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Infonetics is Bullish on Wi-Fi and so am I

May 13, 2015

By Ernest Worthman —

Worthman

Worthman

May 14, 2015 — Seems the industry is staying bullish on Wi-Fi. ABI reports that the worldwide consumer Wi-Fi equipment market increased 5 percent in 2014. Of that, 802.11ac devices grew more than 11 percent of total access point shipments. Shipments of 802.11n hardware are declining – down 3 percent in 2014.

But wait…802.11ad is on the horizon. This next generation of Wi-Fi promises 7 Gbps at 60 GHz. So far, nothing is on the table but Qualcomm recently demonstrated a Wi-Fi solutions which support tri-band, 802.11ad (60 GHz), and 802.11ac (5 GHz and 2.4 GHz).

Carrier Wi-Fi is also holding up in the face of the LTE-Unlicensed hype. Part of that is because of the uncertainty of LTE-U and License Assisted Access; but, in reality, Wi-Fi is here now, works and is well understood. Regardless of how LTE-U and LAA evolve, I’m still buying Wi-Fi vendor stock (most of the backers of the LTE-U/LAA platforms are those that are late-comers or poor adopters to/of Wi-Fi).

Wi-Fi is broadening rapidly. Adding things like VoWi-Fi, HotSpot 2.0, and WiGig, and developing the capability for dual-SSID gateways allow operators with massive home and enterprise footprints to move into public Wi-Fi segment through community Wi-Fi.

Carrier Wi-Fi offload is also booming – up 23 percent in the last half of 2014. And Infonetics sees no abatement in growth. They are predicting staggering growth in 2015, with carrier Wi-Fi spending poised to jump 88 percent.

Why? Because carrier offload is one of the tools carriers find very attractive. It lets the carrier make better use of the LTE spectrum they have by taking a lot of the heavy payload; read data-intensive applications such as streaming, and move it into a more data-centric environment – Wi-Fi. That I’ll take to the bank. Like I said, I’m still buying Wi-Fi stock.

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