Wi-Fi 6 applications are in sight, which may trigger another wave of IoT development

Wi-Fi currently sends signals on the 2.4 and 5GHz bands, but a new proposal from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) seeks to expand unauthorized Wi-Fi use to the wider 6GHz band. Doing so would bring more than 1,200 megahertz of new bandwidth to next-generation Wi-Fi 6E devices, on top of the 500 megahertz of total bandwidth in the 5GHz band. With room for seven new 160MHz channels and complete immunity to interference from previous-generation devices, the 6GHz band has the potential to become a multi-lane highway for the latest Wi-Fi devices, all using the latest, fastest, and most efficient version of Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi 6.

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Now, 10 days before the FCC vote, an industry-funded study concluded that the move has the potential to generate more than $180 billion in revenue for the U.S. over the next five years, among other benefits.

The report, released Monday, was funded by WifiForward, an industry advocacy group whose members include Google, Microsoft, Comcast, Charter, Broadcom, Arris, and others. The report was written by Dr. Raul Katz, director of business strategy research at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information and president of Telecom Advisory Services, LLC.

By 2025, gross domestic product (GDP) increases by $106 billion, driven by improved broadband speeds, accelerated deployment of the Internet of Things, and greater market access for augmented and virtual reality applications.

Manufacturers earned $69 billion, driven by enterprise wireless data savings and sales of Wi-Fi and AR/VR devices.

Increased broadband speeds create $8 billion in consumer savings.

By 2025, the U.S. economy is expected to increase by $183.44 billion.

Faster speeds

The report noted that as of February this year, the average fixed broadband download speed in the United States was 137Mbps, and it is expected that this number will double to 280Mbps by 2022. This is faster than the current average speed of dual-band routers in the 2.4 and 5GHz bands (267Mbps), which may lead to new network bottlenecks in the next few years, and ordinary routers cannot take full advantage of ultra-fast networks.

In addition to opening up the 6GHz band for unlicensed Wi-Fi use, the FCC is proposing to open up the bottom 45MHz of the 5.9GHz band. This seemingly minor change would create the first widely used, contiguous 160MHz channels in the U.S. Doing so could solve the bottleneck by increasing the average router's throughput to 468Mbps, the report says, and ultimately contribute $23 billion to U.S. GDP by 2025, and $5 billion in consumer surplus over the same period.

As for the 1,200 MHz band in the 6GHz band, Katz estimates that the economic value of the five-year contribution to GDP will be $83 billion, with a production surplus of $68 billion and a consumer surplus of $3 billion. Combined with the gains from 5.9GHz, the U.S. economy will increase by $183.44 billion by 2025.

"By opening up the 5.9GHz and 6GHz bands and adding to the existing unlicensed bands at 2.4GHz and 5GHz, the combined spectrum will be able to support eight 160MHz channels or three 320MHz channels, which will pave the way for Wi-Fi 6 and later technologies to meet growing Wi-Fi traffic demands," Katz wrote.

IoT boom

The FCC's proposal for the 6GHz band would open up standard-power Wi-Fi connections, as well as low-power indoor (LPI) and very low-power (VLP) connections. The latter two are the bread and butter of machine-to-machine communications (M2M), which are likely to play a key role as the Internet of Things continues to grow.

“Under this new proposal, industry stakeholders say that LPI and VLP devices not only pose minimal risk of harmful interference, but also provide significant economic value,” Katz wrote. “Indeed, many stakeholders, including broadband providers and technology companies, believe that unless LPI and VLP devices are designed as they should, the economic value of the 6 GHz band will be significantly reduced.”

In particular, Katz noted that the increase in LPI spectrum capacity for M2M communications, which is expected to grow from the current installed base of 118 million devices to 214 million by 2025, will allow for a wider deployment of IoT devices, contributing $44 billion to GDP over the next five years.

Additionally, the report describes the potential for “ubiquitous, high-throughput wireless connectivity across multiple indoor access points in commercial facilities such as industrial plants and corporate campuses to generate an initial producer surplus by saving the equivalent of $54.04 billion in telecommunication costs between 2020 and 2025.”

As for VLP, Katz predicts that opening up connectivity space in the 6GHz band will enable a new generation of AR/VR applications, which will generate up to $14 billion in revenue for U.S. companies selling hardware, software and content over the next five years. This, in turn, will have a spillover effect on GDP equivalent to approximately $26 billion.

The Good News of 5G

Katz predicts that the mobile phone business will also benefit from the FCC's proposal. The reason is simple: as data traffic continues to expand, Wi-Fi networks will be able to bear more of the burden. This means that mobile phone service providers will be able to reduce their investment and operating expenses without the FCC's action.

"In the absence of additional unlicensed spectrum, service providers will have to deploy costly infrastructure to accommodate the growth in traffic," Katz wrote, noting that the additional bandwidth the FCC hopes to allocate will directly impact those efforts. "Conservatively, this advantage will be realized in some suburban (about 15%) and rural (about 5%) deployments, resulting in $13.6 billion in savings that can be invested in expanding 5G deployment in rural areas."

Wi-Fi 6 adoption in sight

The FCC plans to begin voting on its proposals on April 23. If they pass (and with bipartisan support from Chairman Ajit Pai, they have a good chance of passing), the Wi-Fi industry will be ready to run. The Wi-Fi Alliance has already set a "Wi-Fi 6E" name for new equipment that taps into the 6GHz band. New chipsets for access points and mobile devices are already equipped and expected to be available by the end of the year.

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