WAA Makes Its Debut at LEAP 2026, Jointly Driving the Upgrade and Reshaping of Broadband Experience in the AI Era
2026-09-09
以下文章来源于微信公众号——WAA联盟
The Middle East’s premier technology event, the Riyadh International Tech & Information Technology Exhibition (LEAP 2026), was held from August 31 to September 3 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. As one of the world’s most influential technology platforms, this year’s edition brought together thousands of global tech companies, regulatory bodies, operators, and standards organizations, facilitating in-depth exchanges on cutting-edge topics including artificial intelligence (AI), smart cities, and network infrastructure.
Smart Cities sub‑forum of LEAP 2026
At the Smart Cities sub‑forum of LEAP 2026 on August 31, Dr. Crane Yang, Secretary‑General of the World WLAN Application Alliance (WAA), took part in a panel discussion themed Redefining Broadband Experience in the AI Era. He engaged in in‑depth dialogues with industry representatives from Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), Dawiyat, STC, ETSI/WBBA and other institutions and enterprises to discuss the construction of gigabit‑rate broadband experience.
Panel participants noted that Saudi Arabia has greatly upgraded its optical‑fiber infrastructure and is technically capable of delivering 10 Gbps to the home. The network bottleneck has shifted from the external backbone network to indoor home environments. With the rapid popularization of AI applications, cloud gaming and smart‑home solutions, the number of connected household devices keeps rising, and the indoor WLAN “last mile” has become a critical factor shaping digital user experience.
Dr. Crane Yang stated during the panel: “Whatever speed you subscribe to, you should actually experience it where you need it within your home.” He stressed that as WLAN technology keeps evolving, the industry should focus not merely on the peak throughput of individual devices, but on real‑world whole‑home performance under conditions such as physical wall attenuation, signal interference and concurrent multi‑device load. WAA builds a standardized test and certification framework that establishes evaluation metrics bridging device‑level performance indicators and real‑world end‑user experience. At present, WAA is dedicated to developing standardized home‑networking frameworks alongside innovative AI‑powered WLAN technologies, and providing relevant performance testing and certification services. It helps operators upgrade traditional “speed‑based service plans” into perceptible, certifiable “experience‑centric service plans”, putting the industry concept of “Wi‑Fi as a Service” into practice, so that subscribers pay for stable, reliable whole‑home wireless network services.
Key consensus was reached among all participating parties at the forum: Saudi Arabia has released building‑infrastructure guidelines to push for room‑level fiber deployment in residential and commercial premises. Upcoming initiatives will drive the fixed‑network ecosystem forward, scaling from 300 Mbps to 500 Mbps, and further on to gigabit and 10‑gigabit speed tiers.WAA’s test‑and‑certification system serves as a complementary solution: building codes guarantee “wired reachability”, while WAA certification ensures “wireless experiential quality”. Together, they establish an end‑to‑end broadband service quality assurance system.
Leveraging this high‑level dialogue at LEAP 2026, WAA will further deepen international industrial cooperation across the Middle East. According to Dr. Crane Yang, follow‑up plans include aligning the WAA certification scheme with Saudi FTTR building‑infrastructure guidelines and ETSI F5G‑Advanced specifications, and exploring the establishment of an authorized testing laboratory in the Gulf region to meet local certification demands for equipment vendors and operators.
As the world’s first international industry and standards organization dedicated to WLAN application experience, WAA continues to promote cross-regional collaboration on a global scale, engage in standardization cooperation with international institutions, and deliver scenario-based WLAN test and certification solutions to markets worldwide. Looking ahead, WAA will continue to work with partners in the Middle East and beyond to unlock the technological value of gigabit fiber, transforming high-speed networks into tangible, high-quality WLAN experiences for households everywhere.
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