Opportunities for the 6 GHz Band for Unlicensed Wi-Fi Use in India

Countries around the world are investigating opening up the 6 GHz band, from 5925 MHz to 7125 MHz, for unlicensed Wi-Fi use. The 6 GHz Wi-Fi will provide higher throughput, more capacity, greater reliability, lower latency, and improved service, solving many Wi-Fi challenges. Legacy, non-Wi-Fi 6 devices will be unable to utilize the new spectrum, ensuring that the band remains clear for longer. The band will enable up to 14 additional 80 MHz channels and 7 additional 160 MHz channels. Several countries have announced plans to open up the 6 GHz band or are investigating the possibilities, including:

• United States: The FCC has announced that it will make 5925 MHz to 7125 MHz available for unlicensed low-power indoor use
• United Kingdom: Ofcom has announced that it will make 5925 MHz to 6425 MHz available for license-exempt use
• Korea: A draft regulation is in place to make 5925 MHz to 7125 MHz available for low-power indoor use and 5925 MHz to 6425 MHz available for very low-power use
• Brazil: Investigations are in place to make 5925 MHz to 7125 MHz available for Wi-Fi
• Europe: The CEPT has a draft regulation in place to make 5925 to 6425 MHz available for license-exempt low-power indoor and very low-power use

While the regulatory process for opening up the 6 GHz band for unlicensed Wi-Fi use in India has not yet begun, major players in the market are aware of the opportunities that it will provide and are investigating the possibilities for the technology. 5G is not expected in India for 2 years, so 6 GHz Wi-Fi will provide high-quality connectivity in urban and rural areas alike quickly and cheaply. It is important to ensure that rural areas have access to high-quality connectivity because they are home to roughly 70% of India’s population. The likely aim is to provide Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) using Wi-Fi as an alternative to 5G, ensuring that all of India, particularly rural areas, have access to high-quality Internet access within the next 2 years.

Currently, only 54% of India has access to the Internet, with those that do consuming roughly 12 GB to 16 GB each per month, a large proportion of which is video-based. This percentage is set to increase over the coming years, with the BharatNet initiative designed to provide broadband access to rural areas via optical fiber connectivity. This initiative is set to provide 2.5 million gram panchayats, or village institutes, with 1 Gbps Wi-Fi, which will be upgradable to 10 Gbps.

Organizations such as the ITU-APT and Broadband India Forum have seen a 50% increase in Wi-Fi use in India during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly by smartphones. This is causing tremendous pressure on Wi-Fi networks, with the current spectrum not enough to support this extra use from huge numbers of people connecting to the same network. An extra 1 GHz to 2 GHz of spectrum is required to meet this increased need, with India currently only having access to 690 MHz of spectrum. Some 4.2 exabytes of India’s mobile data traffic is expected to be offloaded to Wi-Fi by 2020.

All of this represents a great need to provide more bandwidth for Wi-Fi in India to ensure that the increasing number of users, as well as the amount of data required by each user, can be catered to. The 6 GHz band would be very advantageous here, offering a vast increase in spectrum, as well as a number of other advantages and upgrades to the quality of the technology.

The 6 GHz band is currently being used for TV uplinking with 500 million TVs, satellite monitoring, and VSATs in India, but can be shared by low-power indoor Wi-Fi with the appropriate technical conditions and regulations in place. There is a great opportunity to grow broadband in India to support the increase in device use and to help modernize manufacturing, with Wi-Fi set to become the de facto technology for all indoor use cases. The expansion of the 6 GHz band will help with this and create millions of public Wi-Fi hotspots in markets, government buildings, hospitals, education facilities, railways, airports, malls, museums, parks, and more.

The ITU-APT and Broadband India Forum are pushing for the Indian government to delicense the 6 GHz band for low-power indoor Wi-Fi and have recommended that it initiate studies for sharing the lower part of the band for low-power outdoor Wi-Fi use that won’t affect satellite and fixed services. The organizations have also suggested that the government support studies for the upper part of the 6 GHz band to be used for IMT.

The next steps for India in its exploration into the 6 GHz band for Wi-Fi should include:

• Identifying incumbent 6 GHz users
• Defining proposed unlicensed use case scenarios that will be specific to India
• Developing a methodology for sharing studies based on global best practices
• Performing studies with sensitivity analyses to understand 6 GHz power, channel size, activity factors, and adoption
• Developing recommendations within the industry and the government