According to a cross-industry survey conducted by the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA), 90 per cent of respondents are already planning to deploy Wi-Fi 6. 

The respondents include personnel from a global cross-section of over 200 telecommunications service providers, technology vendors and enterprises.  Highlighting the speed of planned upgrades, 66 per cent said they plan to deploy the next iteration of Wi-Fi before the end of 2020.

These findings were released by the WBA, as part of the WBA Annual Industry Report 2020, an in-depth analysis of the state of the Wi-Fi market. 

“Although the WBA has been driving the adoption of WI-Fi 6, with deployment guidelines and field trials, we were ourselves surprised at the scale of support that Wi-Fi 6 already has,” said Tiago Rodrigues, CEO of the WBA.  “When such a large proportion of service providers and technology vendors have the technology in their short-term roadmap, it means that Wi-Fi 6 will very quickly become part of the landscape for service providers, enterprises and consumers.”

Other key findings from the survey and report include:

·        78 per cent of those surveyed find the 6 GHz extension to be very important or important to their current or future network strategy.

·        The role of Wi-Fi or unlicensed spectrum was the most important factor to consider in terms of strategy for network evolution and 5G, for about half of respondents.

·        Next Generation Hotspot (NGH)/Passpoint continues to gain in popularity, with 40 per cent of those surveyed saying they would incorporate the Wi-Fi roaming technology before the end of 2020. 

·        A further 37 per cent plan to implement the technology, but have not set a firm date.

·        Within three years, IoT and vertical industry applications are expected to become the leading revenue driver for Wi-Fi, with 45 per cent placing it in their top three expected revenue sources.

The full report is available to download from this link.