In late September, cable industry engineers unveiled a modern technological marvel inside Washington’s convention center. Alarmingly, a high-stakes lobbying fight between America’s telecommunications giants might prevent this innovation breakthrough from ever reaching our living rooms.
At the Society of Cable Television Engineers’ annual trade show, Charter Communications and chipmaker Broadcom demonstrated an experimental Wi-Fi router that hit speeds approaching 10 gigabits per second. For context, that’s more bandwidth than you’d use streaming 600 different Netflix shows — in full 4K resolution — simultaneously. Practically, it means lightning-fast file downloads, photo uploads and daily phone backups, and would be a complete game-changer in high-traffic settings like stadiums, hotels, airports, apartment complexes and corporate offices.
These are the innovations we can imagine now. As we know from economics, Say’s Law states that supply will create its own demand. That is, new innovations would emerge simply because of the abundance of extra capacity and speed.
This breakthrough is great news for anyone who relies on Wi-Fi, essentially all of us. Today, 80 percent to 90 percent of all smartphone traffic flows over Wi-Fi, not cellular networks. The number of Wi-Fi-connected devices in homes continues to rise, while 4K streaming, short-form video, and constant cloud backups fuel an insatiable demand for increased bandwidth.
Fortunately, but only for now, the additional spectrum the FCC opened for Wi-Fi in 2020 — the 6 GHz band — is helping keep pace. This band allows wider channels, enabling faster speeds and more reliable connections. Nearly 100 million Wi-Fi devices built for the 6 GHz band shipped in North America last year, and that number is expected to more than triple by 2029.
This breathing room won’t last long. As more devices crowd the 6 GHz band and data traffic continues to soar, congestion is inevitable. A recent study projected that more than 30 million Americans, and as many as 100 million, if Wi-Fi usage accelerates as predicted, could face Wi-Fi slowdowns within five years unless policymakers take action.
Charter and Broadcom’s recent demo points to the solution: tacking on a small slice of spectrum just above 6 GHz — the 7125-7250 MHz band. Opening this “Lower 7 GHz” band for unlicensed use would unlock an additional ultra-wide Wi-Fi channel, enabling the kind of “leveled up” performance showcased at the convention center in September. The demo used this added spectrum on a temporary, experimental basis as proof of the advancement, but making this access permanent would bring this future within reach for everyone.
However, others have competing plans for the Lower 7 GHz band. While the big cellular carriers are heavy users of Wi-Fi — again, more than 80 percent of their customers’ wireless traffic travels over its unlicensed frequencies — their more urgent strategic priority is securing more exclusive, licensed spectrum for their 5G (and future 6G) services. Their preference is to license the 7GHz band for exclusive use, which would likely make Wi-Fi unworkable in those frequencies.
And the carriers are gaining traction. Congress, considering only the short-term cash for the treasury rather the long-term growth of the U.S. innovation economy, is pressuring the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and Federal Communications Commission to auction off more spectrum for 5G and 6G. NTIA recently confirmed it’s studying whether and how to auction the Lower 7 GHz band.
If that happens, the leading cellular carriers, which control more than 80 percent of the country’s mobile spectrum, would further tighten their stranglehold on a market that the Trump administration has warned is overly concentrated.
Wi-Fi is the innovative lifeblood of modern commerce, communication and entertainment, a technology so essential we notice it only when it fails. If we want Wi-Fi to keep working, it will need more bandwidth. Federal regulators should remember that, and resist proposals that would sacrifice the future of Wi-Fi to expand the carriers’ vast portfolio of spectrum licenses.
