Use of old Wi-Fi standards is limiting fibre’s potential in the GCC

• More than one-third of the users in the region reported using Wi-Fi 4, Ookla says.
• Wi-Fi 6 can bring significant speed gains and users can benefit the most from a Customer Premise Equipment upgrade.
• The choice of Wi-Fi standards and spectrum bands has a direct impact on connectivity quality, throughput, and network coverage.

Despite improvements in fibre coverage and adoption by investing in fixed infrastructure in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, the use of legacy and underperforming Wi-Fi standards in home networks is limiting fibre’s potential in the region.

In the second quarter of this year, more than one-third of the users in the region reported using Wi-Fi 4, which means that a sizable proportion of users are not utilising broadband services to their full potential.

Karim Yaici, Lead Industry Analyst at Ookla, said that modern Wi-Fi standards can bring significant speed gains.

On average, customers using Wi-Fi 5 had a median download speed of more than five times higher than those on Wi-Fi 4. Likewise, the speed over Wi-Fi 6 was 1.2 times faster on average than with Wi-Fi 5.

“Even if consumers in the Gulf region own modern smartphones and Wi-Fi routers, they may still unknowingly use Wi-Fi 4 due to device misconfiguration and coverage constraints. So, internet service providers need to ensure that their customers’ routers and smartphones are configured correctly and offer solutions to improve indoor connectivity to use the more efficient 5 GHz spectrum band,” Yaici said.

Moreover, he said that fixed broadband subscribers in the Gulf (most of whom use fibre services) with routers that only support Wi-Fi 4 would benefit the most from a CPE (Customer Premise Equipment) upgrade.

According to Ookla, most Gulf countries improved their global fixed broadband speed ranking since 2020.

According to the FTTH Council industry body, the UAE topped the global rankings for fibre household coverage, reaching 98.1% in September 2022, a position it has maintained since 2016. Qatar closely followed in the second position with 97.8% coverage.

These two GCC countries ranked ahead of Singapore (96.5%), Hong Kong (91.6%), and China (89.4%). In Bahrain, meanwhile, more than 88% of households were connected to the fibre infrastructure, whereas fibre coverage exceeded 60% in Saudi Arabia and reached 52% in Oman.

As a result, most Gulf countries boosted their ranking in the Ookla Speedtest Global Index.

The UAE was ranked second in the Speedtest Global Index for median download speeds over fixed broadband in June 2023. Other GCC countries improved their rankings as well but trailed the UAE.

In the UAE, Etisalat by e& and du increased minimum download speeds to 500 Mbps and offered discounts on higher-tier fibre plans in 2022.

Yaici said that the choice of Wi-Fi standards and spectrum bands has a direct impact on connectivity quality, throughput, and network coverage.

Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) significantly increases the maximum theoretical throughput speed of the access point to 3.5 Gbps, compared to 600 Mbps supported by the old Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n) standard.

Wi-Fi 6/6E (802.11ax) supports even faster maximum data rates (up to 9.6 Gbps) and lower latency than earlier generations. It also combines 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz spectrum bands and wider channels for better throughput and less interference.

However, Yaici said that Bahrain has the highest incidence of samples that use Wi-Fi 4 and the lowest proportion of Wi-Fi 6.

“Wi-Fi 4 was more prevalent in the UAE than Wi-Fi 6 (30.8% compared to 17.2% in Q2 2023). This suggests that the ISPs have an opportunity to improve the network experience for nearly a third of their customer base and extend their lead in the speed leaderboard if they can address that CPE speed bottleneck,” he said.

The minimum broadband speed currently offered by ISPs in Saudi Arabia is 100 Mbps, while the median download speed on fixed broadband measured by Speedtest Intelligence data was 93.85 Mbps in the second quarter of 2023.

 “Consumer-initiated speed tests confirm that users’ experience of network speed is significantly affected by how their devices connect to Wi-Fi access points,” he said.

Given the clear performance advantages of Wi-Fi 5, he said that ISPs should encourage customers to migrate from Wi-Fi 4 to Wi-Fi 5 because it will significantly impact the end-user network experience.

Top router brands

According to Ookla, Huawei and TP-Link are the top router brands reported by Gulf users utilising Wi-Fi 4. The data show that Bahrain and Saudi Arabia have the highest proportion of samples connected to a Huawei CPE while TP-Link routers are most common in Qatar and the UAE.

The UAE has the highest proportion of routers from D-Link, Cisco, and less popular brands used with Wi-Fi 4 (nearly 64% of samples reported using ‘other’ manufacturers).

This high level of market fragmentation is likely due to users replacing routers provided by their ISP or installing refurbished routers to extend coverage indoors. Such fragmentation complicates the task of ISPs to ensure that their customers use more recent routers or that they configure them correctly to use more modern Wi-Fi standards.

Yaici said that, according to their data, most commercial CPEs in the region introduced since 2020 likely support Wi-Fi 5 (if not Wi-Fi 6).

“Further, tests also showed that most Android-based smartphones that used Wi-Fi 4 were equipped with Wi-Fi 5-capable chipsets. Therefore, many users in the region are capable of using Wi-Fi 5 but are still on Wi-Fi 4. We believe that misconfigured routers could be the primary cause of such a high prevalence of legacy Wi-Fi 4 technology among Gulf countries,” he said.

As many ISPs in the region already offer a minimum fibre speed of 250 Mbps, they should, he said as a priority, migrate existing customers with legacy Wi-Fi routers to more modern models and educate customers with newer routers on how to correctly configure them.

“ISPs’ efforts to introduce newer CPEs will help improve the end-user experience, boost global speed rankings in the region, and ensure that their routers are more future-proof as gigabit speeds become more widespread,” Yaici said.

How ISPs can address the issues:

Legacy equipment: Some fixed broadband customers are locked into long service contracts and are not eligible for router upgrades. ISPs may not offer newer routers to existing customers whose contracts are automatically renewed.

Solutions: Encourage existing broadband customers to upgrade to faster fibre packages to benefit from modern Wi-Fi routers. Offer customers the option to replace their old Wi-Fi routers for free or for a small fee during their contract.

Configuration issues: Routers may, by default, use older Wi-Fi standards or deactivate the 5 GHz band.

Some routers are pre-configured to use the same network name for both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands, and some devices may not handle this well, Some old mobile devices latch to 2.4 GHz (which is more likely used by Wi-Fi 4) on first-run but do not switch back to 5 GHz due to firmware limitations or a hardware/software setting in the router/end-user devices.

Solutions: Work with OEMs to push firmware and software updates to prioritize newer Wi-Fi standards and the use of 5 GHz over 2.4 GHz. Educate customers about the importance of updating the router’s firmware and smartphone software. Preconfigure the routers to have separate names for the 2.4 GHz and the 5 GHz bands. Offer routers that can automatically select the optimal Wi-Fi channel and band to improve performance.

Coverage and performance issues: Distance from CPE, physical obstruction, and interference in the crowded 2.4 GHz band.

Solutions: Offer Wi-Fi extenders to improve indoor coverage. Share best practices with customers on the configuration and placement of the router.

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