By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman
Europe may be lagging in Wi-Fi 7 adoption currently but MediaTek says European operators will be ramping up Wi-Fi 7 gateway and extender deployments aggressively within a few months. Meanwhile Wi-Fi 7 adoption in China has been slower than expected because of the lack of 6 GHz spectrum, MediaTek says.
A research report by OOKLA recently lamented European operators’ slow rollout of CPEs supporting new Wi-Fi standards (read more here) but now MediaTek – perhaps the world’s leading provider of Wi-Fi 7 home gateway and extender chipsets right now – offers a contrasting view of what’s happening on the ground: Europe is simply about a year behind North America and poised to begin climbing the steep part of the Wi-Fi 7 adoption curve within a few months, MediaTek says.
“We know that European broadband service providers are on track to ramp up Wi-Fi 7 deployments since we’ve already won sockets with many European service providers for powering Wi-Fi 7 gateways and extenders. These are new products to be launched this year. Within the home broadband service provider market we’re experiencing the fastest adoption ever of any new Wi-Fi standard,” says James Chen, VP Product & Technology Marketing at MediaTek.
In 2024 MediaTek’s Wi-Fi 7 broadband sales were just getting started (note that Wi-Fi 7 certification began in 2024). In 2025 the share of Wi-Fi 7 broadband sales has jumped to a significant percentage of the total, the company says. “Nearly all Tier 1 as well as Tier 2 broadband service providers have adopted MediaTek Wi-Fi 7 for fibre gateways, 5G FWA CPEs, and home extenders. Interest is strong in Europe and USA – as well as other parts of the world – and deployments will accelerate into 2026 and 2027,” he says.
Meanwhile in China, the adoption of Wi-Fi 7 has been slower than expected. This represents a reversal of past global market dynamics as China has previously been quick in adopting new Wi-Fi technology. The reason is clear: Lack of 6 GHz band. “China has really been the litmus test for how much the availability of 6 GHz spectrum means for Wi-Fi 7 adoption. Instead markets without 6 GHz band need to rely on other improvements to gain traction as far as Wi-Fi 7 adoption is concerned,” James Chen says.
Operators in non-6 GHz regions will still benefit from Wi-Fi 7 features – such as 20% higher peak speed due to 4kQAM modulation – although performance improvements may be less pronounced. “MLO is still an important feature but APs and gateways will be limited to aggregating two instead of three bands. MediaTek’s excellent 4kQAM and MLO implementation as well as a fifth antenna for extended range of up to 20%, support for non-linear FEMs, and 6 nm low power consumptions are all still valid selling points for MediaTek Filogic Wi-Fi 7 chips for markets where 6 GHz spectrum is not available,” he says.
In addition to the rollout Wi-Fi 7-capable fibre gateways, the market for Wi-Fi 7-capable 5G FWA CPEs is ramping up fast across the globe. The European 5G FWA CPE market has begun growing although 5G FWA is still not at the same scale in Europe as for example in the US, MediaTek says. Last year MediaTek landed major 5G FWA CPE deals with Verizon and AT&T – read more here.
/Claus.
