FCC Makes 1.2 GHz of 6 GHz Spectrum Available, Enabling Next Decade of Wi-Fi to Flourish

On April 23, 2020, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the United States made 1.2 GHz of 6 GHz spectrum available for unlicensed use, vastly increasing the available spectrum for Wi-Fi technologies. The announcement is a momentous decision and will help to ensure the long-term future and viability of Wi-Fi, as well as enabling new use cases, business opportunities, and valuable services over the next decade and beyond. 6 GHz will also ensure that theoretical and real-world Wi-Fi performance will be closer to each other than ever before, thanks to several benefits. Wi-Fi 6 devices that can support the 6 GHz band will be labelled as Wi-Fi 6E.

Over the next decade, Wi-Fi faces several difficult challenges. Key among them are the growing demands being placed on Wi-Fi networks, leading to increased congestion, performance limitations, and reduced Quality of Service (QoS). Most Wi-Fi devices are using increasing amounts of data per device, including streaming high-resolution music and videos, video calling, application and firmware updates, digital downloads, social networking, data-heavy web content, and online gaming, among others. The tremendous surge in active Wi-Fi devices at home in recent months and resulting increase in traffic as a result of COVID-19 have reaffirmed Wi-Fi as a vital utility, acutely demonstrating both its importance and limitations. Some numbers have reported a 300% increase in teleconferencing and 400% increase in gaming traffic, while cellular data traffic has shifted over to Wi-Fi, and many fixed broadband providers have removed caps on data allowance to help people stay connected. OpenVault has seen fixed broadband usage up by 41% during business hours and 28% daily overall. BT/EE has seen a 5% reduction in mobile traffic and between a 35% and 60% increase on its fixed network, while Wi-Fi voice calling is also up across the board by as much as 80%. ASSIA has reported an 80% increase in Wi-Fi upload traffic as well as a 30% increase in 5 GHz band congestion, highlighting the further need for additional Wi-Fi spectrum as Wi-Fi demands increase. While the hope and expectation is that the impact of COVID-19 will be short-lived and people will be able to return to normal life as soon as possible, Wi-Fi traffic and performance demands are going to increase over time regardless thanks to low latency gaming, higher resolution video streaming, wireless Virtual Reality (VR), and smart home growth, as well as new 5G class services and 5G mobile offload. Cisco, for example, anticipates 71% of 5G network traffic will be offloaded to Wi-Fi networks. A recent report commissioned by the Wi-Fi Alliance indicated that, by as early as 2020, Wi-Fi networks will need significantly more spectrum in order to satisfy increased traffic demands. The report also indicated that, by 2025, between 500 Megahertz (MHz) and 1 GHz of additional spectrum at the very least would be needed to satisfy peak usage, with upper estimates placing this between 1.3 GHz and 1.8 GHz.

The tremendous increase in spectrum availability provided by the FCC’s announcement brings obvious benefits to the capacity of existing Wi-Fi networks. This opens up the potential for utilization of wider channels, with 14 additional 80 MHz channels and 7 additional 160 MHz channels now available in the United States, compared to just six 80 MHz and two 160 MHz channels in the 5 GHz band. These are essential improvements for enabling for high-performance and low latency applications such as Augmented Reality (AR) and VR, video streaming, and gaming. Companies such as Broadcom have already demonstrated over 2 Gbps of throughput and 2ms latency using the 6 GHz band.

6 GHz not only brings about additional spectrum and higher throughputs, but essentially guarantees access to channels with no legacy, resulting in a corresponding improvement in latency and simplifying channel access. As the 6 GHz band is clean and only enables Wi-Fi 6 and above devices, Wi-Fi 6E takes full advantage of what Wi-Fi 6 has to offer and can open new opportunities for Wi-Fi to better support 5G-class services reliant on high multi-gigabit throughput, low latency, high efficiency, broader coverage, and better mobility. Effectively, it will also ensure that theoretical and real-world Wi-Fi performance will be closer to each other than ever before.

A number of Wi-Fi vendors have already introduced 6E-capable chipsets, meaning that 6E capable devices can quickly arrive to the market. Broadcom introduced a comprehensive enterprise and residential portfolio of Wi-Fi 6E chipsets and showcased them at the show. These include a combination of dual and tri-band 4x4, 3x3, and 2x2 solutions with a combination of 80 MHz and 160 MHz support. Alongside this, Celeno announced that it was adding Wi-Fi 6E support to its CL8000 series of chips, with the entire family capable of supporting the entire 6 GHz spectrum under regulatory evaluation (5925-7125 MHz) with 160 MHz support. Its 6E products will sample in 2Q 2020. In February 2020, Broadcom announced its BCM4389 Wi-Fi 6E client chipset, with support for more than 2 Gbps throughput in devices like smartphones. Qualcomm is also developing its Wi-Fi 6E portfolio, while the Quantenna division of ON Semiconductor has also unveiled its QCS-AX2 series for Wi-Fi 6E infrastructure applications.

Ultimately, ABI Research believes 6 GHz Wi-Fi is fundamental to the future of the technology. However, there will still be some challenges ahead. Perhaps the largest current barrier to 6 GHz adoption is still the need to iron out various regulatory challenges and obstacles across different regions. While other regions are working to enable the 6 GHz band in the not-too-distant future, additional spectrum allocation is not always an easy process to solve, while staggered availability of spectrum across the globe may also slow down incentives for adoption in the near term. More also needs to be done to educate the industry on the benefits of 6 GHz to ensure Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and consumers alike adopt the technology. Historically, moving to a new band takes time. 5 GHz Wi-Fi took time to go mainstream, and much will depend on regional availability of spectrum, infrastructure rollout, and mainstream device support in order to build a comprehensive 6 GHz ecosystem. There will be a cost increase to supporting Wi-Fi 6E and the 6 GHz band. Vendors will have to think carefully about how soon they will support the technology and it may not always be a simple upgrade. While 6 GHz may gain some initial support in the ultra-high end, it will likely take some time to transition down as other components become more widely available on both the infrastructure and client sides. In addition, while several vendors are committed to bringing 6 GHz chipsets to the market early on, as highlighted above, as with any new standard, it will take time before these are well established with numerous vendors, helping to drive down costs and build scale. Those who have just upgraded their infrastructure to Wi-Fi 6 are now also faced with another upgrade cycle and may find it difficult to justify the expense so soon. This could also apply to device OEMs and the wider ecosystem. However, some vendors, such as ON Semiconductor, are futureproofing their Wi-Fi infrastructure chipsets to accommodate this, enabling flexible deployments that allow the network to operate in 5 GHz or 6 GHz depending on the available client devices, maximizing performance and utilization of each band. For more information on the benefits, challenges, and timelines around 6 GHz and Wi-Fi 6E, see ABI Research’s The Future of Wi-Fi Whitepaper.