New Survey Claims 50 Percent of Broadband ISPs to Adopt WiFi 7 Within 12 Months
A new survey of 90 global internet providers, which was conducted by Heavy Reading (Omdia), in collaboration with eero (Amazon) and Qualcomm Technologies, claims that more than 50% of ISPs have already deployed or expect to deploy WiFi 7 based service plans within 12 months. Part of this is to support the roll-out of multi-gigabit speed packages, said to be growing at 20.5% a year (CAGR).
In terms of what the ISPs currently support. A combined 63% of global service providers indicate Wi-Fi 5 is no longer supported or will only be for up to 2 years. Of all respondents, 16% will continue support for “3–4 years” and 22% “up to 5 years.” By comparison, 38% of respondents expect to support Wi-Fi 6 for up to 2 years.
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Faster broadband speeds (61%) are said to remain the top driver for Wi-Fi upgrades to newer technologies like WiFi 7, with “Quality of experience/user experience” (48%) and “lower latency” (47%) following close behind. Not to mention that the most frequently reported customer concern related to ISP supplied Wi-Fi kit is “poor indoor coverage/dead zones” – 61% of respondents commonly recommend using a multi-device wireless architecture (based on a combined group recommending Wi-Fi extenders (33%) and mesh systems (28%)).
Additional Survey Highlights
➤ A combined group of 66% of respondents for business connectivity and 59% for consumer use consider Tri-band frequency support in Wi-Fi 7 (2.4GHz, 5GHz and 6GHz) to be extremely important or important for their connectivity offerings.
➤ 94% of ISPs currently offer, or plan to deploy, multi-link operation (MLO) – a key performance boosting feature of WiFi 7.
➤ Security and safety features (67%) are the top software priority for service providers when selecting Wi-Fi equipment. Device and real-time service optimization (54%), internet backup (29%), and the ability to sell value-added services, including third-party subscriptions (28%), follow behind.
➤ Automated troubleshooting (28%) and network optimisation (26%) are the top use cases for AI-based Wi-Fi network management. Predictive management (16%) and configuration management (15%) follow behind.
The catch in all of this is that Wi-Fi 7 is still more of a premium market feature, with most ISPs maintaining a mixed estate of Wi-Fi generations across their installed base. However, vendors are starting to introduce more affordable, entry-level products to make this technology more accessible, just as they always do.
The full Wi-Fi 7 Operator Survey can be accessed via the ISPA’s website (here), although we would have preferred to see the results for a survey that only focused on UK based broadband providers. Naturally eero also has a vested interest in plugging adoption of the latest router technologies.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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There is an awful lot of people out there who still use older PCs/laptops which aren’t WiFi 6 compatible, let alone WiFi 7. Every day I have a conversation with some of them. It is not hyperbolic to suggest that a transition to an all-7 future will be more disruptive to society as a whole that the PSTN switch off is.
Even the overpriced eero 7 is backwards compatible, it would lose them a lot of sale if it was not, so just because the router is Wi-fi 7,, don’t mean it will not work with older stuff. The majority of smart home stuff still run on the 2.4Ghz band, I presume because it is more reliable and will go through walls that 5Ghz have problems with and the majority of smart home devices don’t need super-duper speed. A smart plug will just send a signal to say if it is on or off, even my doobell camera and blink cameras run on 2.4Ghz and they are fine.
So new Wi-Fi 7 routers will still support the older tech for a long time.
As for Wi-Fi 7 itself, There are two versions type of thing, cheaper routers that say they are Wi-Fi 7 seems to be on 5Ghz, while the more expensive ones use 6Ghz for Wi-Fi 7 from what I have been reading.
I am in no rush to update as long as my router keeps going, if I do update my router, then I may think about making one, just for the fun of it.
@AD47UK
Wifi6E routers use 6ghz band as well. I think this was when 6ghz was introduced.
It is quite hyperbolic really – WiFi7 routers work just fine with older kit. How is that disruptive in any way?
I have a growing number of devices that support it now. So it’ll soon be time to upgrade my UniFi access points to the Wi-Fi 7 versions, which are actually quite reasonably priced. And they have 2.5GBe POE ports, so next I can look at upgrading to a 2.5GBe switch, and onwards it goes! Admittedly all fairly pointless when our fibre connection is at 160/30Mbps, because that’s enough for now…