Broadband providers have moved Wi-Fi 7 beyond a small group of early adopters, according to new research from Wi-Fi NOW, a Wi-Fi industry research and events firm. The company said it identified 85 verified commercial Wi-Fi 7 deployments by broadband providers worldwide, and that 43 of them, or 50.6%, support the 6 GHz band.

The figures came from the firm’s new Wi-Fi 7 deployment tracker, which catalogs launches by country and region. Wi-Fi NOW said its review covered Europe, North America, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa.

Wi-Fi 7 can run on the traditional 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz unlicensed bands, but 6 GHz adds a large block of spectrum and, where regulators allow it, the wide 320 MHz channels that help define the standard.

Wi-Fi NOW said the 6 GHz share was notable because access to the band still varies country to country. Some markets have opened the full band for Wi-Fi, others have released only the lower portion, and some have yet to authorize 6 GHz Wi-Fi.

The deployments were geographically broad, the firm said. While the U.S. and Europe accounted for much of the activity, the tracker also logged launches in Canada, Mexico, and across Asia-Pacific, along with deployments in Brazil and other parts of Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa.

The firm said reviewing the market country by country revealed more activity than the presence of a few large operators would indicate, and that its Latin America review in particular uncovered more launches than expected.

Wi-Fi NOW also pointed to a pattern linking fiber and Wi-Fi 7. Providers building multi-gigabit fiber networks need in-home Wi-Fi that can carry that capacity to devices, the firm said, because a fast connection delivers little benefit if the home network becomes the bottleneck.

As a result, providers are increasingly packaging Wi-Fi 7 with premium fiber tiers alongside features such as mesh networking and multi-gigabit Ethernet, rather than selling it as a standalone router upgrade.

The transition is still in its early days, however. Wi-Fi NOW said many providers are launching Wi-Fi 7 only in premium tiers, new gateways, or select fiber packages, which means the shift away from Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E is far from finished.