The Economic Value of Wi-Fi 6: A $500 Billion Market | Daily News Byte

Wi-Fi has been universally recognized as the term for a non-cellular, wireless connection to the Internet for at least two decades, and reliance on Wi-Fi is increasing as more devices become “connected,” such as smart plugs, televisions, audio systems, and the like. in a connected household. Similarly, consumers have become more dependent on Wi-Fi bandwidth for bandwidth-intensive activities such as video streaming, video conferencing during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the emerging “metaverse.”

Determining the value of a Wi-Fi network

The convenience of Wi-Fi features and functionality for users is incredibly valuable from an economic perspective. For example, the Wi-Fi Alliance’s February 2021 Economic Value of Wi-Fi: A Global View (2021-2025) estimates that the global economic value of Wi-Fi in 2021 will be $3.3 trillion and that to increase to $4.88 trillion by 2025, with approximately 30% of the economic value attributable to the United States. Notably, the report estimates that the global value attributable to Wi-Fi 6 alone will grow from $57.9 billion in 2021 to a nearly tenfold increase of $527.5 billion in 2025.

The Wi-Fi Alliance analysis identified a number of drivers of the economic value of Wi-Fi for various stakeholders, including: (1) free Wi-Fi in public locations, particularly in developing countries without developed cellular networks or widespread home Wi-Fi use; Fi networks; (2) residential Wi-Fi for connected devices (for example, “smart home” functions, such as security systems) to access the Internet; (3) enterprise Wi-Fi to support a significant portion of enterprise broadband traffic and increase productivity, especially for IoT and AR/VR applications; (4) Internet service providers that rely on Wi-Fi redirection and revenue from commercial Wi-Fi providers; and (5) Wi-Fi ecosystem manufacturers and companies for Wi-Fi devices and equipment, IoT networks, and AR/VR solutions. Indeed, an analysis by the Wi-Fi Alliance found that “a country’s economic development directly connected to the value of Wi-Fi,” as shown in the chart by country. However, the analysis found that there are different strengths of the relationship between the value of Wi-Fi and economic development in certain countries. Indeed, the value of Wi-Fi in certain developing countries exceeds that of some advanced economies due to the lack of developed mobile infrastructure and higher mobile costs in developing countries, and the larger digital divide in developing countries that is reduced by free public Wi-Fi. Fi.

Wi-Fi 6 will continue the trend of rapid increases in the value of Wi-Fi

Looking ahead, the Wi-Fi Alliance determined that Wi-Fi 6 will have an “accelerating effect” on the economic value of Wi-Fi in the United States. Indeed, the analysis estimated that the economic value in the United States of Wi-Fi 6 will increase more than 10-fold, from $16 billion in 2021 to $187.4 billion in 2025. The Wi-Fi Alliance predicts similar trends in other countries worldwide from 2021 to 2025, including the UK (up from $1.9 billion to $10.7 billion), France ($1.3 billion to $9.0 billion), Germany ($1.9 billion to $15.3 billion), Spain ($0.6 billion to $4.5 billion), Poland ($0.2 billion to $5.7 billion billion), Japan ($5.4 to $28.7 billion), South Korea ($2.1 to $13.4 billion), among others.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the use and, therefore, value of Wi-Fi, and even as the world returns to certain pre-pandemic activities, lessons learned and changing social behavior during the pandemic are likely to have an impact on future Wi-Fi. Fi addiction. An economic analysis by the Wi-Fi Alliance notes that while GDP for leading countries around the world shrank due to job closures and supply chain issues during the pandemic (the Wi-Fi Alliance cited the International Monetary Fund’s finding that pre-Covid growth in 2020, the United States States was 1.90%, but post-Covid 2020 growth was -4.30%), the world’s reliance on Wi-Fi has increased due to remote work and increased video consumption instead of in-person workplaces and activities. For example, instead of in-person meetings and activities where an individual is more likely to use mobile networks due to the person’s movement from location to location, the reduced mobility of individuals confined to their homes has encouraged Internet device users to rely more on Wi-Fi hotspots. Similarly, while many meetings and discussions took place in person before the COVID-19 pandemic, a greater percentage of meetings were hosted on video meeting platforms, requiring high-speed, high-bandwidth connections for instant, high-capacity video transmissions.

Quantitatively, the Wi-Fi Alliance (citing Opensignal) estimates that wireless users in the United States, the country with the most widespread Wi-Fi adoption and use in the world, have increased their communication time using Wi-Fi from 56.2% to 59.9% in less than a year. This is in line with Cisco’s Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2017-2022, in which Cisco predicted that mobile traffic (both on cellular networks and Wi-Fi) will increase from approximately 20 exabytes per month in 2017 to 180 exabytes per month in 2022. Due to this significant growth, the reliance on mobile and Wi-Fi connectivity has increased and is likely to continue to grow. For example, while this Cisco analysis predicted that mobile traffic to Wi-Fi will increase from 54% in 2017 to 59% in 2022, mobile traffic growth has also increased more than sixfold, from 11 .5 exabytes per month. in 2017 (which itself represented a large increase from 6.7 exabytes per month at the end of 2016) to 77.5 exabytes per month in 2022. Therefore, even as the world takes steps to return to pre-pandemic levels, these trends , which may have been accelerated by the pandemic, still indicate that Wi-Fi 6 is becoming increasingly valuable.

Looking ahead to the impact of Wi-Fi 6

Wi-Fi 6 is predicted to take significant value from existing Wi-Fi and accelerate value, usage and incorporation worldwide in the future. As such, it is likely to be a significant driver of global economic value for those companies within the Wi-Fi 6 space. As noted above, relatively few corporations driving Wi-Fi 6 innovation will be significant beneficiaries of this Wi-Fi 6 value since Wi-Fi 6 implementers will necessarily infringe standard essential patents.

Image source: Deposit Photos
Image ID: 3993353
Author: Lumumba