NETSCOUT joins countless communications service providers (CSPs) and telecommunications solution vendors in observance of World Wi-Fi Day. The global event, coordinated each year by the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA), began in 2016 to highlight ongoing efforts to connect the unconnected and address the digital divide.
Since its inception, World Wi-Fi Day has highlighted the wireless networking protocol and its on-going innovation as a valuable technical driver for social and economic wellness. Recent facts and statistics published by the WBA include the following:
The Economic Impact of Wi-Fi
- The global economic value of Wi-Fi is estimated to reach $5 trillion by 2025.
- In large economies, Wi-Fi contributed to 3.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2024.
- Nearly 4 million jobs were generated by Wi-Fi in 2024.
The Social Impact of Wi-Fi
- Globally, only 55 percent of households have access to the internet.
- An estimated 75 percent of students in rural areas cannot access remote learning resources.
- Nearly 80 percent of households in poorer countries do not have access to the internet.
The Environmental Impact of Wi-Fi
- Wi-Fi 6 consumes 67 percent less power than 5G.
- Wi-Fi supports Internet of Things (IoT) applications and empowers organizations to optimize processes, reducing waste.
- In smart cities, Wi-Fi reduces congestion and improves traffic-light management for more efficient transportation systems.
- By enabling remote workforces, education, ehealth applications, and energy-efficient smart home technology, Wi-Fi contributes to minimizing the carbon footprint.
Wi-Fi Remains a Preferred Connection Method in More Mature Markets
In more developed countries such as the United States, Wi-Fi continues in popularity and usage, with an estimated 90 percent of internet traffic happening over the technology. And, with most of the internet traffic generated by smartphone users, Wi-Fi often out-connects in areas with 5G shortfalls, reporting a negligible 10 percent decline in use by subscribers when away from home.
According to Claus Hetting, CEO and chairman of Wi-Fi NOW, subscribers prefer Wi-Fi to 5G in part due to the quality of service they experience while connected indoors. To address this trend, we’ve already seen several mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) successfully introduce converged offload strategies designed to drive and keep subscriber traffic on Wi-Fi for reduced reliance on costly mobile-operator network use.
So How Do Operators Leverage Wi-Fi Networks and Ensure a More Preferable Experience?
For years, NETSCOUT has served the needs of CSPs looking to address the biggest challenges associated with subscriber, network, and cost-containment issues.
- Subscriber issues: The most critical challenges facing operators that want to drive subscriber adoption of Wi-Fi involve authentication and handover performance. Largely within the realm of network operations teams, issues that impact accessibility and retainability require immediate action and swift resolution. In the end, a good experience with Wi-Fi will pave the way for continued subscriber use and significant operator savings.
- Network issues: As with any new technology, network tuning plays a major part in service launch and maintenance. The combination of new elements, multiple node vendors, ever-evolving specifications, and interoperability requirements will produce a myriad of unexpected and never-before-seen problems. To stay informed of emerging issues and avoid widespread network outages, even the most experienced engineers will rely heavily on access to timely and actionable network and service performance information.
- Capex spending: Although the economics of Wi-Fi are more favorable than macro network equivalents, without the proper insights blind spending is still a risk. Network engineering teams need to understand resource utilization across the entire network to make the best decisions when it comes to optimizing performance and tracking the effectiveness of network design.
As a natural extension of deployed core network and mobile network access monitoring system investments, NETSCOUT’S Wi-Fi monitoring solution leverages a familiar InfinistreamNG and nGeniusONE toolset to improve visibility and enhance the productivity of your troubleshooting and design teams.
Looking for More Insights? NETSCOUT Smart Analytics Chain Supports Automated Analytics and Multilevel Diagnostic Capabilities.
Beyond proactive service monitoring, NETSCOUT also employs artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) techniques to improve connectivity and performance with actionable intelligence.
- Localize and isolate login problems: Subscribers expect instantaneous connection to available and subscribed Wi-Fi networks. Although DHCP 4-way handshake latency metrics are often used to evaluate networkwide login performance, visibility to underlying issues experienced by users in a particular market or on a particular service set identifier (SSID) add additional clarity and actionable insights. With NETSCOUT automated analytics, service providers can determine when a newly deployed or updated access point is contributing to login latency.
- Address the impact of packet loss in the last mile: When service issues occur between the Wi-Fi access gateway and the end user (access point/end user, or AP/UE), service providers need a way to quickly assess the severity of the impact on the user experience by market and region. Among poor-performing areas, specific SSIDs and AP models may be easily evaluated and compared against daily performance thresholds.
- Correlate application issues with network problems: With Wi-Fi networks supporting massive amounts of internet traffic, providers need to stay on top of fluctuations in throughput as well as the impacts and tonnage of top apps such as Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Google. In addition, the ability to correlate service degradation of top apps with transport layer visibility to latency and packet loss enables swift actions to restore and maintain the user experience.
With NETSCOUT’s analytics offering, service providers can understand and isolate how and why Wi-Fi services are performing from the customer’s point of view for at-a-glance investigation and resolution.
NETSCOUT Guardians Celebrate World Wi-Fi Day
With an ever-evolving toolset, NETSCOUT remains committed to quality Wi-Fi services and salutes the ongoing efforts of the WBA to focus on the digital divide; promote connectivity; collaborate with innovators, governments, and communities; think globally; and make an impact in developing countries.
Read more about the NETSCOUT Wi-Fi solution.
Download the Wi-Fi access data sheet.