The FCC Sets a Vote for Expanding Wi-Fi into the 6GHz Band
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Bytram:
The FCC sets a vote for expanding Wi-Fi into the 6GHz band:
The Federal Communications Commission announced a potentially significant step for Wi-Fi today, with plans for an April 23 vote on a proposal to open the 6GHz band for unlicensed Wi-Fi use. Doing so would free up more than 1,200MHz of additional bandwidth for next-gen Wi-Fi 6E devices with antennas and chipsets capable of tapping into the extra spectrum.
"To accommodate that increase in Wi-Fi demand, the FCC is aiming to increase the supply of Wi-Fi spectrum with our boldest initiative yet: making the entire 6GHz band available for unlicensed use," reads the FCC's announcement. "By doing this, we would effectively increase the amount of spectrum available for Wi-Fi almost by a factor of five. This would be a huge benefit to consumers and innovators across the nation. It would be another step toward increasing the capacity of our country's networks. And it would help advance even further our leadership in next generation wireless technologies, including 5G."
With more than twice as much bandwidth as the 5GHz band used by Wi-Fi devices today, the 6GHz band could accommodate up to seven 160MHz channels at once. Latency stands to be a lot lower on the 6GHz band too, because there aren't any existing, older-gen Wi-Fi devices operating in that spectrum to slow things down. That gives the 6GHz band the potential to serve as an exclusive, multilane expressway for Wi-Fi devices equipped to take advantage, all of them using Wi-Fi 6, the newest, fastest and most efficient version of Wi-Fi.
The announcement of a vote on opening the 6GHz band for unlicensed Wi-Fi use comes months after FCC Chairman Ajit Pai signaled his support for the move.
"This band is currently populated by microwave services that are used to support utilities, public safety and wireless backhaul," Pai said in September of 2019. "But studies have shown that sharing this band with unlicensed operations is feasible, and can put massive amounts of new spectrum into the hands of consumers."
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