Wi-Fi technology continues to evolve in ways that anticipate the needs of consumers, businesses, enterprise verticals, smart cities, and service providers, according to the Wireless Broadband Alliance.
Tiago Rodrigues, CEO of the Wireless Broadband Alliance, revealed predictions for 2024 and beyond that he believes will change the way wireless technology is used by communities and businesses across the world, including improved connectivity, efficiencies and new consumer experiences.
Fibre broadband deployments will continue to expand in most developed and developing markets, creating a need for an upgrade of home Wi-Fi networks to pass on the increased bandwidth to the device, which will drive the rapid adoption of Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7.
The rapid adoption of Wi-Fi 6E/7 will also be driven by its ability to access additional spectrum in the 6GHz band as more countries open the band.
Wi-Fi 7 will drive advancements in gaming and video content.
In a sport where milliseconds count, networking equipment will be just as crucial to the game as the speed of the gaming rig.
Wi-Fi 7 will be critical for speed and near-zero latency, and game developers will break new barriers with immersive experiences.
Wi-Fi 7 client devices have already been released in 2023 with Qualcomm chipset, with more to come in 2024.
OpenRoaming growth will continue to integrate with private 5G and IoT networks in 2024, reaching a critical point of exponential growth by 2026 when tens of millions of hotspots will be enabled.
Deployments of OpenRoaming, continue to rise as more brands and identity providers recognize the value of the federation to enable seamless connectivity access across different networks.
Convergence will progress enabling access to private and/or public 5G services over Wi-Fi. Network executives are expected to continue deploying Wi-Fi and cellular in the coming years, with Wi-Fi 6E/7 for indoor, on-campus, and fixed network situations and 5G/cellular for outdoor, off-campus, and mobile environments.
Rather than competing with 5G over emerging high-performance use cases, the Wi-Fi community continues to work on coexistence with 5G, especially around identity management, authentication, and policy management.
NaaS will rise beyond early adopters spreading quickly to traditional enterprises where networks provide cloud-first, software-defined, application-centric environments.
The role of AI and ML cannot be overstated, with Adaptive AI set to explode on networks, from enabling Automated Frequency Coordination to predicting network resourcing needs.
Outdoor AFC will initially be successful in rural connectivity, in countries that have opened large portions of the 6GHz spectrum to Wi-Fi. We expect 6GHz low-power indoor devices with an average transmit power of 24 dBm to proliferate quickly for indoor applications such as residential mesh, indoor public venues, and high-density enterprise networks.
New IoT technology will help unify connectivity across multiple home devices, transforming home users' experience with IoT devices.
Given the weight of players involved, we expect the adoption of Matter-certified products will be exponential in the next three years, validating Wi-Fi's central role in the smart connected home and buildings.
Pilot projects and trials of TIP Open Wi-Fi will proliferate in developing countries and price-sensitive markets due to its cost-effectiveness and the benefits offered by an open disaggregated model.
Well-established wireless local-area network vendors will continue working to make themselves more cost-effective in these markets through massive investment in machine learning and AI and an integrated Wi-Fi + 5G offering to enterprises.
Augmented and virtual reality will gain a larger share of our daily lives at home and work, but it will require indoor broadband networks to adapt with improvements in user interfaces and network capabilities to cater for larger group of users.
This Cyber News was published on www.helpnetsecurity.com. Publication date: Fri, 22 Dec 2023 05:43:22 +0000