Week 7

While we’re on the topic of setting up Wi-Fi networks this week, I figure it may be prudent to discuss a topical issue happening in the US regarding the future of the 6 GHz frequency band employed by Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 technologies.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act introduced by the Trump Administration goes over several policies that aim to cut government spending and do a whole bunch of other things that are out of the scope of this conversation.

The part of this bill that is in-scope relates to section 400002, spectrum auctions. This section specifies that the FCC is supposed to look at all frequencies between 1.3 GHz and 10.5 GHz and come up with about 800 MHz that can be sold to the highest bidder for licensed uses.

The problem comes from two additional facts: some sections of the spectrum are off limits, and other sections are already in use by well-established standards like 2.4 and 5 GHz Wi-Fi and changing those standards would be impractical at this point with the number of devices that would need to be swapped out or updated. 

Given these two facts, some people are worried that parts of the 6 GHz spectrum may be auctioned away to comply with the law which will eat into the available spectrum for Wi-Fi 6E and 7. Now, this may not spell doom for the two technologies, but it would certainly not be good.

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