Opensignal bets on Wi-Fi 5 as the baseline for its new 'Optimized Speed' metric

Opensignal has launched a new broadband metric called Optimized Speed, built on a Wi-Fi 5 baseline and a minimum 200Mbps link speed — a deliberately modest threshold chosen so the standard stays achievable in developing markets rather than becoming an aspiration reserved for high-income countries.

The metric emerges from a question Opensignal says it hears constantly from operator customers: "Why aren't your fixed broadband speeds as high as what competitors report?" The company's answer is that average speeds hide huge variance in experience, and that the variance has moved. Access technology and speed tiers once explained most differences in user experience, but today most networks and speed tiers exceed typical household needs. In-home Wi-Fi is now, in Opensignal's framing, the true last mile.

What does the metric actually measure?

Optimized Speed isolates test results to Wi-Fi conditions an ISP can influence, then pairs them with Opensignal's everyday speed measurements. The gap between the two shows the uplift possible if every subscriber had well-configured in-home Wi-Fi — and, by extension, the drag sub-optimal Wi-Fi imposes on the average experience.

Opensignal's core methodology relies on tests run automatically in the background of user activity, not tests users initiate when connections feel unusually good or bad. That choice is designed to capture the typical experience rather than peak capacity.

The filters Opensignal considered were extensive: Wi-Fi protocol, frequency band, signal strength, link speed, channel width, and end-user device quality. Almost all were discarded.

Why Wi-Fi 5 and not something newer?

The generation choice came down to Wi-Fi 5 versus Wi-Fi 6. Wi-Fi 7 was excluded because time spent on it is extremely low even in markets packed with Wi-Fi 7-capable gateways. Wi-Fi 6E never saw wide adoption.

Wi-Fi 5 — commercially available since 2013, with Wi-Fi 6 arriving in 2019, Wi-Fi 6E in 2021 and Wi-Fi 7 in 2024 — won because it remains the maximum capability of many end-user devices. In the US, TV replacement cycles run beyond four years, and most smart TVs sold in 2022 topped out at Wi-Fi 5 support due to component costs. Restricting the metric to Wi-Fi 6 would have sharply cut the number of eligible tests in developing markets.

Other filters fell away for related reasons:

• Frequency band was dropped because 2.4GHz, added back to Wi-Fi 6 for coverage reasons, can never be fully eliminated from a good home setup.
• Channel width was dropped for the same reason — almost all 2.4GHz traffic runs on the minimum 20MHz width, and a higher threshold would have been a backdoor ban on 2.4GHz.
• Device quality was dropped because ISPs control devices only at the point of sale, not over their lifetime.
• Signal strength was dropped because it measures signal, not noise — a user can hold a strong signal yet suffer limited throughput from channel interference.

Link speed — the negotiated maximum throughput between device and gateway, which absorbs signal strength, interference and hardware limits — became the sole remaining filter.

Why 200Mbps?

Opensignal tested round numbers for the link-speed floor. Raising the minimum from 100Mbps to 200Mbps lifted measured experienced speeds by 10–40%. Going from 200Mbps to 300Mbps typically added under 10%. More decisively, 300Mbps is the theoretical 2.4GHz maximum, almost never observed in tests. Link speeds of 200Mbps still appear on 2.4GHz, but only about 5% of the time globally.

The practical playbook for ISPs is short: ship newer gateways, offer extenders or mesh systems to customers in large or concrete-heavy buildings, and push software updates to gateways in apartment blocks to manage interference from neighbours.

One caveat sits inside the metric itself. Opensignal concedes the definition has a built-in shelf life: optimized conditions today will look antiquated by 2029, because unlike physical broadband infrastructure, this last mile gets re-paved every few years.