Proponents of spectrum auctions should be ashamed of themselves.<p>If you pop up a spectrum analyzer anywhere there are people, you'll see loads of traffic jammed into the "free-for-all" ISM bands, you'll see AM & FM radio, and you'll see precious little else. If you have a really good spectrum analyzer, you'll be able to spot the occasional cellular traffic, but by and large the spectrum that has been auctioned off to corporate owners goes almost entirely to waste.<p>50 years ago when fixed-frequency narrowband receivers were all we had, this made sense. It was a necessary compromise. Nobody needed bandwidth but everybody needed a dedicated frequency to accommodate their primitive hardware. Today it's the opposite, and the relative usage of ISM bands vs everything else proves it. The radio-frequency situation makes the real-estate markets with block after block of unoccupied apartments look downright efficient by comparison. We need to fix this.
This looks like a money-making scheme from big telecom companies to me. They have to compete with faster, cheaper, more reliable hardwired connections, and can only benefit from hobbling WiFi.<p>WiFi 6E is necessary and potentially revolutionary for indoor spaces. If you’ve ever lived in a large apartment building, then you have probably seen the huge number of neighbor WiFi routers with varying signal strengths interfering with your WiFi connection. I’ve found WiFi to be completely unusable for gaming for that exact reason, and have to use a MoCA adapter instead.<p>WiFi 6 helps, but most devices on 5Ghz are still not on WiFi 6, and won’t be for a long time. Any non-WiFi 6 device on the same channel will interfere with the more advanced devices.<p>WiFi 6E not only introduces a new 6Ghz band where every device is using WiFi 6, but it also has significantly more channels, allowing for more routers in a limited area without interference.<p>On top of that, it has higher speed and lower latency than even WiFi 6 on 5Ghz. I’ve seen some claims that it might be used for wireless VR headsets, though that remains to be seen.<p>This is a technology apartment dwellers don’t even know they’ve been dreaming of, and it should not be delayed.
This should be an easy choice. Award huge amounts of <i>indoor spectrum</i> to a consortium that requires a SIM card to use any of it? What are they thinking?
Why the hell are we not just using beam forming with WiFi? Why are we restricting the construction of computer networks to some few privileged companies?<p>What the hell is going on here?
I'm confused; I thought that Wifi 6E equipment using the 6GHz band was already available?<p>I actually just ordered a wifi card based on the Intel AX210: <a href="https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/wireless/wi-fi-6e-ax201-module-brief.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/wirele...</a><p>I'm eagerly awaiting an AP that supports 6GHz and am hoping for a few years of relatively interference free wifi in an urban setting (like 5Ghz was for the first year or two).
Perhaps I’m just the wrong audience but I had a good laugh at the irony of this clarification:<p>“IMT is the ITU nomenclature for all things cellular”<p>... OK, but what is ‘ITU’ the nomenclature for?
I bet a delay of ten years of fully using the 6GHz band would be considered a big win for the 5G advocates. They will have crippled Wifi's performance for 10 years, giving them more breathing space to show that 5G is the future.
Most of the comments here are looking at this the wrong way<p>The big problem here is the spectrum, any spectrum, is being SOLD..<p>Spectrum use should come at a cost based on % of revenue or Profit paid back the people and used for common programs. Not a one time free where by then the private company owns it for all time
Spectrum reminds me very much of diamonds. It is an artificial scarcity. Except a government controlled cartel rather than a private cartel. Most of the RF spectrum is reserved for "DoD" they never use.