Op-Ed: Evan Swarztrauber: Don’t kill the golden Wi-Fi goose
Wi-Fi is one of those technologies so easy to take for granted. Remember the dark ages when you had to use an ethernet cord to get a decent connection? Today, Wi-Fi is ubiquitous and carries the vast majority of Internet traffic. It’s kept up despite ever-growing demands on broadband networks — from streaming video and online gaming to virtual reality and artificial intelligence (AI).
That it just works is not by happenstance. Like any wireless technology, Wi-Fi relies on spectrum — the invisible airwaves that power everything from your car radio to Bluetooth speakers to Starlink satellites. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which manages the nation’s commercial airwaves, has made key decisions to free up spectrum for Wi-Fi so that networks can satiate Americans’ ever-growing demand for and reliance on more data.
While Washington isn’t known for planning ahead, Wi-Fi offers a rare exception. In 2020, recognizing that Wi-Fi networks would become congested without access to more spectrum, the FCC under then-Chairman Ajit Pai made a bold and visionary decision. He led his fellow commissioners in a bipartisan, unanimous vote to triple the amount of spectrum available for Wi-Fi by freeing up the entire 6 GHz band for its use.
The decision was overwhelmingly popular, drawing plaudits from a wide and diverse range of stakeholders, including bipartisan members of Congress, tech manufacturers, rural broadband providers, and civil society groups. And the results speak for themselves.
Nearly 100 million 6 GHz-enabled devices were shipped to North America last year. Internet service providers (ISPs) serving some of the most rural and remote communities are leveraging 6 GHz spectrum to bridge the digital divide. The band is helping businesses improve security, integrate AI, and automate workflows. And perhaps most importantly, 6 GHz availability is sparking demand for American manufacturing in networking equipment — a field otherwise dominated by Chinese and European firms.
What could possibly disrupt this good news story? Well, Washington of course.
As the airwaves have gotten more crowded over time, policymakers are struggling to find more ways to free up spectrum for new users and to meet growing demand for existing ones. There is virtually no “greenfield” spectrum left, meaning unoccupied airwaves, and the federal government holds around 60 percent of the most sought-after “mid-band” spectrum.
As spectrum is a scarce resource, there are only so many ways to make more room. New users can share or co-exist alongside incumbents. The government can consolidate its operations into smaller slices of the pie. Or spectrum can simply be taken from one set of users and given to another—the zero-sum option. Rather than stay the course and find a way to co-exist, forces in Washington are now exploring relitigating and reversing past decisions that would undermine the 6 GHz success story.
Aside from the obvious downsides of shrinking the airwaves needed for Wi-Fi, these proposals suffer fatal technical flaws. For one, the FCC under Pai already considered allocating portions of the 6 GHz band for mobile cellular back in 2020. The agency decided against it for a variety of reasons, including that it would require relocating a huge swath of incumbent users, including electric utilities, public safety entities, and broadcasters.
As Pai noted at the time, the approach adopted by the agency protected those users from harmful interference, as Wi-Fi could be used without disrupting their operations. Then-Commissioner, now Chairman, Brendan Carr agreed, noting the 6 GHz decision would pave the way for transformative technologies.
American manufacturers in particular would be harmed by undoing or modifying the FCC’s 2020 order. Companies that made long-term investments would see capital wasted and their products devalued overnight. Worse, it would set a damaging precedent—that the solution to federal spectrum challenges is for the private sector to cannibalize.
Who would benefit from the US second-guessing itself and reallocating the 6 GHz band for cellular? China, which has led the global push to make 6 GHz a 5G band. Chinese companies dominate the 5G equipment market, and they would capture the lion’s share of global business from selling 6 GHz 5G equipment. If the US backtracks on 6 GHz, it would not only undermine Wi-Fi in the U.S. but undermine our long-standing efforts to encourage other countries to follow our lead. Wi-Fi is a quintessentially American technology supported by American manufacturers. Undermining the 6GHz band that Wi-Fi depends upon would have significant geopolitical consequences.
The 6 GHz band is a story of Washington identifying a need, taking a practical and effective path to meet it, and unleashing American innovation and investment in the process. And only Washington could give that story a tragic end.
While doing nothing is often the easiest thing for policymakers, it is rarely the best thing. But in this case, leaving the 6 GHz band alone would be a boon for consumers, the economy, and U.S. technological leadership. Let’s hope policymakers choose to do no harm.
Evan Swarztrauber is Principal at CorePoint Strategies and a former policy advisor at the FCC.
