Hotspot 2.0, 802.11ac and NFV driving carrier WiFi equipment market

Infonetics has reported the global carrier WiFi equipment market totaled $713 million in 2015. The other findings disclosed by Infonetics includes: The market has grown consistently year-over-year since 2007, initially due to the proliferation of WiFi as a hotspot service, but increasingly driven by a diverse customer base and technologies including Hotspot 2.0, 802.11ac and network functions virtualization (NFV). Technology innovations continue to deliver positive impacts on the carrier WiFi market, driving current and next-generation service opportunities. Hotspot 2.0 enables operators to fully integrate WiFi with their existing broadband networks and supports service functions such as WiFi roaming. WiFi standard 802.11ac, based on 5GHz spectrum, offers higher-than-ever capacities and has rapidly become the dominant standard for carrier WiFi deployments, also driving upgrade purchasing from 802.11n deployments. And the evolution of NFV, which has already been introduced into the carrier WiFi market by Ruckus Wireless and Cisco, offers the opportunity for more cost-effective WiFi service delivery by a range of service providers as well as enterprises and other organizations. By 2020, the worldwide carrier WiFi market is forecast to reach $1.5 billion and have a cumulative size of over $6.8 billion for 2016–2020 based on two strong segments: standalone WiFi ...