The recent Enterprise Connectivity Forum brought together industry leaders to explore the evolving landscape of enterprise Wi-Fi, with a sharp focus on seamless connectivity, security, and innovation. The event highlighted how organizations are using OpenRoaming™, Passpoint, and data-driven strategies to transform Wi-Fi from a basic utility into a powerful business enabler.
Seamless and Secure Connectivity: The Role of Open Roaming
At the heart of the forum was the OpenRoaming program, which is helping redefine how users connect to public and enterprise Wi-Fi networks. By enabling automatic, secure, and seamless authentication, OpenRoaming removes the friction traditionally associated with captive portals. The Enterprise Connectivity Forum (ECF) acts as a think tank to further support collaboration and pilot initiatives around this technology.
Enterprise Wi-Fi Trends and Market Forecasts
Andrew Spivey, Principal Analyst at ABI Research, provided a detailed overview of current and future trends in the enterprise WLAN market. According to ABI Research, while Wi-Fi 6 remains dominant today, Wi-Fi 7 is gaining strong momentum and is expected to surpass Wi-Fi 6 in shipment volumes by 2027. Meanwhile, Wi-Fi 6E is seeing a rapid decline as enterprises look to skip directly to Wi-Fi 7 due to better performance and future-proofing benefits.
Spivey also emphasized the importance of 6GHz spectrum policies, noting a growing global divide. While countries like the US, Canada, and South Korea offer full access to the band, others such as China and India have limited or no availability, a situation which is leading to considerable regional variation in the performance of Wi-Fi 7, and negatively impacting global scalability for the new standard. Spivey finished his session by examining the UK’s Ofcom proposal to share the upper 6GHz spectrum band between Wi-Fi and cellular networks, suggesting that this could serve as a model for hybrid use going forward.
Turning Wi-Fi ecosystem into an asset
Nitin Dugal, COO of Adentro, shared how the company is enabling new business models and experiences by turning Wi-Fi ecosystems from a cost into an asset. By leveraging guest Wi-Fi and technologies like Passpoint and Open Roaming, Adentro enables physical businesses to collect and enhance first party customer data and turn the enriched customer profiles into marketing fuel to convert first time customers into loyalists by bringing more of them back to their physical locations and online destinations. Adentro has also partnered with MVNOs and telecom providers to seamlessly offload their cellular subscribers onto its secure WiFi network installed at 6,000 commercial venues and locations to improve the user experience.
Notable case studies included Gelson’s Supermarkets, which saw a ~10% lift in repeat visits by targeting casual shoppers with ads on social media, and Simon Malls, which used Guest Wi-Fi analytics and location data to curate high-value Simon shoppers and drive repeat visits to their retail partners locations in the Simon properties.
The Ecosystem View: Bridging Tech and Business
Ivan Muccini, VP of Products at Cloud4Wi, discussed how enterprise clients are embracing Passpoint and Personal Pre-Shared Key (PPSK) technologies for both public guest Wi-Fi and secure employee access. He stressed that while captive portals are still prevalent, they are increasingly being replaced or supplemented with seamless authentication solutions.
Cloud4Wi also shared how WBA OpenRoaming can unleash new business model opportunities, helping both identity providers (IDPs) and access networks collaborate through toolkits, analytics, and privacy-compliant onboarding.
In the end, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Each technology—whether Passpoint, WBA OpenRoaming, or PPSK—is best suited to addressing specific use cases within particular industries.
Conclusion
The forum showcased how the convergence of OpenRoaming, Wi-Fi 7, AI-driven network management, and data monetization is shaping the future of enterprise connectivity. As businesses increasingly view Wi-Fi as a strategic asset, collaboration between network providers, identity platforms, and cloud services will be crucial to unlocking its full potential.
To watch the full webinar, please visit the Enterprise Connectivity Forum website and click to view. The next ECF event will be face to face in Dallas in May – visit the website for more information.
