The Covid-19 pandemic has spurred global organizations to accelerate investment in wireless networking. They have rapidly shifted their focus to advanced wireless such as 5G and Wi-Fi 6, to protect the link between machines and people.

To understand how enterprises are adopting advanced wireless technologies during the crisis around the world, Deloitte surveyed global business and IT executives who are responsible for networking at organizations. We uncovered key insights about how and why organizations around the world plan to adopt advanced wireless:

Focus has rapidly shifted to advanced wireless

• Covid-19 pandemic is accelerating wireless investment—and catalyzing the shift to advanced wireless
• 5G and Wi-Fi 6 are viewed as the most critical wireless networking technologies for businesses today
• Networking executives recognize the importance of advanced wireless for business success today and believe it will be essential to thriving in the post-pandemic era
• 8 in 10 believe advanced wireless technologies are very/critically important to their business success
• Enterprises are adopting Wi-Fi 6 & 5G in parallel: 98% expect their organization to use both within 2-3 years

Advanced wireless technologies allow organizations to take advantage of other emerging technologies

• 8 in 10 believe advanced wireless will transform their organization within 3 years, and 7 in 10 believe it will transform their industry
• Top three adoption goal are Taking advantage of new technologies, improved efficiencies and improved customer interactions
• At least 8 in 10 view advanced wireless as integral to their efforts to deploy innovative technologies at the heart of their digital transformation efforts: Cloud, Big Data Analytics, AI, IoT, Edge
• 76% believe their company can create a significant competitive advantage by leveraging advanced wireless

Organizations are approaching advanced wireless adoption as a strategic technology initiative

• IT staff & tech vendors are most influential in guiding choices, and CIOs/CTOs & IT managers lead the adoption charge
• Fulfilling the promise of advanced wireless initiatives, particularly those involving 5G, involves a complex ecosystem of players, including application and cloud providers, wireless carriers, consultants and integrators, equipment manufacturers, and infrastructure providers. Two thirds prefer to acquire best-of-breed components or a blend of components and full solutions, offering more of an opportunity to customize and control
• In order to assemble complete solutions, organizations generally bring together capabilities and technologies from a range of players. On average, advanced wireless adopters engage with 8 types of vendors
• 2/3 prefer to integrate some “best of breed” modules—and cloud companies and in-house teams are expected to lead integration
• 7 in 10 expect to primarily deploy wireless applications/services on cloud in 2-3 years.
  Tech companies—cloud and application providers—are relied upon the most to help design advanced wireless network architectures