By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman
What CSPs currently offer Wi-Fi 7-based home broadband services? We’ve been trying to get a handle on this although it is not easy. Here’s what we know going all the way back to the first launches of 2023. Aside: We tried to get some help from Grok and ChatGPT. Although their answers occasionally are helpful they were also often incorrect. Thankfully WiFi NOW will not be replaced by robot researchers – at least not yet 😉
Now that Wi-Fi 8 seems to have been launched (read more here) how about a quick status report on where we are with Wi-Fi 7? We think it’s timely. But before we dig into the details: If you want the fully researched Wi-Fi 7 adoption status report make sure you check out this tracker from the excellent people at Intel – although it is from April (but fully valid at the time).
What has happened across Europe – and what has not
One of the earliest Wi-Fi 7 launches (powered by Qualcomm) is from early 2024 when France’s Free (Iliad) introduced their home-grown solution (meaning using their own CPEs). You can read about it here. The launch was surrounded by a little controversy in that competitor Bouygues later claimed that they were first to launch Wi-Fi 7 (in January 2025) because Free’s CPE was not Wi-Fi 7 certified at the time.
In any case Free and Bouygues were two of the first (depending on how you define it) although not the only ones in that Finnish fibre service provider Lounea had already launch a Wi-Fi 7 service using TP-Link routers as had Singtel using what appears to be their own CPEs. Technically, we believe the Singtel was probably the first to go live with an own Wi-Fi 7-capable CPE in December of 2023.
We then had to make amends to Bouygues for getting the facts wrong – with this story. Swisscom added Wi-Fi 7 to their portfolio in November of 2024, while Iliad of Italy (sister company to Free in France) had already introduced their Wi-Fi 7 service in April 2024. EE of UK launched their Wi-Fi 7 offering in September of 2024. Then came (according to Grok) – in addition to eir of Ireland – three UK-based fibre operators who added Wi-Fi 7 to their portfolios in August of this year: Zzoom, BeFibre, and YouFibre. Orange France started rolling out its Livebox 7 in April of this year while – remarkably – Deutsche Telecom has yet to introduce Wi-Fi 7 to its subscriber base. Conversely, both Vodafone and O2 Germany offer Wi-Fi 7-capable routers including (in O2’s case) the infamous Fritz!Box as of the middle of this year.
Orange Poland introduced Wi-Fi 7 in January of this year while Denmark-based based CPE provider Icotera announced Wi-Fi 7 deals with Telenor Denmark and Telenor Sweden. But it appears that Wi-Fi 7 is not yet available for Telenor subscribers yet. Sweden and Denmark also for the time being appear to be Wi-Fi 7-free. This means that Scandinavia is in general Wi-Fi 7-free with the possible exception of Lounea (and that depends on whether you consider Finland a part of Scandinavia, and we shouldn’t really get into that discussion here).
Vodafone UK began Wi-Fi 7 rollouts in June of this year while another local giant – KPN of Holland – has yet to introduce Wi-Fi 7. Virgin Media UK has also not launched Wi-Fi 7 yet. In other words: There are a number of significant European operators that have still (as far as we know) not moved on the Wi-Fi 7 front, including Liberty Global, DT, and KPN. And while PT Portugal (MEO) launched their Wi-Fi 7 offering last year, Telefonica Spain still has not. In other words: There’s plenty of room for Wi-Fi 7 adoption improvements in Europe.
North America: Ahead or behind?
North America is really ground zero for all things Wi-Fi in that most of the Wi-Fi industry is concentrated in the US and because the FCC has always been exceedingly supportive of Wi-Fi and unlicensed bands. The first service provider to announce Wi-Fi 7 in North America was – at least formally and to our knowledge – Lumen Technologies. The company introduced its first Wi-Fi 7 device and service in December 2023 (read more here). Charter’s Wi-Fi 7 announcement came in November of last year and the company promptly went on to win a WiFi NOW Award for Best Wi-Fi Service Provider in December 2024. Comcast Xfinity’s Wi-Fi 7 solution seems still to be limited in rollout while AT&T’s ‘All-Fi Pro’ Wi-Fi 7 package was launched in April of this year. We’re still waiting for a Verizon Fios Wi-Fi 7 offering.
