Gigabit to the Building, Not to the Device: Europe's GIA and the Wi-Fi Spectrum Gap

Europe has written gigabit connectivity into building law, but it has not secured the spectrum that carries gigabit to the devices inside.

Since 12 February 2026, every new or majorly renovated building in the EU must be fibre-ready, and every new multi-dwelling building must have an access point open to operators. The fibre now reaches the flat. The last ten meters — where nearly every laptop, TV, phone and smart thermostat connects over Wi-Fi — run on a 6 GHz allocation that Europe has so far capped at 480 MHz. The upper part of the band is being held largely for future mobile networks.

This post explores the gap between the Gigabit Infrastructure Act (GIA) and Europe's Wi-Fi spectrum policy. It bites hardest in multi-dwelling units (MDUs), where dozens of households share the same air. It is also a question we will put to regulators, operators and vendors at RISER, the European Summit for Residential MDU Connectivity and PropTech, in Amsterdam on April 6–8, 2027.

What the Gigabit Infrastructure Act actually requires

The Gigabit Infrastructure Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1309) entered into force on 11 May 2024 and replaced the 2014 Broadband Cost Reduction Directive. Its in-building rules are concrete and, for MDUs, significant: Article 10(1) requires new buildings and major renovations to have fibre-ready in-building physical infrastructure and wiring up to the network termination point. Article 10(2) requires new or majorly renovated multi-dwelling buildings to also be equipped with an access point for operators. Article 11 opens that access point to any network provider on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.

Recital 48 sets the yardstick: by 2030, every end user at a fixed location should be covered by a gigabit network "up to the network termination point." That is exactly where the Act's ambition ends. Search the full text, and the term Wi-Fi does not appear once. Wireless is mentioned almost always as 5G, which is named seven times. The Act does define in-building infrastructure as able to host wired or wireless access networks, but only between the building access point and the termination point. Everything beyond the termination point — where residents actually experience their connection — sits outside its scope.

The spectrum reality: 480 MHz and five wide channels

Europe opened the lower 6 GHz band (5945–6425 MHz) to licence-exempt Wi-Fi in 2021. The upper band (6425–7125 MHz) is where the fight is. In November 2025, the Radio Spectrum Policy Group (RSPG) recommended prioritising 6585–7125 MHz (540 MHz) for mobile networks and holding 6425–6585 MHz (160 MHz) until WRC-27. The Wi-Fi Alliance responded that the 160 MHz was only nominally on hold, with no clear route to Wi-Fi access.

The channel math explains why this matters for buildings. Plum Consulting's 2024 assessment counts five 160 MHz channels available in Europe today: two at 5 GHz and three at 6 GHz. In other words, the EU's own Digital Decade objective of 1 Gbps for all households cannot be met room by room in a dense building on today's allocation. Opening the upper band closes most of the gap; nothing else does.

The effect already shows in usage data. Ookla's Q1 2026 figures put 6 GHz at 1.6% of European Wi-Fi samples against 13.8% in North America. The access points and phones sold in Europe are largely the same hardware sold in the US; the upper 6 GHz capability is simply switched off. The UK has already chosen a different path: Ofcom has set out a hybrid split that gives Wi-Fi priority in 6425–6585 MHz and mobile priority above it, while allowing licence-exempt Wi-Fi across the mobile-priority portion under automated frequency coordination.

Five inconsistencies between the GIA and Europe's spectrum policy

Building infrastructure and spectrum are handled by different parts of the EU machine, and the seams show. None of these is a technical disagreement; each is a policy gap.

Gigabit measured at the wrong point

Gigabit coverage is counted at the network termination point. Residents experience the network on devices over Wi-Fi, and five wide channels cannot carry gigabit across a dense building.

Selective technology neutrality

The GIA invokes technological neutrality and names 5G seven times. Wi-Fi, which carries about 88% of European IP traffic, is not named once.

Fibre to the flat, rationed air inside it

Every new MDU must have fibre wiring and an operator access point from February 2026. The radio layer that distributes that fibre inside each flat stays at 480 MHz, while 540 MHz is prioritised for 6G services not expected before the end of the decade.

