Ookla: Wi-Fi Hardware, Not Fiber, Limits Broadband Quality

May 28, 2026 – Aging home Wi-Fi hardware, not fiber infrastructure, is now the primary bottleneck limiting broadband quality in the world’s most connected markets, analysts said Thursday.

That was the central finding of a webinar hosted by Ookla, where researchers argued that multi-gigabit fiber has become a commodity across Europe, Latin America, the United States, and parts of Asia-Pacific and the Gulf.

Luke Kehoe , lead industry analyst at Ookla, said the competitive battleground has moved.

"Multi-gigabit fiber access is no longer necessarily a differentiator," Kehoe said. "The point of differentiation is shifting to other parts of the infrastructure stack."

Wi-Fi hardware lags behind the fiber build

Mark Giles , director of industry research and analysis at Ookla, said broader fiber deployment is now exposing bottlenecks that were previously hidden, starting inside the home.

Lengthening device replacement cycles drag down real-world experience, Giles said, describing his own gigabit fiber connection in Spain: a game update on his son's Xbox capped at 150 Megabits per second because the console supported only Wi-Fi 5.

Ookla data shows significant fragmentation across Europe in the adoption of Wi-Fi 6, 6E, and 7. Spain, one of the continent's fiber leaders, performs poorly on modern Wi-Fi deployment, artificially suppressing the consumer experience its fiber networks should deliver.

France performs better. Internet service providers there compete heavily on the quality of home routers and gateway equipment, delivering integrated home boxes that drive higher real-world speeds regardless of subscribed tier.

Giles said some ISPs appear to be lagging deliberately. “There are quite a few ISPs being laggards with that upgrade through to 6 and 7,” he said, adding that suboptimal Wi-Fi could be a way for operators to manage network capacity.

Interconnection geography shapes experience

Kehoe presented data from Italy showing how network interconnection, not last-mile access, drives end-user quality in fiber-rich markets.

Fiber connections in southern Italy deliver materially worse gaming latency than those in the north, due to the concentration of routing infrastructure and gaming servers around Milan.

"Even if you have the best fiber in the world, the latency outcomes will be relatively poor in the south compared to the north," Kehoe said.

Benoit Felten , managing director of Fiberevolution, said the European Union's Digital Networks Act, which includes provisions designed to facilitate cooperation at the interconnection layer, fundamentally misreads how peering has operated.

"There are, in our estimate, millions if not tens of millions of peering agreements in Europe, and there's a handful of disputes over the last 15 years," Felten said. "Assuming there's a lack of cooperation seems a little bit absurd."

He warned the policy mechanisms in the Digital Networks Act are “much more likely to have negative results” on end-user experience, and identified Brazil as the only country with a proactive policy on interconnection density, noting its high number of internet exchange points per capita as a direct result.

Satellite filling gaps left by policy

Felten argued that the EU's elevation of fiber as the exclusive future solution has sidelined fixed wireless access and created an opening for low-earth orbit providers to move in.

“Wherever there is no alternative, people are going to turn to satellite for sure,” Felten said. “We are going to see more satellite penetration.”

He cautioned that satellite costs are unlikely to fall the way fiber costs eventually will, since low-earth orbit constellations require constant replenishment. “There is no opportunity for the cost to come down,” he said. “Fiber will stop somewhere in some countries.”

Starlink's growing footprint in Europe adds weight to that warning. Ookla's own data, published Monday, shows Starlink recorded a median download speed of 165.71 Mbps across all 27 measured European countries in the first quarter of 2026, up from 114.05 Mbps in the same period a year earlier.

Kehoe pointed to Ireland as a case study. Despite one of the most extensive rural full-fiber rollouts of any developed country on a per capita basis, Starlink usage there remains among the highest in Europe. Atlantic storms have repeatedly severed fiber lines for weeks at a time in the west of the country.

Giles described purchasing a Starlink kit the day after last year's Iberian power outage; his fiber connection took a full week to restore while power came back within hours.