Almost one year ago we wrote a blog entitled" Is OpenWiFi Ready for Primetime?".
"Nobody gets fired for buying IBM” is a phrase anyone working in technology has encountered for the last twenty years. We argued the same could be said about Cisco or HP-Aruba in the enterprise WLAN space. Yet Wi-Fi technology has evolved rapidly in the last two decades, spanning various generations of architectures and standards. The hardware disaggregation movement in the data center has now reached the network's edge with TIP OpenWiFi.
Using an analogy, we asked industry leaders we interviewed what sort of car Open WiFi would be equivalent to. Some answered Hyundai/Kia, others Tesla. Hyundai symbolizes a cost-effective car with few bells and whistles (or at least in its modest beginnings) that takes you from point A to point B. To others, OpenWiFi is equivalent to Tesla because it disrupts the traditional car industry and supports a whole movement of open software for its charging stations.
In our opinion, OpenWiFi is a decent car whose performance and value will improve as deployments generate the volumes required for continued R&D. Only commercial success will ensure the survival and eventual prosperity of its ecosystem of developers and hardware vendors. We do not think economics alone is the primary driver for adopting OpenWiFi. For many customers, OpenWiFi allows them to innovate and control their destiny in a volatile and uncertain Wi-Fi supply chain. Combining these two drivers—better economics and more user value—is necessary for a disruption to succeed.
OpenWiFi is now four years old, with three years spent on R&D. It is slowly making inroads into several markets, including multi-family, hospitality, and other sectors. Further, the introduction of OpenLAN switching will positively impact future deployments.
For many Managed Service Providers (MSPs), the promise of TIP OpenWiFi has been enticing—but adopting it has often meant starting from scratch or disrupting carefully built tech stacks. WiBUZ changes that equation. As a vendor-agnostic operating system, WiBUZ acts as the glue that enables MSPs to onboard TIP OpenWiFi seamlessly—without abandoning their existing Ruckus, Cambium, or other infrastructure. With its API-first architecture and unified single pane of glass, WiBUZ lets MSPs evolve at their own pace, finally unlocking OpenWiFi's potential while preserving the systems they already trust.
A standout example of OpenWiFi's real-world impact comes from Jamaica’s Ministry of Education, where WiBUZ deployed its wibipOS platform at national scale. In just 90 days, local integrator MSTech—supported by WiBUZ—successfully connected 364 schools using 3,150 Ruckus access points. The project has since expanded to include OpenWiFi hardware from Actiontec and controller support from NetExperience, scaling toward 10,000 APs. WiBUZ enabled seamless multi-vendor management through a unified dashboard tailored for government operations, proving that OpenWiFi isn’t just a concept—it’s powering real, mission-critical infrastructure today.
As OpenWiFi becomes more mature and accepted, perhaps CIOs and CTOs will see it as a safe choice, and thus… “Nobody will get fired for buying OpenWiFi ”.
The TIP Open WiFi : A Reality Check and Forecasts 2024-2029 is report is based on numerous interviews with industry leaders and companies deploying OpenWiFi. It includes a detailed view of the latest OpenLAN switching offering, the state of the current deployments in each segment, a risk assessment, and various forecast scenarios for OpenWiFi access point markets for 2024-2029.