By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman
Dell’Oro predicts Wi-Fi’s return to growth in 2025
More bullish market news from the analysts at Dell’Oro Group: The company now forecasts 12% enterprise Wi-Fi market growth for 2025 following a contraction in 2024. Separately they expect the broadband access equipment market (including CPEs) to grow just 0.8% per year on average towards 2029 with Wi-Fi 7 routers and CPEs reaching a total market value of $US8.9 billion by 2029.
After a couple of slim years the enterprise Wi-Fi market is now finally returning to growth.”Wi-Fi 7 adoption will shoot up in 2025 and represent over a third of indoor AP revenues,” Dell’Oro says. Dell’Oro estimates the growth to reach double digits landing at around 12%.
“We expect Wi-Fi 7 adoption to continue on this upward trend. Shipments of the new technology should overtake shipments of Wi-Fi 6E by mid-2025,” says Sîan Morgan, Research Director at Dell’Oro. The WLAN market research report from Dell’Oro Group is available here.
The company also says that in particular enterprise Wi-Fi software revenues are expected to rise sharply and that features based on AIOps are leading to a higher revenue per installed AP. Dell’Oro also expects WLAN revenues to grow in China despite China’s challenging macro-economic conditions.
On the home broadband side VP Analyst Jeff Heynen also of Dell’Oro says PON equipment and Wi-Fi 7 routers are leading the growth spree as the industry begins a shift towards AI-powered services. The overall broadband access network market is expected to grow by 0.8% towards 2029, peaking in 2028. The good Wi-Fi news is that revenue from Wi-Fi 7 residential routers and CPEs will rise to US$8.9 billion by 2029 as Wi-Fi 7 is being rapidly adopted, Dell’Oro says. The report is available here.
ACT Fibernet deploys Aprecomm’s AI-based Wi-Fi QoE platform
Bangalore-based home broadband service provider ACT Fibernet announced today that it has successfully deployed Aprecomm’s Wi-Fi QoE solution on customer CPEs. Aprecomm says the software enhances the in-home Wi-Fi experience across all devices and applications by creating an intelligent Wi-Fi service.
“The new software aims to transform traditional Wi-Fi connectivity by actively monitoring the home Wi-Fi network – including all applications and client devices – to identify quality of experience issues, including congestion and interference, and optimise the online experience in real-time through channel switching, band steering, and other advanced features,” Aprecomm says. ACT Fibernet serves more than 2 million subscribers in more than 30 cities across India.
ACT Fibernet says providing exceptional Wi-Fi QoE is a top priority and a top challenge. “We have planned a range of products and innovations in the home Wi-Fi sector to tackle this challenge and greatly enhance the in-home Wi-Fi experience,” says Ravi Karthik, Chief Marketing and Customer Experience Officer at ACT Fibernet. Aprecomm is a WiFi NOW partner – also read here. For more also don’t miss meeting Aprecomm in person at Wi-Fi World Congress Mountain View on April 28-30.
The Verge unravels the ‘Matter’ confusion. So what’s going on?
The Matter standard was unveiled with a great deal of fanfare a couple of years ago (WiFi NOW was involved to some extent) but since then we’ve heard precious little about this now not-so-new IoT device interoperability and usability standard. So what happened? The truth is we’ve been confused about Matter for a while. Now this extensive interview by The Verge sheds some light on the issues.
According to The Verge’s excellent reporting there have been all manner of Matter problems including reliability and interoperability issues, which are indeed the very issues the Matter standard was supposed to resolve. Add to this the idea of using ‘Thread’ as a critical part of the solution knowing that this wireless standard is otherwise nowhere to be found. That said the Matter industry organisations are now promising that 2025 will be the year where Matter delivers on its promises.
We hope that is true. We still think Matter is a great concept that will also play an important role in accelerating Wi-Fi IoT adoption. But regardless of Matter’s pending success or not, IoT (especially the ultra-low power use case) remains a major growth segment for the Wi-Fi industry. That part will continue unabated. The Verge’s coverage is highly recommended.
/Claus.
