Wi-Fi: Positive news, but also some missing discussions & opportunities

I could only attend the WiFi NOW EMEA event in Geneva for one day this year, as I had to leave early to do a client workshop elsewhere. However, I had a chance to listen to a number of the keynotes and panel sessions on the first day, as well as the Dynamic Spectrum Alliance summit at the same venue the day before.

I also did a fireside chat and Q&A session with Claus Hetting , the WFN supremo. I only had one slide, which listed two categories of things I’ve found interesting about the Wi-Fi world recently:

• Key positive trends I’ve observed in the marketplace, in briefing calls or at events

• Themes that seem to be overlooked or downplayed by the #WiFi industry

Indoor wireless

In the first category I mainly discussed a slowly growing awareness among (some) regulatory agencies of the importance of indoor wireless connectivity. I see a number of factors driving this change – firstly, I hope that some of the noise from industry commentators such as myself and many of my analyst peers is percolating through to policymakers, as well as better event coverage. I’ve been very pleased to have seen and participated in indoor wireless or neutral host panels at events such as FYUZ, 5G Techritory and ConnectX, for instance. Many spectrum events mention it now.

Secondly, vendors have been taking it more seriously – Ericsson is now a loud advocate, for instance, at least on the cellular side of #indoorwireless (note: Ericsson really needs a proper Wi-Fi strategy as well).

Finally, I think a few policy folk are starting to join the dots with their #FTTP / #gigabit #broadband targets, realising that merely running fibre to or past someone’s front door doesn’t actually help with all the economy- and society-boosting applications that have been pitched, if they can’t connect wirelessly inside the home, without the CPE being a bottleneck.

More positive trends

Other good news I’ve seen of heard recently include:

An upswing of CSPs starting to push #WiFi7, either for FTTP or in some cases FWA access. A notable example was from BT Group which now promises 100Mbps to every room in the subscriber’s house for its top-tier customers. Less impressive is the trend I posted about recently, where some #WiFi7 gateways are only dual-band, without support for 6GHz. I'll have more to say about that at the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) congress in Paris on Oct 9th.

There's a slow trend towards simpler public Wi-Fi onboarding, even without "seamless" automated models. I’m seeing fewer awful #captiveportals demanding personal info, email or social logins – and more use of single-click-to-connect pages, or (as in the venue for the conference) no splash page at all. I have a burning hatred of captive portals and most forms of so-called “WiFi monetisation”, so this makes me very happy.

Latency is becoming more central to many Wi-Fi discussions, especially for enterprise deployments. About 5 years ago I stood at Wi-Fi conferences and asked why only #5G standards and vendor marketing mentioned latency, despite any half-decent broadband and Wi-Fi setup performing much better than virtually every cellular network. The industry seems to have got the memo, is pitching latency as a key feature of Wi-Fi 7 and future 8 versions, and is now pushing on with deterministic latency as well.

But it’s not all good news. There are various areas where I think the Wi-Fi industry is either lagging, or simply ignoring opportunities. Ones I highlighted included:

Where are the Wi-Fi APIs?

There’s no concerted effort by the Wi-Fi industry to jump on the trend for developer-friendly network APIs. While there is a wide variety of individual API initiatives and open platforms, they’re mostly inward-looking, for ISPs or people actually building customised access points for operators, or customer-experience monitoring platforms. There's good stuff happening in Broadband Forum, TMForum, groups like prpl and OpenWRT, but there's no "storefront" concept.

There are various vendor-specific initiatives API too, but that’s pretty useless for (say) a game or smart home developer wanting to use capabilities for 100’s of millions of homes around the world, on 1000s of ISPs and 100s of vendor products. I think there needs to be more effort akin to what I’m seeing from CAMARA, GSMA and many others in mobile / 5G network APIs, as well as engagement with the CPaaS, hyperscaler and integrator communities. Smartphones spend 80% of their lives on Wi-Fi, so it would make sense to provide some form of unified exposure layer.

Shared spectrum:

With the arguable exception of 6GHz with AFC for higher-power Wi-Fi usage outdoors, there’s very little interest in developing Wi-Fi solutions (or advancing policy ideas) for local-licensed or shared #spectrum. It’s still stuck in the mindset that it must only use unlicensed bands.

I think that's missing a trick - there should be Wi-Fi variants for all the various local-licensed bands, being used for #private5G in enterprises or public-sector domains. While Wi-Fi is good for many industrial use-cases, it can't really address some of the mission-critical / safety-critical uses that fit best with more guaranteed spectrum access. It would give higher power options too.

Wi-Fi & cellular integration

Many operators, especially in Europe, are still bewilderingly slow at pushing forward for Wi-Fi + cellular integration and federation, especially around the use of PassPoint or OpenRoaming, to allow a broad array of venues and visited networks to participate. I know that more are looking at it, but some get really hung up on minor issues such as policy control over offloaded traffic. I’m pretty sure that if their compliance folk talked to regulators, they could find a simple workaround.

Wi-Fi, 6G and R&D projects

An almost complete absence of Wi-Fi vision as part of 6G thinking, apart from some vague references to “networks of networks”. I’d like to see IEEE 802.11 pitch WiFi9 (or even WiFi8) as a candidate tech for IMT2030, alongside whatever 3GPP and others come up with. Linked to this, there needs to be a concerted effort by the industry to get more involvement form academia and R&D institutions in Wi-Fi-related research.

Why aren’t there Wi-Fi Innovation Centres, or funded collaborative research projects, similar to those set up by governments for 5G / 6G or satellite?

Summary

Overall, the Wi-Fi industry is in a reasonable position of strength. Adoption of gigabit broadband is a pull-factor for upgrades of residential equipment. Ongoing industrial and enterprise interest in new business processes and wireless IoT is assisting growth there as well.

But there are also some missed opportunities, where the future could look even better. I think the industry needs to take the fight to 5G / 6G a bit more aggressively, in particular - and continue its advocacy to policymakers and regulators along various different vectors.

If you want to meet to chat about any of this, please let me know. I'll be at Spectrum Americas in Washington DC on Oct 1-2, and at WBA Wireless Global Congress & NetworkX in Paris from Oct 8-10.