Meanwhile a few smaller US ISPs have launched Wi-Fi 7 services: Google Fiber started rolling out Wi-Fi 7 early this year while it can even be argued that Frontier was really ‘the first’ with a Wi-Fi 7 service in November of 2023 when the company announced a partnership with mesh and router pioneer eero. Eero’s first (consumer) Wi-Fi 7 device was launched in September of 2023. Canadian rollout of Wi-Fi 7 started with Rogers in June of this year and since then Telus (July) and Bell (September) have followed. There may well be smaller ISPs in North America with Wi-Fi 7 services that are not included on this list.
Altice does not appear to have launched a Wi-Fi 7 service yet although sister company Altice Labs has developed a Wi-Fi 7 platform. As far as we know, Mexican service providers have yet to offer any Wi-Fi 7-based services. As far as we know Wi-Fi 7 has not arrived in South America yet.
Who has launched Wi-Fi 7 in Asia?
For various reasons it is a little harder to get a handle on Wi-Fi 7 deployments in Asia but – as mentioned – the honour as the world’s first goes to Singtel. Singapore’s StarHub is also an early adopter having launched Wi-Fi 7 with TP-Link hardware in February of 2024 and since then MyRepublic has followed in January of 2025. Singapore appears to be the only fully-enabled Wi-Fi 7 country in the world. India – on the other hand – has yet to offer a Wi-Fi 7 service although Reliance Jio trials are ongoing (the lower 6 GHz band was only delicensed for Wi-Fi operation by Indian regulators in May of this year).
Softbank appears to be the only Japanese service provider to offer Wi-Fi 7 at this time while both NTT Docomo and KDDI have announced trials. In August of this year Time of Malaysia began offering Wi-Fi 7 routers with certain fibre plans. Hong Kong’s HKBN launched a Wi-Fi 7-based service (using TP-Link routers) in mid-2024 while HKT/PCCW introduced their service in November of 2024 using ASUS or Huawei hardware, which means that Hong Kong is also pretty well covered by Wi-Fi 7.
Finally we would be remiss if we didn’t dive into what’s happening with Wi-Fi 7 in Korea. Korean operators have been notoriously pro-Wi-Fi and early in adopting most new generations and indeed, KT announced a Wi-Fi 7 partnership with Intel as early as in March of 2023. Sources indicate that KT began offering Wi-Fi 7 services to home broadband customers in March of this year hot on the heels of Korean operator LG U+ who also launched its Wi-Fi 7 router the same month. SKT does not appear to have launched a Wi-Fi-7 based home service as yet.
Has Wi-Fi 7 deployment by service providers been a disappointment?
Let’s start by pointing out that Wi-Fi 7 adoption – as evidenced by this data – has certainly not been disappointing and in fact has been faster than that of previous standards. That said one can’t help but feel a little disappointed that not more (especially major) service providers have not long since jumped on the Wi-Fi 7 bandwagon. The reason is – of course – cost. Rolling out new CPEs by the millions is not a low-cost undertaking and many service providers are not exactly experiencing financial growth these days. So the reasons are largely understandable.
Meanwhile we now have more than ample evidence that a lot of service providers continue to deliver (to put it politely) below par Wi-Fi despite rolling out a lot of fibre, for example. This evidence has been accumulating in reports by both Ookla (speedtest) and (more recently) Opensignal. There are (at least) three ways of delivering excellent home Wi-Fi services: Deploying CPEs supporting the latest (or at least a recent) Wi-Fi standard, making use of the 6 GHz band (which means that as a minimum Wi-Fi 6E is required), and finally optimising home Wi-Fi quality of experience remotely.
While the first and second methods involve significant CAPEX, the third method does not. We will have more to say about that shortly.
Did we leave out any Wi-Fi 7 home broadband providers? Did we get anything wrong? We not big on fake news so please contact me at [email protected] if you have any comments to this story.
Some additions have come in: We left out Sky UK, which of course also has Wi-Fi 7 available. The service was introduced in July of this year – you can read more about it here.
/Claus.
