Wi-Fi 7 gains ground but advanced Wi-Fi standards lag in Europe

While Wi-Fi consistently maintains its status as the last-mile workhorse that carries the vast majority of indoor internet traffic, the market is evolving in the face of fragmentation with 5 GHz remaining the “Wi-Fi workhorse” as global 6 GHz use is patchy, especially in European markets which are showing low 6 GHz use and disparities in advanced Wi-Fi adoption, according to research from Ookla. The Global state of Wi-Fi report showed that Wi-Fi is now supporting an increasingly dense network environment of smart home systems, enterprise internet of things (IoT) endpoints and security infrastructure. Yet while the demands of all these applications on Wi-Fi continue to diversify, the active end-user experience is ultimately governed by the device used most frequently – the smartphone. The research was based on Ookla Speedtest data from Android devices to track the proliferation of the different generations of Wi-Fi (from Wi-Fi 4 to Wi-Fi 7) within the global installed base of customer premise equipment (CPE). In particular, it examined the growth in use of 6 GHz spectrum for Wi-Fi , as well as the emergence of CPE supporting Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be). Globally, there was a clear trend over the past four years covered in the research, based on Speedtest data – Wi-Fi 4 has been in rapid decline, with Wi-Fi 6 the net recipient, and Wi-Fi 7 beginning to scale only in the most advanced markets. Research firm Omdia forecasts that consumer Wi-Fi 7 CPE will ramp up from 3.6% of the global installed base in 2025, at a CAGR of 35.2%, to reach an installed base of 13.8% by 2030. Among the key takeaways were that despite the recent plethora of launches of Wi-Fi 7 technology, it remains nascent in most markets with Singapore having the highest percentage of Wi-Fi 7 users (25%) in the world. The latter was attributed to the city state government’s push to upgrade home broadband speeds to 10 Gbps by educating consumers that their old Wi-Fi 6 or 6E routers wouldn’t be able to achieve those speeds. In addition, Singapore’s telcos have actively bundled Wi-Fi 7 hardware into their 10 Gbps broadband subscriptions, helping drive adoption. Overall global Speedtest data showed that Wi-Fi 7 was emerging with slightly less than 2% share of samples in Q1 2026. It also showed Wi-Fi 6 rising from just 6% in Q1 2022 to 27% in Q1 2026, as well as the gradual decline of older Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 4 generations, which fell to 39% and 34% respectively. Oookla said that there are many factors behind what appears to be a slow adoption curve for the latest Wi-Fi generation. It observed that development of the Wi-Fi 7 standard (802.11be) began with an initial draft in March 2021, and while early commercially available Wi-Fi 7 devices were released in early 2023, they were based on draft standards, with the final version published in July 2025. Looking at use of spectrum bands for Wi-Fi, the study found that newly introduced 6 GHz frequency had seen pockets of progress, but remained subscale globally, capturing just 1.7% share of samples. The 5 GHz spectrum band remained the de facto Wi-Fi band of choice, with just under 60% of Wi-Fi users globally connecting to it. This was said to be primarily because the lower portion of the 5 GHz band is available for unlicensed use in nearly every country in the world. Interestingly, the study revealed that Wi-Fi 7 adoption has been impacted by the availability of the 6 GHz band, which lends it most of its throughput headroom, but assignment of which is fragmented globally. In the first quarter of 2024, 2.2% of Speedtest users in the key North America region were connecting via the 6 GHz band, compared with Q1 2026 when 13.8% were connecting on that band. This represented a sixfold increase in 2 years. The analyst noted that early allocation of the band, and ISP deployment of 6 GHz CPE has helped drive adoption. At the same time, it said that it was seeing Wi-Fi usage in the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz bands declining strongly in the region. Despite early regional moves to open lower frequencies, Europe’s 6 GHz band utilisation is capped at a lowly 1.6%. This migration – described as “sluggish” – was said to be masking “significant” country-level fragmentation in the adoption of advanced Wi-Fi standards (Wi-Fi 6 + 7). Switzerland led the region with 58.7% modern Wi-Fi share, well ahead of lagging markets such as Czechia (31.1%) and Ireland (30.7%). In Latin America, despite widespread regulatory adoption of the 6 GHz band for Wi-Fi, real-world utilisation remained at a nominal 0.1% in Q1 2026. Ookla said this indicated a lag in commercial deployments across the region. Another key finding of the study was that the typical consumer device lifecycle is not a bottleneck for advanced Wi-Fi, as the majority (61.4%) of global Speedtest samples from Android devices support modern Wi-Fi 6 or newer generations. However, the analyst noted that surging datacentre demand for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure – specifically high-performance memory and processing units – has inflated component costs across the global semiconductor supply chain, increasing bill-of-materials pressures for both smartphone and CPE manufacturers. Read more about Wi-Fi Can enterprise AI in Singapore succeed without Wi‐Fi 7? : Enterprises are quickly discovering that their wireless infrastructure is the real barrier to AI readiness. 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