The last twelve months have been exceptionally rich for Wi-Fi both in terms of innovation and market adoption boosted by a favorable regulatory environment. There are more than 18 billion Wi-Fi devices in use today, and Wi-Fi generates an economic value of $3.5 trillion. Wi-Fi remains the dominant indoor technology and enjoys a momentum driven by a combination of factors. These include: the impact of the pandemic on internet usage (with Wi-Fi traffic doubling ); the game-changing addition of the 6GHz spectrum band around the world; the rapid commercial availability and market adoption of Wi-Fi 6/6E and the flurry of innovative services ranging from OpenRoaming™ to Wi-Fi sensing.
Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 promises to supercharge deterministic Wi-Fi with new techniques— such as multi-link operation and time-sensitive networking—while leveraging spectrum dynamically with automatic frequency coordination. Industries from hospitality to healthcare and transportation to smart cities are embracing this predictable WiFi to support new use cases and business models.
To find out more, download the WBA Industry Report 2023.
