By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman.
What will be the big narratives and major opportunities in Wi-Fi this year? One thing is for sure: It’s been a turbulent couple of years for the industry but we’re now on track for a resurgence – meaning a return to growth – across all major segments, from home to IoT to enterprise – with a few surprises and promising innovations thrown in the mix. Here’s what we believe are the important themes and opportunities for 2025.
Wi-Fi for the home: QoE and AI – everywhere
Home Wi-Fi QoE management is gradually becoming table stakes for vendors and CSPs – but it is still a hot topic and there’s a lot of market share still up for grabs. We think a few new vendors are likely to make significant inroads with great low-cost offerings. And of course new AI tools – such as Qualcomm’s new chip with AI at the edge – will come into play as home gateways become conduits for GenAI. The infrastructure is ready but we have yet to see what revenue-generating services will look like.
Defragmenting the massive Wi-Fi IoT opportunity
The stars are aligning for a huge surge in Wi-Fi IoT with loads of excellent technology, including ultra-low-power chipsets and long-range Wi-Fi HaLow. Perhaps the two biggest challenges are scale and defragmentation. Meanwhile opportunities continue to expand in myriads of use cases. There’s no question that this will continue to be a big theme in 2025.
Open source CPE platforms – can they deliver on their promises?
RDK, Prpl, OpenWRT, OpenWiFi, OpenSync – just some of the initiatives and organisations relying on open source platforms to deliver the Wi-Fi that everyone wants. These are important and they’re growing. The battle is on to secure support from major vendors and CSPs for the various initiatives. Who will win or how will the spoils be divided in 2025?
Wi-Fi HaLow comes of age – finally
New market analysis suggests (and we think they’re right!) that Wi-Fi HaLow is finally coming of age as the technology of choice for long range, low-power IoT. And after nearly 10 years it’s about time. We’ve never been in doubt, the standard speaks for itself, as do chipsets and new products, which are now emerging in numbers. We believe Wi-Fi HaLow will be on everyone’s lips in 2025 (and we’ll be conducting the first Wi-Fi HaLow Global Summit in April – more here).
Indoor mobile coverage with Wi-Fi and ‘offload’
The stars are also aligning to finally replace expensive and inflexible indoor cellular technology (DAS, small cells) with fast, low cost, ubiquitous enterprise Wi-Fi. How are they doing it? With Passpoint – and with some great new companies shifting the paradigm. Now is the time for autoconnect Wi-Fi everywhere at all indoor venues across the US and across the planet.
A new networking paradigm with Campus NaaS
A handful of innovative enterprise networking startups are attacking the global enterprise market with a new approach: Campus NaaS. And they are growing – relatively fast. NaaS is still relatively new so we’re still discovering what it is and why it is potentially disruptive in an age where IT resources are becoming increasingly scarce. Campus NaaS is also a new source of service and technology innovation. We think they will make a small but important dent in the enterprise market in 2025.
Non-connectivity Wi-Fi use cases: Sensing, gestures, ambient power
With the aid of AI, non-connectivity use cases for Wi-Fi have been around for a while but interest and applications are expanding. Wi-Fi sensing is evolving fast and things like gesture controls and breathing detection could be in the pipeline soon. Harvesting RF energy for battery-free IoT devices is another leap forward in ubiquitous Wi-Fi IoT. For more about this also see this recent guest blog by embedUR.
Can Web3/blockchain disrupt the connectivity industry?
Web3-based initiatives such as Helium Mobile, Metablox, XNET, and others have moved from curiosities to viable propositions – but can they go mass market? As the crypto industry nears the top of its fourth market cycle, Web3-based networking is back in vogue and this time, we think it’s serious. Decentralised networks may have an important role to play – also in the world of Wi-Fi – and 2025 could lay the foundation for this.
The perfect marriage: LEO satellites & Wi-Fi
This is on the outskirts of what we would normally consider Wi-Fi related but it can no longer be ignored. Tens of thousands of low Earth orbit satellites are going up from Florida and LEO services are quickly becoming amazingly popular for homes, businesses, boats, you name it. This is the right time to position your enterprise or home broadband Wi-Fi business to benefit from massive satellite investments. We believe there are opportunities for Wi-Fi companies in this space.
Our favourite startups & innovators in Wi-Fi
Entrepreneurs make the world go around – and we want to support them as much as we can, especially those projects that are pushing the envelope for what’s possible with Wi-Fi. We’ve got a few surprises up our sleeve that we’re supporting and following. Wi-Fi is fertile ground for innovation and some of these will surely go big. The seeds will be planted in 2025.
Did we miss anything? Let me know – write me at [email protected].
And of course pretty much all of the above will be on display at the Wi-Fi World Congress USA in Mountain View, California, on April 28-30 – register your interest and receive full updates by signing up here.
/Claus.
