According to Dell’Oro, most manufacturers will deliver enterprise-grade Wi-Fi 7 products in 2024
According to the new Wireless LAN 5-Year July 2023 Forecast Report from the Dell’Oro Group, thewWireless LAN market is expected to grow another 11%, due to an uptick in the supply chain. Further, the analyst firm claims that most manufacturers will deliver enterprise-grade Wi-Fi 7 products in 2024, and in 2027, revenues will exceed $5 billion.
“Wi-Fi 7 revenues may have a slow start but will pick up when the market accelerates again, as digital transformation projects continue to drive IT investments,” commented Siân Morgan, wireless LAN research director at Dell’Oro Group. “Once Wi-Fi 7 AP shipments become material, we’re going to see a surge in LAN speeds. The uplink ports on the high-end Wi-Fi 7 products are 10 times the speed of those on most of the APs shipped today. This will mean switch upgrades and new cabling for many enterprises.”
The Dell’Oro report also shows that Wi-Fi 6E adoption picked up slightly in 1Q 2023, but according to the firm, this technology will remain a small portion of the access points (APs) shipped this year.
Wi-Fi 7, which is built from the ground up with the 6 GHz band in mind, will use multi-band/multi-channel aggregation and operation and deliver higher spectrum and power efficiency, better interference mitigations, higher capacity density and higher cost efficiency. Some direct enhancements over Wi-Fi 6 include support of 320 MHz transmissions, which is double the 160 MHz of 802.11ax, the use of higher modulation orders, optionally supporting 4096-QAM — up from 1024-QAM in 802.11ax — and the allocation of multiple resource units, such as groups of OFDMA tones.
Dell’Oro also cautioned that the “vision of global spectrum harmonization” remains at risk as the World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC) — where international Radio Regulations are review and, as necessary, revised — approaches in November. While the firm did not elaborate on why that might be, it did state that if a lack of harmonization around Wi-Fi spectrum continues, an increase of market fragmentation and higher product costs will likely follow.
