UK Shows Strong Adoption of Latest Wi-Fi 6 and 7 Standards vs Europe

Internet connection benchmarking firm Ookla (Accenture), which operates the popular broadband and mobile Speedtest.net service and app, has published a general summary of WiFi technology adoption across the world that reveals how the UK has a fairly strong level of Wi-Fi 6 and 7 adoption vs most of Europe.

On these pages we often talk about service speeds from fixed broadband connections. But it remains important to understand that most of the devices we actually connect to such services these days will usually do so via a wireless link to our router, which is often much more variable in its performance than the fixed line component.

Suffice to say that the prevalence of different Wi-Fi standards between devices can have a significant impact upon the broadband performance we perceive at home, with older standards tending to be slower than newer ones. The latest Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 standards can also harness the 6GHz band (big speed boost nearer to your router), as well as being better at functioning in environments that are highly congested by other Wi-Fi networks.

In that sense it’s good to see the latest Wi-Fi data from Ookla, which appears to show that people in the UK have a “relatively” high level of Wi-Fi 6 / 802.11ax (43.4% share) adoption across Europe, with the latest Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be) holding 3.8%. But some 14.1% still use old Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n) technology and Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) remains strong at 38.7%.

Ookla Statement

Europe has largely moved in the same direction in allocating the lower portion of the 6 GHz band for unlicensed use, with some markets following hot on the heels of the U.S. allocation of the entire band in 2020. Within the European Union, this was driven by a regionwide harmonization measure, with the European Commission issuing a binding Implementing Decision in 2021 requiring Member States to update their national spectrum plans to accommodate WAS/RLAN use in the lower portion of the band, specifically 5945–6425 MHz, by year-end.

The UK moved separately and slightly earlier, with Ofcom making the lower 6 GHz band available in 2020, and uses the marginally wider 5925–6425 MHz range. Other non-EU European countries are generally pulled toward the same lower-band framework through CEPT/ECC harmonization, although implementation remains a national matter rather than an EU legal obligation.

The upper half, 6425–7125 MHz, remains the live policy battleground, with mobile operators pushing for it to support 5G and future 6G networks, while the Wi-Fi industry continues to argue for broader unlicensed access closer to the U.S. and Canadian model. The UK has moved toward a more explicit sharing model, while the EU process remains more cautious, with recent policy direction pointing toward mobile priority for much of the upper band rather than a full-band Wi-Fi allocation. Despite this relatively early move to 6 GHz, Europe’s adoption of the 6 GHz spectrum trails North America. According to Speedtest data, as of Q1 2026 just 1.6% of the 6 GHz spectrum band in the EU is being used for Wi-Fi. The majority of Wi-Fi usage (66%) in the EU is being handled by the 5 GHz band and that is an increase from 45.7% in Q1 2022.

At the country level, France has the highest percentage of Wi-Fi in the 6 GHz band compared to other EU countries, with 8.6% of Wi-Fi usage as of Q1 2026, followed by Norway with 6.5%. Some European countries, like Spain, which feature among the highest levels of fibre coverage in the world, exhibit notably lower usage of the 6 GHz band (reflecting the focus on price competition, like in Italy, rather than CPE differentiation and in-home experience, in contrast to the “box war” in markets like France).

We should point out that most people will have a patchwork network of devices that will mix different Wi-Fi generations and capabilities, but obviously the most important ones for performance are your main broadband router and the devices you use to get online for daily tasks and entertainment (Computer, Smartphone etc.).

Overall, the global speedtest data shows Wi-Fi 7 emerging with just a 1.8% share of samples in Q1 2026, but that will change over time. For example, Wi-Fi 6 has risen – globally – from just 6% in Q1 2022 to 27% in Q1 2026, while there has been a gradual decline of older Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 4 generations, which fell to 39% and 34% respectively.