Is Wi-Fi the telecoms industry’s forgotten network?

Wi-Fi carries a huge proportion of the data we consume every day, but it is often overlooked as telcos invest billions in fibre, 5G and spectrum. Are operators neglecting the network their customers actually use the most?

“That’s the dirty secret of the mobile business; it’s really a Wi-Fi business,” said Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, following reports that subscribers to its Xfinity Mobile service offload 90% of their data traffic onto Wi-Fi both in and out of the home.

It is a remarkable statistic for an industry that has spent a decade talking relentlessly about 5G. Mobile operators have invested billions in spectrum and network upgrades, yet much of the data consumed on customers’ devices never travels across those mobile networks at all – Wi-Fi quietly does much of the heavy lifting.

There were 23.3 billion Wi-Fi devices in use last year, and research from Opensignal shows that, even outside the home, Wi-Fi carried between 75% and 84% of smartphone data across the five US operators it analysed.

Yet Wi-Fi rarely attracts the same strategic attention as the 5G spectrum and networks into which mobile operators continue to invest billions.

If Wi-Fi carries such a significant proportion of our data, should operators be treating it as something more than the technology sitting between a broadband router and the devices around it?

Customers understand the difference between 4G and 5G. Broadband providers advertise increasingly impressive fibre speeds. New mobile spectrum auctions generate headlines and enormous investment. Wi-Fi, though, tends to just be Wi-Fi.

That perception persists despite enormous technical progress. Wi-Fi 7 offers wider channels and the ability to use multi-link operation to improve throughput, latency and reliability. Yet to most customers, and even many telcos, Wi-Fi is still just Wi-Fi. The New York Times Wirecutter concludes that most customers don’t need Wi-Fi 7 yet.

Wi-Fi is inexpensive, easy to set up and more energy efficient than mobile data, making it well suited to homes and offices.

However, Wi-Fi networks tend to be short range, are prone to interference from nearby networks and may struggle to support many devices at once. Poorly secured networks can also expose users to security risks.

Operators are investing heavily in FTTP networks capable of delivering gigabit and increasingly multi-gigabit broadband. But once that connection reaches the customer’s home, its performance is mediated by Wi-Fi quality.

Wi-Fi performance can, of course, be affected by interference from a neighbour’s network, poor coverage upstairs, or old devices that support an earlier Wi-Fi standard.

From the customer’s perspective, however, those distinctions rarely matter. If their video starts to buffer or a Teams call freezes, the conclusion is unlikely to be that the 5 GHz channel is congested.

Outside the home, Wi-Fi still lacks the seamlessness of cellular connectivity. For many users, public Wi-Fi remains a fallback rather than the first choice:

Even among regular users, the most common reason for using public Wi-Fi is the absence of a cellular connection. However, Westminster’s trial of free single sign-on Wi-Fi across Central London shows how simpler authentication could make public networks a more attractive part of the connectivity experience.

Wi-Fi uses unlicensed spectrum and relatively inexpensive equipment, making capacity comparatively cheap to deploy. It can also provide excellent indoor coverage where cellular signals struggle to penetrate buildings.
For an MVNO such as Xfinity Mobile, the advantages are obvious. The more customer traffic Comcast can carry over its own Wi-Fi and broadband infrastructure, the less mobile data it potentially needs to purchase wholesale.

For mobile network operators, Wi-Fi can relieve pressure on cellular networks in high-traffic areas and reduce the need for additional cellular capacity.

Wi-Fi’s capabilities have been significantly expanded by access to the 6 GHz band, providing much more spectrum for newer Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 equipment. The mobile industry, meanwhile, continues to make the case for additional licensed spectrum to accommodate growing data consumption.

Both have legitimate requirements; mobile networks provide wide-area mobility and predictable managed connectivity in ways Wi-Fi cannot always replicate, while Wi-Fi depends on sufficient unlicensed spectrum to deliver capacity in increasingly connected homes, offices and public spaces.

Given the sheer volume of smartphone traffic carried by Wi-Fi, the industry needs to value unlicensed spectrum alongside licensed mobile spectrum when planning future wireless capacity.

Historically, Wi-Fi and mobile networks were built around very different assumptions. Wi-Fi was designed around relatively localised, best-effort connectivity using unlicensed spectrum, while mobile networks were centrally managed, designed for mobility and engineered to make efficient use of scarce licensed spectrum.

At the same time, technologies designed to make Wi-Fi more seamless are removing some of the friction that usually comes when accessing public networks. Passpoint and OpenRoaming, for example, allow compatible devices to authenticate automatically with participating Wi-Fi networks rather than requiring users to search for a network, enter credentials or navigate a captive portal.

You don’t normally select a mobile network every time you walk into a building – your phone simply connects. The closer Wi-Fi gets to providing the same experience, the less the underlying technology matters to customers.

Telcos can turn Wi-Fi into a more visible and valuable part of their proposition through:

Premium home connectivity, combining managed mesh Wi-Fi, security, parental controls, device management and support that extends the broadband experience throughout the home.

Managed business and venue connectivity, providing one service across Wi-Fi and private 5G, including installation, monitoring, security and service-level guarantees.

Wholesale and offload services, giving MVNOs and other partners authenticated access to Wi-Fi footprints while reducing cellular congestion and wholesale data costs.

The opportunity is to stop treating Wi-Fi as an incidental feature of another product.

Traditionally, telecom products have closely reflected the networks delivering them, but customers increasingly care less about the underlying access technology than the experience it delivers.

A household might buy a premium home connectivity package combining fibre, managed mesh Wi-Fi, cybersecurity and mobile connectivity; an enterprise could buy one managed service spanning Wi-Fi and private 5G.

BSS/OSS platforms must support that shift, allowing operators to bundle services across access technologies, manage devices, entitlements, charging and SLAs, and coordinate partners without exposing the underlying network architecture to the customer.

Perhaps Brian Roberts’ “dirty secret” isn’t that mobile is a Wi-Fi business, but that the distinction matters far more to the telecoms industry than it does to the customer.

If Wi-Fi already carries most smartphone data, operators should treat it as a strategic part of the service they sell – investing in the in-home and out-of-home experience, using it to manage capacity and supporting it in their commercial and operational systems.

Cerillion’s pre-integrated BSS/OSS suite helps operators create, manage and monetise convergent services across fibre, mobile and Wi-Fi. Get in touch to find out more.