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Wi-Fi 7 adoption in the US quadrupled to 7.2% of routers, Ookla data show

Wi-Fi 7 adoption in the US quadrupled to 7.2% of routers, according to Ookla data reported by ZDNet.

AI News Feed · 2026-08-14 20:42

Ookla's data show the share jumped from 1.8% in Q1 2025 and below 1% during 2024, when operators were just beginning to seed the market with Wi-Fi 7 gateways. Charter's Spectrum brand was the largest Wi-Fi 7 network in the world by Speedtest sample volume in Q1 2026, accounting for 24.9% of all US Wi-Fi 7 samples. Comcast's Xfinity ranked second globally with 12.4%, underlining how aggressively cable operators are bundling Wi-Fi 7 gateways into broadband tiers.

Fiber providers CenturyLink and Frontier have converted a significant share of their bases, with Wi-Fi 7 at 14.7% and 14.3% respectively, roughly double the national average. Ookla summarized the pattern as 'fiber drives penetration, cable drives scale': fiber ISPs have the highest proportion of upgraded customers, while cable's much larger subscriber base accounts for most Wi-Fi 7 traffic.

Upstream performance is also improving. Driven by DOCSIS spectrum-split upgrades and new Wi-Fi 7 gateways, Xfinity's median Wi-Fi 7 upload speed more than doubled year over year to 108.8 Mbps, according to Ookla. Usage of the 6 GHz band, which enables many of Wi-Fi 7's headline gains, jumped 62% year over year and now accounts for 13.8% of all US Wi-Fi Speedtest samples.

Across all fixed broadband providers and Wi-Fi generations, median US download speeds in Q1 2026 reached 316.3 Mbps, up 76% from 2022, while median upload speeds tripled to 68.3 Mbps. Ookla attributes part of the improvement to routers and client devices shipping with 6 GHz support at scale.

Client support has broadened across phones and computers. Apple iPhone 16 models and newer, except the budget e models, support Wi-Fi 7; Google introduced it with the Pixel 8 line, and Samsung began with the S23 Ultra, with almost all newer models now supporting it. Most new high-end Windows laptops and some 2026 MacBooks ship with Wi-Fi 7, with mid-range models starting to follow. Linux support remains uneven, but modern kernels can use Wi-Fi 7 on MediaTek MT7925 or Intel BE-series chipsets with kernel 6.10 or newer.

Despite the growth, Wi-Fi 7 remains in early adoption. A 7.2% national share means more than 90% of US Wi-Fi users are still on Wi-Fi 6/6E or earlier, and many client devices cannot yet take full advantage of the new standard. ZDNet reports that ISPs are now treating Wi-Fi 7 gateways as standard issue, and 6 GHz usage is expanding in real-world speed tests.