The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA), yesterday published the “WBA Industry Report 2026”, which contains the results of its annual industry survey across the WiFi, cellular and enterprise ecosystem. Among its chief findings is that 62 percent of respondents have grown more confident to invest in WiFi over the last 12 months (18 percent are as confident). WiFi 7 is the technology most likely to be deployed in 2026, with 38 percent of respondents planning deployments. Closely behind that is the impact of AI, with 32 percent planning to deploy AI/Cognitive networks, which can transform WiFi networking, with an ability to improve the performance and reliability of networks.
The survey also details where respondents expect to see overall network and traffic growth. Smart Home IoT led the top three with 36 percent, followed by AI (33 percent) and Industrial/Manufacturing Applications & IoT (24 percent). As to the verticals with the greatest level of traffic growth, stadiums/event venues were identified as highest with 41 percent.
The 2026 survey highlights a positive outlook for WiFi, strong momentum behind WiFi 7 and 6 GHz, and growing confidence in OpenRoaming as a foundation for seamless, secure connectivity across public, private and carrier networks. Together, the findings underline the importance of WBA’s core focus areas, including OpenRoaming, WiFi 7, AI-enabled WiFi, QoS/QoE, security and WiFi/5G convergence.
When asked about the role of WiFi in converged networks with both 5G and private enterprise implementations, responses reinforced the view that the technologies are complementary and together benefit organizations. Six in ten (60 percent) said combining them would give their organization greater enterprise flexibility. The same proportion expect WiFi and 5G to co-exist, rather than be a binary choice for enterprise networks.
Asked about the most important new or improved feature of WiFi 6E and WiFi 7, respondents rated Multi-Link Operation as the single most important at 46 percent, highlighting a sharp focus on latency, resilience and spectrum efficiency in dense environments. This was followed in joint second place by OFDMA Uplink & Downlink, and Mandatory WPA3 co