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Analysis: Legacy Wi-Fi standards continue to dominate in Europe

February 26, 2025

Intense fibre overbuilding in advanced European markets has made investments in timely Wi-Fi upgrades a critical lever for enhancing and differentiating multi-gigabit experiences reports Ookla, a specialist in network intelligence and connectivity insights.

European markets are at the forefront of the global transition to full-fibre networks in the last mile, with multi-gigabit home broadband connections becoming increasingly common in the most advanced Western and Northern European markets. A groundswell of fibre investment has driven extensive network overbuilding at many residential addresses, expanding consumer choice but making it difficult for ISPs to differentiate beyond price.

The critical role of home Wi-Fi solutions in enhancing broadband experiences has come into sharper focus in recent years, with leading European ISPs adopting mesh solutions and offering more advanced customer premise equipment (CPE) to improve performance and unlock new revenue streams through innovative bundling and minimum Wi-Fi speed guarantees. The challenge now lies in spreading gigabit-level performance throughout the entire home, beyond the line connection point, to meet the growing demands of an increasing number of connected devices.

The arrival of Wi-Fi 7 presents a unique opportunity for leading ISPs to address this challenge head-on, offering a new avenue for fibre differentiation and a stronger focus on quality of experience (QoE). With advancements in speed, latency, and efficiency, Wi-Fi 7 is becoming an important tool for ISPs looking to compete more effectively in the premium segment of the fixed market, enabling best-in-class experiences on multi-gigabit connections.

Key Takeaways from Ookla’s analysis:

  • Central and Western European countries lead in Wi-Fi 7 adoption, while the Nordics boast the most advanced overall Wi-Fi mix: At the end of 2024, France (1.5 per cent Speedtest sample share), Switzerland (0.9 per cent), and Denmark (0.6 per cent)—among the world’s leading fixed broadband markets in fibre penetration and consistently ranked in the Speedtest Global Index top ten for median download speed—had the highest adoption of Wi-Fi 7 connections. When considering overall adoption of modern Wi-Fi standards (Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7 combined), Nordic countries such as Iceland (46 per cent), Norway (39 per cent), and Sweden (38 per cent) led in Europe, with over a third of all connections in each of these countries using these modern Wi-Fi standards.
  • Wi-Fi 7 drives substantial improvements in performance across all metrics: Among the ten countries with the highest Wi-Fi 7 penetration at the end of 2024, the average country-wide median download speeds on Wi-Fi 7 (565.80 Mbps) were up to 78 per cent higher than those on Wi-Fi 6. Upload speeds—boosted by technical advancements like Multi-Link Operation (MLO), which enables simultaneous transmissions across multiple spectrum bands—were nearly twice as fast as those on Wi-Fi 6. Latency improvements, meanwhile, have been more modest, with median latency (13 ms) across the country sample just over 11 per cent lower than on Wi-Fi 6.
  • Legacy Wi-Fi standards continue to dominate in Europe, weighing on fibre experiences: By the end of 2024, legacy Wi-Fi standards (Wi-Fi 4 and Wi-Fi 5) still accounted for over 70 per cent of connections in many European countries. Western European markets with very high fibre penetration, such as Spain (75 per cent legacy Wi-Fi share), Portugal (78 per cent), and Ireland (84 per cent), lagged, hindering their competitiveness in fixed network performance.

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