By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman
Parts of Europe are leading the pack globally when it comes to rolling out gigabit fibre broadband to the home – but sadly, much of this is to no avail. Most European broadband service providers are still stuck operating legacy Wi-Fi CPEs, which undermine the potential benefits of multi-gigabit fibre infrastructure. This is the conclusion of an OOKLA research report published this week.
Multi-gigabit fibre now accounts for nearly 20% of all residential broadband connections across Europe but gigabit connections to the home are on average not reflected in the service providers’ corresponding choice of CPE. In many countries legacy CPEs – meaning devices capable of only Wi-Fi 4 or Wi-Fi 5 connectivity – represent more than 70% of the installed base, OOKLA says in a new research report.
Even countries with very high fibre penetration – such as Spain, Portugal, and Ireland – have deployed less than 25% Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi 7-capable CPEs. “The bottleneck has shifted from the last-mile access line to in-home Wi-Fi networks, which now face challenges from larger property sizes, modern insulation materials that hinder signal propagation, and the rapid growth in both the number and diversity of connected devices,” says Luke Kehoe, author of the OOKLA report.
Wi-Fi 7 is practically invisible in the European CPE statistics (see graphic below) while OOKLA’s speedtest results (see graphic above) show the huge boost in download (and upload) speeds for example for the Wi-Fi 7 fibre-based services of EE in the U.K. and Free of France. France leads Europe in Wi-Fi 7 penetration with both Free and Bouygues Telecom having launched Wi-Fi 7-based services while Switzerland and Denmark occupy second and third places, respectively.
Strangely, the report doesn’t mention Wi-Fi 6E at all, which has been launched by – among others – Orange France. It also makes no mention of the fact that the availability of more 6 GHz spectrum in Europe would likely also lead to more operator investment into tri-band, gigabit-speed Wi-Fi 6E or Wi-Fi 7 CPEs and mesh systems. For more about the recent Bouygues Telecom Wi-Fi 7 launch read here.
“European countries and ISPs that swiftly transition a larger share of their base from legacy Wi-Fi standards to more advanced CPE will maintain a significant competitive edge in differentiating their fiber experiences,” Luke Kehoe writes in the report. See all the details of the report here.
/Claus.
