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WBA Annual Industry Report 2022
The 2022 WBA Annual Industry Report takes a look at the industry trends and drivers occurring in the Wi-Fi industry with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic reinforcing the central role of Wi-Fi for indoor connectivity in all aspects of our lives. In the last two years, Wi-Fi has become the lifeline for working, learning, playing and increasingly for telemedicine and other sensitive applications. With success comes greater responsibility. Ongoing standardization work and innovation are aimed at creating a supercharged and predictable Wi-Fi that delivers a high quality experience.
The momentum enjoyed by Wi-Fi is driven by a combination of factors. These include the game-changing addition of the 6GHz spectrum band in a growing number of countries around the world; the rapid commercial availability and market adoption of Wi-Fi 6 and 6E; and the flurry of innovative services ranging from the WBA OpenRoaming™ to Wi-Fi sensing.
The Wi-Fi experience is becoming more deterministic thanks to the combination of technology innovations resulting in higher throughput and lower latencies. Wi-Fi 7 promises to supercharge Wi-Fi 6 with new techniques such as multi-link operation and time sensitive networking while leveraging spectrum dynamically with automatic frequency coordination. Wi-Fi is also increasingly integrated into cellular networks both at the access and core network level. Industries from hospitality to healthcare and transportation to smart cities are embracing this deterministic Wi-Fi to support new use cases and business models. They also use Wi-Fi to support their own digital transformation, empowering their employees and increasing their overall operational efficiency.
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OpenRoaming™ for Device Manufactures Brochure
WBA OpenRoaming™ creates the framework to connect billions of users and things to millions of Wi-Fi networks globally
OpenRoaming™ for Aviation Brochure
WBA OpenRoaming™ creates the framework to connect billions of users and things to millions of Wi-Fi networks globally
Captive Portal Onboarding Guidelines 2021
This Captive Portal Onboarding Evolution white paper provides industry-wide solutions and guidelines to identify captive portal design and deployment issues. Identifying the improvement and best practices helps increasing Wi-Fi usage and profits from providing Wi-Fi connectivity seamlessly and better data and security protection for users.
Wi-Fi Sensing – Test Methodology and Performance Metrics
In 2020, WBA launched a Wi-Fi Sensing Whitepaper providing an overview of Wi-Fi Sensing technology, classifying use cases and requirements, and identifying the gaps in Wi-Fi standards which would lead to the enhancement of the technology and ease of deployment if those gaps are addressed with Home Monitoring case study.
Wi-Fi Sensing is a relatively new technology with no current standard currently in existence. While some applications can be enabled using existing standards, there are technology gaps that limit the range of applications. Today, a number of products are available which are based on existing Wi-Fi standards, and the IEEE has recently formed a new task group, 802.11bf, that will focus on creating and improving existing standards specific to sensing applications. As this technology becomes more widely available, there is a great deal of interest within the industry looking towards evaluating and testing it. However, there is currently no standard methodology outlining how it should be validated, what tools to use, or what external factors impact the behavior.
5G and Wi-Fi RAN Convergence
In 2019, the WBA and NGMN created a RAN Convergence White Paper to address some of the challenges outlined in creating a streamlined and seamless integration between both Wi-Fi and cellular access with the cellular operator core.
As society increasingly depends on fast reliable data connectivity, the WBA believes an important capability for the industry is the convergence at a network level between 5G and Wi-Fi, so that the unique and complementary capabilities of both RANs can be leveraged to provide seamless network services. Bearing in mind that a significant amount of data traffic from smartphones uses a Wi-Fi access, this will lead to a better user experience and create new business opportunities for both Wi-Fi and cellular providers.
