WifiForward Claims that FCC Approval of Wi-Fi 6 Standard Would Boost Economy

An industry-funded report by WifiForward seeks to reveal the potential gains behind the expansion of unlicensed operations in 1,200 MHz in the 6 GHz band, for the new Wi-Fi6E standard. The report comes just before a crucial FCC vote on the matter scheduled for April 23.

The expansion of the Wi-Fi standard into the 6GHz band is coming, but it first needs to go through a series of approvals, including from the FCC. This is important because authorities need to make sure that the new frequencies won’t interfere with existing regulations or other devices.

As more and more Wi-Fi devices hit the market, the existing bands are getting increasingly crowded, although this is a cyclical problem. The same happened before the release of the Wi-Fi 5 standards, and the extension into the Wi-Fi 6 and 6E bands will only work for a while. When a new frequency opens up, there’s no interference with the previous generation of devices.

Most companies interested in the FCC vote are gathered under the banner of ad hoc, a broad-based group called WifiForward, which promotes the use and implementation of Wi-Fi standards. Their latest report aims to underline just how profitable the expansion would be for the economy.

“The total economic value of allowing unlicensed use in the 5.9 GHz and 6 GHz bands will amount at least to $183.44 billion between 2020 and 2025,” states the WifiForward report. “Opening 45 MHz of the 5.9 GHz band to unlicensed use will generate an economic value of $23.042 billion in terms of GDP contribution, and $5.098 billion in consumer surplus between 2020 and 2025.”

WifiForward, which includes companies such as Google, Microsoft, Broadcom, and many others, also expects cellular operations to save $13.60 billion in costs after some of their 5G-generated traffic workloads are offloaded to 5.9 GHz and 6 GHz Wi-Fi equipment.

If the proposal is approved on April 23, most companies will be ready to deploy hardware nearly immediately.