According to statistics released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, by February 2024, the number of FTTH/O broadband access users in my country will reach 610 million, and the home network industry will become a new blue ocean. At the same time, WLAN networks have become an indispensable part of home networks. It is the most widely used way to connect to the Internet within the home and the basic requirement of smart homes. Mobile phones, tablets, laptops, cameras, smart home appliances and other terminals all need to connect to WLAN. The number of devices supporting WLAN in the home continues to increase, and the terminal access density continues to increase, which promotes the traditional WLAN network from "best effort" network connection to reliable and controllable high-quality connection. However, the home WLAN experience has always had problems such as "application freezes, remote meetings are not smooth, signals are weak, and it is easy to drop the line", resulting in a sharp increase in network quality complaints under WLAN access, and users have doubts about the WLAN network carrying high-quality demand services.

The main reasons for the current WLAN network problems in home scenarios are, on the one hand, the large number of home gateways, wireless routers and other products on the market, with many brands and different product capabilities, and users lack the ability to discern the quality of their network performance when purchasing WLAN products; on the other hand, the home network product evaluation reports released by multiple evaluation agencies on the market have inconsistent test indicators and test methods, which to a certain extent increases the difficulty for users to choose home WLAN products.

Therefore, the industry urgently needs to establish technical indicators and evaluation and certification systems for product types such as home gateways, FTTRs, wireless routers and home networking equipment for home scenarios, providing a reference for operators and mass consumers in choosing high-quality home network products.

The Home WLAN Working Group mainly focuses on the WLAN application needs in home scenarios, conducts technical research on the networking topology, network capabilities, service experience, security, green energy saving, etc. of home single devices (such as home gateways, wireless routers, etc.) and home networking devices (such as FTTR, Mesh wireless routers, etc.), proposes technical indicator requirements and standardizes test methods, and provides technical and standard support for the WAA Alliance to carry out testing and certification of related products.

The working group will set up task groups (TFs) for specific technical research directions according to the application needs of home WLAN, carry out technical research, standard formulation, and promote related testing and certification work.