.
OpenRoaming Release 2 was announced in June and defines important new functionality, including support for SLAs via a QoS tier that guarantees a “silver-tier” HD streaming experience when on OpenRoaming networks. Silver-tier service is already available across 95% of the OpenRoaming ecosystem. Tiago Rodrigues, WBA CEO said, “Service providers, equipment manufacturers and enterprises worldwide see more value than ever in Wi-Fi.”
Rodrigues added, “Despite all of the uncertainty due to the pandemic, 56% of respondents said they were more confident about investing in Wi-Fi than they were a year ago. This confidence also shows up in the number of WBA members participating in various projects – an increase of 15% compared to 2020 — and the record 20 projects in development or already in progress. One example is their strong interest in the convergence of 5G and Wi-Fi 6, including how mobile operators can leverage Wi-Fi as part of their 5G strategy in terms of maximizing coverage and capacity.”
As well as reviewing 2021, the new report addresses emerging trends and business models in key vertical markets such as retail, aviation, hospitality, smart transportation, healthcare and general industry. In addition, it charts the progress of technology trends and developments including standards evolution, OpenRoaming, Mesh Wi-Fi, and Mobile Edge Computing.
The WBA's 60-page 2022 Wi-Fi Market Report is available for download at: https://wballiance.com/resource/wba-annual-industry-report-2022/.