Contributed Article
By: Valerie M. Sargent, Broadband Communities
The Wireless Broadband Alliance highlights advancements in technologies and trends in their annual Wi-Fi survey.
The 2024 WBA Industry Report was released by the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) late last year, authored by Adlane Fellah of Maravedis LLC and Alex Davies of Rethink Research. This annual survey of Wi-Fi stakeholders addresses indicators of key technology adoption and monetization trends, and this year’s results came as WBA celebrated their 20th anniversary as the global organization connecting people with the latest Wi-Fi initiatives. This is a full, 63-page, in-depth report, covering some of WBA’s notable achievements, challenges, and goals, along with information on trends, technologies, and business opportunities experienced in the Wi-Fi industry today.
Today we will touch upon a few of those things that impact our Multifamily industry readers. The report points out that there are close to 20 billion Wi-Fi devices being used today, and the economic value of Wi-Fi is an estimated $4 trillion. That’s right … $4 trillion! Connectivity is more important than ever before, and Wi-Fi continues its upward trajectory and momentum. The 6 GHz band has helped with this growth, and both Wi-Fi 6E and the OpenRoaming specification have enjoyed strong market adoption in the different Enterprise Wi-Fi segments. The average bandwidth usage across U.S. broadband households is now up to 533.8 GB, an increase from 513.8 GB in Q2 2022.
In most developed countries, it is noted that Multifamily rental demand is undergoing a multigenerational transformation. With younger generations entering the rental market in larger numbers, their needs and expectations increasingly center around having reliable Wi-Fi. Smart home devices have continued to gain popularity, and more residents have shifted into permanent hybrid work models since the pandemic. As a result, Maravedis predicts that by 2028 the managed Wi-Fi market will grow to over $6 billion in service revenues in the United States.
As a recent cord-cutter myself, it was of interest to see that among Residential Wi-Fi Home users (including single family homes), average households own nearly 20 connected devices. In this growing residential broadband usage, video streaming represents a huge portion of this traffic origination (see Figure 1 below). After this year’s Emmys, SAG Awards, and Golden Globes, I recently joined the rest of the viewers in finally streaming “Succession.” You?
Some noteworthy trends they highlight as the most critical evolutions in Wi-Fi technology to help expand business opportunities in the coming decade include enterprises increasingly adopting Wi-Fi 6E and the convergence of Private 5G and Wi-Fi.
Wi-Fi 6E allows for much wider channels and can minimize interference in densely populated locations such as Multifamily communities or office buildings that have multiple Wi-Fi access points. Higher speeds and lower latency are experienced with those wider channels, resulting in increased capacity to support all the connected devices in those locations without impacting quality of experience or slowing performance for other users. This is especially helpful for those residents relying on these services to have successful video conferencing, gaming, and streaming, along with AR and VR applications.
For those who like to “nerd out,” there is discussion around Wi-Fi 7, leveraging the work done on Wi-Fi 6/6E and the abundance of the new 6GHz spectrum. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) standardization work is focused on innovation in features such as Wi-Fi sensing, AFC, increased convergence with 5G, and OpenRoaming, thanks to the work of WBA member companies.
“Wi-Fi 7 allows channel widths up to 320 MHz, doubling the bandwidth compared to the 160 MHz channels in Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6/6E. Wi-Fi 7 devices with multi-radios can leverage multi-link operations in 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz bands, enabling seamless switching between the links to move critical applications to higher bands and aggregate the links where/when needed. With wider channels, MLOs, and 4K QAM capabilities, Wi-Fi 7 can deliver speeds over three times faster than Wi-Fi 6.”
Looking back at Multifamily, it is predicted that the managed Wi-Fi market in the U.S. will grow to over $6 billion in service revenues by 2028, with other regions to follow suit. Managed Wi-Fi is gaining traction in affordable units due to programs like ACP and BEAD, as well as student housing and senior living. You’ll see this momentum in the Multifamily track of our upcoming Broadband Communities Summit this May.
All of this information is just the tip of the iceberg in this report. It is available to the public via open license, and you can get your copy and read the full report from Maravedis.
Valerie M. Sargent is a multifamily speaker, trainer and executive consultant and is the multifamily news correspondent for Broadband Communities. For more information, visit www.nmhc.org, www.bbcmag.com or www.valeriemsargent.com, where you can contact her directly.
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