Wireless Broadband Alliance releases Industry Report 2026

The Wireless Broadband Alliance released its annual industry report, the WBA Industry Report 2026, which presented survey findings drawn from the Wi‑Fi, cellular and enterprise ecosystem and highlighted recent shifts in investment confidence.

The survey showed that 62% of respondents had grown more confident to invest in Wi‑Fi over the prior 12 months while 18% reported unchanged confidence, and 60% said combining Wi‑Fi and 5G would provide greater enterprise flexibility and expected the two technologies to co‑exist.

Respondents identified likely technology and feature priorities: 38% planned Wi‑Fi 7 deployments in 2026 and 32% planned AI/Cognitive network rollouts, while 65% rated 6 GHz availability as important or critical. Multi‑Link Operation was rated most important at 46%, Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) (OFDMA) uplink and downlink and mandatory Wi-Fi Protected Access 3 (WPA3) each at 33%, and MU‑MIMO uplink at 32%.

The survey reported OpenRoaming and Passpoint activity, with 38% saying they had already deployed compliant networks, 32% planning deployments in 2026 and 18% in 2027. When asked about investment drivers, respondents cited enablement of frictionless Wi‑Fi (63%), seamless access between Wi‑Fi and 5G/LTE (60%) and seamless access across networks (40%). City‑wide public Wi‑Fi had been deployed by 33% of relevant respondents, with 39% planning deployments for 2026/2027, and the survey collected input from 185 participants worldwide across varied job roles.

Tiago Rodrigues, President and CEO of the Wireless Broadband Alliance, said: “6 GHz is viewed as critical spectrum, and almost half of respondents are already deploying or planning OpenRoaming networks.”

Respondents planned rollouts for Wi‑Fi 7 and AI/Cognitive networks and scheduled OpenRoaming deployments in 2026 and 2027.