WAA-WBBA Asia-Pacific WLAN Industry Round Table

Building HighQuality WLAN, Unlocking New Value for Home Broadband — WAA-WBBA Asia-Pacific WLAN Industry Round Table

On 14 July 2026, the WAAWBBA AsiaPacific WLAN Industry Round Table took place at the Athenee Hotel in Bangkok, Thailand. Cohosted by The World WLAN Application Alliance (WAA) and World Broadband Association (WBBA), the seminar set “Building highquality WLAN and elevating home broadband network value” as its core industry consensus objective. It brought together global operators, leading equipment vendors, industry experts and industrialchain representatives including AIS, CMI, MTel, SURGE, SpectrLite Pte Ltd and HUAWEI. Participants focused on hotbutton topics across the broadband sector and conducted indepth discussions covering unified standards and certification, improvement of user experience, and exploration of industrial commercial value. Aligned with the theme “AIEmpowered Connectivity for AsiaPacific”, the event further consolidated WAA’s core influence within the AsiaPacific WLAN industry.

WAA-WBBA Asia-Pacific WLAN Industry Round Table

Crane Yang, Secretary-General, WAA, attended the conference and delivered a keynote speech titledWAA: Provide the Best WLAN Experience for the Digital World, systematically analysing the current landscape and core challenges of the global WLAN industry. Martin Creaner, Director General, WBBA, Bonnie CHEN, Managing Director, China Mobile International (Thailand) Limited, Haipeng Zhai, Vice President of Optical Business Product Line, HUAWEI, and LEONG HOU HENG, Director, MTel Telecommunication Company Limited, delivered successive keynote sharing sessions. Marcus Brunner, Chair of WBBA Working Group 1, Yiou Deng, Secretary-General, NIDA, as well as operator representatives from multiple Asia-Pacific economies and technical experts from the industrial chain, actively participated in the roundtable in-depth dialogue, jointly exploring innovative breakthrough paths for the industry.

The global broadband industry has completed highspeed home access deployment. The industry bottleneck is shifting from the “lastmile” access segment to indoor WLAN experience challenges in the “last 50 feet”. In the AI era, surging demand for highdefinition audiovideo, smart terminals and industrialinternet applications imposes stricter requirements on WLAN in terms of bandwidth, latency, roaming performance and stability. Meanwhile, lack of unified industry experience standards and operationmaintenance diagnostics, together with inconsistent service quality, have become key constraints hindering highquality industrial development.

Against these industry priorities, attendees exchanged practical insights. China Mobile shared achievements in AIdriven proactive O&M and FTTR fullhome optical network deployment. Leveraging edgecloud collaboration and intelligent scheduling, networks are transforming from passive troubleshooting to proactive assurance. Improved user experience helps stimulate demand for home VAS, lifting ARPU while cutting operational expenditure.  HUAWEI presented largescale rollout results for WAAcertified products, optimising wholehome network performance via standardised technologies. Drawing on local culturaltourism scenarios, Macau Telecommunications shared case studies on how upgraded WLAN experience fuels regional digital culturaltourism development.

The roundtable forged several core industry consensuses. First, standardisation is the cornerstone for resolving experiencerelated pain points. Centred on WAA’s scenariooriented standard system, the industry shall unify six key metrics: bandwidth, coverage, latency, security, roaming and connectivity, and establish a tiered certification framework together with unified evaluation criteria for enduser experience. Second, AIWLAN and integrated communicationsensing represent core evolutionary directions for nextgeneration networks. Accelerated technology implementation is required to address common challenges including indoor signal interference, highdensity networking and roaming stuttering. Third, ecosystem collaboration is essential for industrial quality improvement and efficiency gains. WAA and WBBA will deepen strategic partnership through joint standardsetting, technology R&D and regional industry empowerment to facilitate resource exchange across the AsiaPacific industrial chain. Fourth, enhanced user experience can unlock new commercial value. Supported by standardised certification and premium network services, differentiated valueadded services can be realised, helping operators reduce costs, raise efficiency and tap new revenue streams.

Rooted in the AsiaPacific region and responding to global broadband transformation demands, the Bangkok roundtable pointed the way forward for the standardised, intelligent and commercialoriented development of AsiaPacific WLAN through standarddriven foundations, technologyenabled capabilities and ecosystemwide synergy. It will keep advancing highquality upgrading of the worldwide WLAN industry.

WAA will continue to work with global clients and industry partners, pooling technological innovation and collective industrial wisdom to refine scenariospecific standards and testcertification systems, and jointly foster a new open, collaborative and winwin ecosystem for global WLAN and broadband industries.