Insulated buildings, outdoor answer

Article 10(3) borrows its definition of major renovation from the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive. Those same energy-efficient buildings cut outdoor signals by around 20 dB — roughly a hundredfold loss in power — making macro cellular a costly way to serve indoor demand.

Cost reduction versus cost shifting

The GIA exists to lower the cost of deploying gigabit networks. A study for the Dynamic Spectrum Alliance puts wide-area mobile coverage of Europe's core urban areas in upper 6 GHz at close to 2.5 million cells and EUR 72.97 bn, against no incremental deployment cost for Wi-Fi beyond the router refresh already under way.

Why MDUs feel it first

A detached house with one router can live comfortably on today's channels. An apartment block cannot. Picture forty flats, each with a router from a different provider, plus smart meters, TVs, thermostats and the cars parked below, all active during the evening busy hour. Every one of those access points competes for the same handful of wide channels, and performance drops exactly when residents need it most.

Europe's MDU model makes this worse. In most European buildings, each household buys its own broadband, self-installs a consumer-grade router, and gets no building-level channel planning, monitoring, or service level. In the US, building-wide managed Wi-Fi — where one provider designs and runs a single network across every unit and common area — is now mainstream in new multifamily. In our recent interviews with European regulators, that model was largely unfamiliar.

The GIA unintentionally reinforces the unmanaged pattern. Article 11 opens the building access point to every operator, which helps retail competition in the riser. It says nothing about coordinating the air inside the building, so each new entrant simply adds another uncoordinated router to the stack. Managed Wi-Fi uses scarce spectrum far more efficiently, because access points can be placed and tuned as one system. But planning cannot create channels that regulation has withheld.

As Wi-Fi Alliance CEO Kevin Robinson told us on Industry Shakers in 2025, cellular is unlikely to serve indoor users "in a way that is economically feasible." Wi-Fi still has to do the indoor job; the only question is how much spectrum it gets to do it.

The window that is still open

Nothing is final yet. The RSPG opinion is advisory. Under the Commission's mandate to CEPT, the sharing-scenario conclusions are due around 30 October 2026, harmonised technical conditions follow in July 2027, and WRC-27 meets at the end of 2027. The CEPT sharing conclusions will therefore be public by the time RISER convenes in April 2027 — three months before the harmonised technical conditions are due — which makes the summit a timely place to test them against real buildings.

A second door is the Digital Networks Act, proposed on 21 January 2026 to replace the European Electronic Communications Code. The European Parliament decides on it on an equal footing with the Council. That matters: MEPs answer to residents rather than to spectrum budgets, and several are starting to ask why Wi-Fi is missing from Europe's connectivity strategy.

Four practical asks

• Measure gigabit where people use it. Digital Decade reporting should track delivered speed at the device inside dense buildings, not only coverage at the termination point.
• Authorise low-power indoor Wi-Fi in the upper band now. Indoor-only use protects outdoor incumbents and keeps the option open to identify the band at WRC-27 for IMT.
• Make technology neutrality explicit in the Digital Networks Act. Name Wi-Fi alongside fibre, 5G and satellite as part of the gigabit chain.
• Extend fibre-ready to wireless-ready. The Article 10(4) specifications and the voluntary fibre-ready label could add simple provisions for in-unit and common-area access point locations, so new MDUs are built for managed Wi-Fi from day one.

The Maravedis take

Europe is building a fibre motorway into every apartment block and then narrowing it to a single lane at the front door. The GIA was right to treat buildings as infrastructure. The inconsistency is treating the building's radio layer as someone else's problem.

The fix does not require choosing Wi-Fi over mobile. It requires recognising that indoor demand needs an indoor answer, and that the GIA's gigabit promise is kept only if the last ten meters have the spectrum to carry it. MDUs are where the gap is widest, easiest to measure, and where the economic case is strongest.

Maravedis is currently mapping MDU connectivity across Europe's largest markets, and we will put this debate on stage at RISER in Amsterdam on April 6–8, 2027. Regulators, operators, building owners, fibre and Wi-Fi vendors: if you have a view on how Europe closes the last-ten-meters gap, we want you in the room.

Originally published on Maravedis