Internet connection benchmarking firm Ookla, which operates the popular Speedtest.net broadband and mobile testing service, has published an interesting new study that looks at the adoption of different WiFi standards and performance across the world. But the study also highlights the performance impact of EE’s (BT) new Wi-Fi 7 capable routers in the UK.
Before we get started, it’s important to understand that the data being used in this research is coming from web-based speedtests conducted by consumers, which is not exactly the most scientific or reliable way of comparing the performance between different generations of WiFi technology. Such testing can be impacted by various issues, such variable Wi-Fi signal strength between rooms, limitations of the tester itself or device being used, local network congestion and more.
Otherwise, Ookla’s new study reveals that legacy Wi-Fi standards continue to dominate in the UK and Europe, accounting for over 70% of connections in many European countries. For example, in the United Kingdom some 17.29% of Wi-Fi connections are still made using Wi-Fi 4, while Wi-Fi 5 has the biggest piece of the pie at 51.35% and Wi-Fi 6 follows on 31.02%. After that, the latest Wi-Fi 7 standard, which only really started to come into the market last year, holds just 0.35%.
However, despite Wi-Fi 7 having such a small share of the UK’s market, it’s worth nothing that this still puts the United Kingdom within the top 7 countries across Central and Western Europe for Wi-Fi 7 adoption. France currently tops this list on 1.48%, followed by Switzerland (0.85%), Denmark (0.6%), Sweden (0.5%), Germany (0.42%), the Netherlands (0.38%) and then the UK on 0.35%.
This is naturally influenced by various factors, with two of the biggest being consumer choice (i.e. many people often pick a broadband package with older kit and use it for years without upgrading / switching) and the capabilities of the broadband routers that ISPs choose to supply to their customers. In addition, each new Wi-Fi generation tends to be faster than the last, and ISPs often bundle the most capable kit with their fastest plans.
At present, EE is one of the only major broadband ISPs in the UK to bundle a Wi-Fi 7 capable router (Smart Hub Pro), which launched in September 2024 and means they’re also one of the few providers able to generate enough testing data to identify a performance impact. The charts below also include French ISP ‘Free’, which has done something similar to EE.
Ookla’s Speedtest Intelligence data shows that median download speeds on Wi-Fi 7 with EE’s fixed broadband reached 665.01Mbps (download) at the end of 2024 — more than four times the performance recorded on EE-based Wi-Fi 6 connections during the same period. EE’s median upload speeds on Wi-Fi 7 were also nearly twice as fast on EE compared to Wi-Fi 6 connections.
Interestingly, median latency on EE’s Wi-Fi 7 connections in the UK also reached just 17ms (lower figures are faster) at the end of 2024, a 12% improvement over Wi-Fi 6. This is despite the fact that latency, unlike download and upload speeds, is not usually as directly influenced by the impact of ISPs bundling Wi-Fi 7-capable routers (CPE) with higher-tier tariff speeds.
The results are interestingly, but much as we said earlier, testing WiFi performance using web-based speedtesters is subject to many caveats and so should be taken with a suitable pinch of salt.