Application latency is new battleground for broadband provision
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John Moulding
| 19 October 2023
2 Application latency is new battleground for broadband provision
A new research paper from Omdia warns that broadband network speeds will cease to be a competitive advantage, and attention must turn to in-home Wi-Fi and a focus on latency, application prioritisation and continuous optimisation to cope with interactivity.

The report, which was commissioned by Airties (a leading provider of managed, Smart Wi-Fi solutions to service providers globally) says operators need the right software management tools to identify applications and enhance Wi-Fi performance to avoid the in-home network becoming a bottleneck on increasingly fast connections.

The report notes that the next generation of Internet applications will be far more interactive, where low latency and network consistency will be crucial to the overall experience. One example given is cloud gaming, where a consistent level of low network latency is more important than speed.

For XR applications, the report notes that ultra-high speeds and ultra-low latency are equally important. “If such services are to be delivered with sufficient QoE, it is essential that operators, when developing their next-generation optical fibre networks, ensure they are capable of multi-gigabit access speeds, but also low levels of latency and jitter, providing the required reliability and consistency.”

Michael Philpott, the report author and Research Director, Service Provider, Consumer at Omdia, says: “As service providers continue their push towards full-fibre networks and gigabit broadband services, the ability to provide high-speed, low-latency and highly consistent Wi-Fi connectivity to every device, and every corner of the home, becomes a vital part of the end-to-end broadband strategy. Not doing so quickly leads to customer dissatisfaction, which in turn leads to increased operational costs and customer churn.”

In fact, the report found that a lack of home Wi-Fi investment can already lead to an increase in customer support calls (with up to 60% of all broadband service calls relating to Wi-Fi) and a reduction of Net Promotor Scores by up to -40 points (because customer Wi-Fi issues are not solved promptly).

“Demands placed upon today’s home Wi-Fi networks have never been higher,” declares Metin Taskin, Co-CEO and Founder of Airties. “For today’s intensive usage, especially with applications like high-definition video conferencing, cloud-based gaming, and AR/VR, broadband operators need ways to proactively manage the application experience across every connected device in the home.

“This new report from Omdia addresses key considerations around latency and QoE, and we’re pleased to help make it available to broadband service providers around the globe.”

The report is called ‘Ensuring Consistent Home Wi-Fi QoE is Critical to Broadband Success’ and finds that more than 40% of households worldwide will have FTTH connectivity by 2027. The figure will be even higher in advanced countries. The move to more advanced broadband access technologies has led to a 500% increase in the average speed over the past five years.

A further 200% speed increase is expected across all regions in the next five years, but the report warns that speed, on its own, will no longer be a competitive advantage for broadband operators.

Based on Omdia’s research with leading broadband service providers, the new report highlights that under-investment in home Wi-Fi can also lead to:

Increased operational costs due to the complexity of pin-pointing causes of home Wi-Fi issues, pushing up costs to $30 per customer care call, with 10%-15% of customers needing more than a single call to resolve the issue.
Additional inefficiency and unnecessary costs, because 80% of routers that are returned as faulty are found to have no physical defect, or ‘no fault found’ (NFF).
Unreported discontent, as up to 50–60% of subscribers with Wi-Fi related issues do not report the problem. Such customers typically have a lower NPS of up to -20 points, making a bad Wi-Fi user experience a growing driver of broadband customer churn.


Data from the report demonstrates the critical need for broadband service providers to deploy Smart Wi-Fi software that can monitor, predict, and solve performance issues. Airties recently announced an integration with Domos that aims to provide enhanced latency measurement at the device and application level as a capability of Airties Cloud.