Report: Wi-Fi 7 remains nascent in most markets
June 8, 2026



Wi-Fi is the last-mile workhorse that carries the vast majority of indoor internet traffic, supporting an increasingly dense network environment of smart home systems, enterprise IoT endpoints, and security infrastructure. While the demands of all these applications on Wi-Fi continue to diversify, the active end-user experience is ultimately governed by the device used most frequently – the smartphone.

Through this lens, Ookla has used its Speedtest data from Android devices to track the proliferation of the different generations of Wi-Fi (from Wi-Fi 4 to Wi-Fi 7) within the global installed base of Customer Premise Equipment (CPE).


In particular, Ookla examined the growth in use of 6 GHz spectrum for Wi-Fi, as well as the emergence of CPE supporting Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be), which received the Wi-Fi Alliance’s stamp of approval in 2024. Omdia forecasts that consumer Wi-Fi 7 CPE will ramp up from 3.6 per cent of the global installed base in 2025, at a CAGR of 35.2 per cent, to reach an installed base of 13.8 per cent by 2030.

Key Takeaways:

Singapore has the highest percentage of Wi-Fi 7 users (25 per cent) in the world. This is largely due to the Singaporean government’s push to upgrade home broadband speeds to 10 Gbps by educating consumers that their old Wi-Fi 6 or 6E routers wouldn’t be able to achieve those speeds. In addition, Singapore’s telcos have actively bundled Wi-Fi 7 hardware into their 10 Gbps broadband subscriptions, helping drive adoption.
North America leads on 6 GHz spectrum band Wi-Fi use. In Q1 2024, 2.2 per cent of Speedtest users in North America were connecting via the 6 GHz band, compared to Q1 2026 when 13.8 per cent were connecting on that band – a sixfold increase in 2 years. Early allocation of the band, and ISP deployment of 6 GHz CPE has helped drive adoption. At the same time, we’re seeing Wi-Fi usage in the 5 GHz and 2.4 GHz bands declining strongly in the region.
Wi-Fi 7 remains nascent in most markets. Global Speedtest data shows Wi-Fi 7 emerging with slightly less than 2 per cent share of samples in Q1 2026. It also shows Wi-Fi 6 rising from just 6 per cent in Q1 2022 to 27 per cent in Q1 2026 as well as the gradual decline of older Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 4 generations, which fell to 39 per cent and 34 per cent respectively.
6 GHz use is fragmented globally as 5 GHz remains the global Wi-Fi workhorse. The newly introduced 6 GHz band has seen pockets of progress, but remains subscale globally, capturing just 1.7 per cent share of samples. The 5 GHz spectrum band remains the de facto Wi-Fi band of choice, with just under 60% of Wi-Fi users globally connecting to it. This is primarily because the lower portion of the 5 GHz band is available for unlicensed use in nearly every country in the world.
Smartphones are not a major bottleneck for advanced Wi-Fi use in middle and high-income markets, but rising component costs loom large. The consumer device lifecycle is not a bottleneck for advanced Wi-Fi, as the majority (61.4 per cent) of global Speedtest samples from Android devices support modern Wi-Fi 6 or newer generations. However, surging data centre demand for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure – specifically high-performance memory and processing units—has inflated component costs across the global semiconductor supply chain, increasing bill-of-materials pressures for both smartphone and customer premises equipment (CPE) manufacturers.
European markets show low 6 GHz use and disparities in advanced Wi-Fi adoption. Despite early regional moves to open lower frequencies, Europe’s 6 GHz band utilisation is capped at a lowly 1.6 per cent. This sluggish migration masks significant country-level fragmentation in the adoption of advanced Wi-Fi standards (Wi-Fi 6 + 7) – Switzerland leads the region with 58.7 per cent modern Wi-Fi share, well ahead of lagging markets such as Czechia (31.1 per cent) and Ireland (30.7 per cent).
Subscale 6 GHz use in many markets is a function either of slow commercial deployment or spectrum clearance. In Latin America, despite widespread regulatory adoption of the 6 GHz band for Wi-Fi, real-world utilisation remained at a nominal 0.1 per cent in Q1 2026. This indicates a lag in commercial deployments across the region.