More than half (51%) of wireless broadband providers polled for the Wireless Broadband Alliance's (WBA) Annual Industry Report for 2019 are more confident in investing in Wi-Fi in the coming year.
A further 33% of respondents to the survey, conducted for WBA by Senza Fili, stated that they were as confident in investing in the technology compared to last year, with only 16% less confident.
The renewed faith is being driven by factors including increased confidence in the deployment of the latest generation of Wi-Fi technology, 802.11ax or Wi-Fi 6.
Other factors include growing adoption of NGH (next generation hotspot) Passpoint devices, as well as increasing volumes of Wi-Fi devices and traffic.
According to the report, the WBA does not believe that the latest generation of Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi 6, will be negatively impacted by 5G. It will instead be embraced by operators to increase the efficiency of wireless networks, the industry body said.
Meanwhile the biggest gap between customer expectations and reality in in-home WI-Fi services was in the provision of end-to-end security services. The introduction of the WPA3 Wi-Fi protected access standard is expected to help address this gap.
“It is an exciting time for the wireless industry, and the WBA brings a key contribution to the Wi-Fi ecosystem by promoting interoperability and convergence, and by making Wi-Fi even more accessible to users and service providers as we transition to Wi-Fi 6,” Senza Fili presiden Monica Paolini said.
“As Wi-Fi continues to evolve the convergence of unlicensed and licenced technologies will be critical to meet requirements for users and new use cases – particularly in IoT.”