The number of households worldwide with Wi-Fi home gateways or routers will rise substantially in the next five years to become a strategic component for ISPs and customers who rely on the technology for everyday activities, according to research from IHS.

IHS forecasts that by 2019, nearly 90 per cent of all households will have a Wi-Fi home gateway or router. That is up from 66 per cent in 2014. The rise in Wi-Fi stems from more consumers relying on their home wireless network for everything from email to social networking to streaming high-quality OTT videos.

“Wi-Fi and Internet have come to mean the same thing to most consumers,” says John Kendall, senior analyst for the connected home and smart home at IHS.

Kendall said that as technology has changed and more connected devices have become an everyday part of life—including smartphones, TVs, tablets, streaming boxes and even Pay-TV set-top boxes (STBs)—Wi-Fi networks increasingly are relied on to access media content. Such reliance places a burden on the broadband gateway, according to Kendall.

IHS forecasts that the number of connected devices per household will continue to rise over the next five years, growing to 13 connected devices per broadband home in 2019, up from 10 devices in 2014.”

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