  In recent years, significant attention has been directed toward the fifth
generation of wireless broadband connectivity known as `5G`, currently being
deployed by Mobile Network Operators. Surprisingly, there has been considerably
less attention paid to `Wi-Fi 6`, the new IEEE 802.1ax standard in the family
of Wireless Local Area Network technologies with features targeting private,
edge-networks. This paper revisits the suitability of cellular and Wi-Fi in
delivering high-speed wireless Internet connectivity. Both technologies aspire
to deliver significantly enhanced performance, enabling each to deliver much
faster wireless broadband connectivity, and provide further support for the
Internet of Things and Machine-to-Machine communications, positioning the two
technologies as technical substitutes in many usage scenarios. We conclude that
both are likely to play important roles in the future, and simultaneously serve
as competitors and complements. We anticipate that 5G will remain the preferred
technology for wide-area coverage, while Wi-Fi 6 will remain the preferred
technology for indoor use, thanks to its much lower deployment costs. However,
the traditional boundaries that differentiated earlier generations of cellular
and Wi-Fi are blurring. Proponents of one technology may argue for the benefits
of their chosen technology displacing the other, requesting regulatory policies
that would serve to tilt the marketplace in their favour. We believe such
efforts need to be resisted, and that both technologies have important roles to
play in the marketplace, based on the needs of heterogeneous use cases. Both
technologies should contribute to achieving the goal of providing affordable,
reliable, and ubiquitously available high-capacity wireless broadband
connectivity.
