Tag Archives: WiFi

Do We Have a Spectrum Policy?

Telecompetitor recently published an article that cited concerns from analysts at MoffettNathanson Research that wonder about the way spectrum is being allocated for FWA home cellular broadband. It turns out that the big cellular carriers are devoting a huge amount of network resources to FWA while reaping only small financial benefits. FWA use may already account for more than half of the traffic on the Verizon cellular network while only accounting for 3% of Verizon’s revenues. FWA makes up only 6% of T-Mobile’s revenues.

I’ve written about this before, and the difference in monthly data usage between cell customers and home broadband customers is immense. CTIA, the association for cellular carriers, recently reported that the average cell customer uses 17.2 gigabytes of data per month on cellular networks. OpenVault recently reported that the average home broadband customer used over 640 gigabytes per month at the end of the third quarter. That means that the average FWA customer is using as much bandwidth as 37 average cellular customers.

You might ask why it matters how Verizon and T-Mobile use the spectrum they purchased in FCC auctions. From a regulatory perspective, it probably doesn’t matter. Once these companies buy the spectrum, they are free to use it in ways allowed by the spectrum licenses. Cellular spectrum has been used for home broadband for many years through the sale of hotspots. The big difference between hotspots and FWA is that hotspots most normally have stingy data caps similar to what is sold to cellphones, while FWA offers unlimited home broadband.

But from a market perspective, it matters a lot because the government has suddenly decided to shuttle a lot more spectrum to the cellular carriers. In the Big Beautiful Bill, Congress instructed the FCC to find at least 800 megahertz of spectrum for commercial wireless services. The expectation is that the sale of this spectrum could raise around $88 billion for the U.S. Treasury. It’s highly likely that the three big cellular companies would buy most of this spectrum along with perhaps a few large cable companies.

Cellular carriers need this extra spectrum to support FWA. Even if they add no new FWA customers, home broadband usage has been growing at around 9% per year, so FWA will take up an increasing share of existing cellular spectrum every year. But the major reason the carriers need more spectrum is because they have big plans to continue to grow FWA cellular. Verizon says it plans to double the number of FWA customers by 2028. T-Mobile says it plans to grow from today’s 7.8 million FWA customers to over 12 million by 2028. AT&T has expressed no specific plan for FWA growth but has recently stepped up sales significantly.

The three carriers will need the new spectrum being made available by Congress to support their sudden appetite for using spectrum to compete for home broadband. That’s one of the more surprising sentences I have ever written. A decade ago, I would have been laughed out of the room if I had suggested that our scarce national spectrum resource should be used to compete with landline broadband networks.

This is policy gone amok. Clearly, the carrier lobbyists were successful in getting this change inserted into the Big Beautiful Bill. That alone is extraordinary, because in the past, the FCC and the NTIA together collaborated to determine spectrum policy. Apparently, Congress can now set spectrum policy in a footnote of a budget reconciliation bill.

There are many other important uses for the same spectrum bands now being considered for expanding FWA. The spectrum is also needed for the military, for rural fixed wireless broadband, for communicating with airplanes, for weather services, for public safety, and for WiFi.

That last use is the most troublesome of all. WiFi spectrum is by far the most valuable spectrum in the U.S. economy. Almost everybody reading this blog spends most of their online time, whether by computer or cellphone, using WiFi spectrum. The FCC is likely going to have to dip into the 6 GHz WiFi spectrum to satisfy the Congressional mandate. That is absurdly short-sighted and undoes decades of careful spectrum deliberations that have tried to make sure that every use of spectrum is protected.

It’s a fair question to ask if we even have a national spectrum policy now. Raiding 800 megahertz of the most valuable spectrum we have to support FWA sounds less like a policy and more like a land grab by the cellular industry.

WiFi is the Problem

TechSee advertises itself as the world’s leading visual agentic AI platform. The company conducted a nationwide survey of  3,790 people that asked about real-world experiences and expectations around home WiFi performance. I think every ISP I know could have predicted the gist of the responses, but I think ISPs might be surprised at the percentage of people who are unhappy with WiFi.

The following are some of the most interesting responses to the survey:

  • WiFi problems are rampant. 68% of households had a problem with WiFi in the past year. 18% of customers experience problems daily.
  • Coverage issues within homes are a problem. 76% of respondents have problems with connectivity in some parts of their house.
  • Getting help is a challenge. Over half of homes try to fix problems themselves and 62% of them are able to make performance better. Two-thirds of homes have contacted their ISP about connectivity issues in the last year. 39% of those had a technician visit the home, and 20% of the technician visits did not fix the issue.
  • Customers expect their ISP to be proactive. Three-fourths of respondents want the ISP to test WiFi coverage in every room as part of the installation. 56% are willing to spend extra for more equipment if they can see that it solves coverage gaps.
  • Over half of homes have more than six devices connected to WiFi at any given time. The more devices connected, the higher the reported WiFi coverage problems.
  • Nearly half of homes have a router that is over three years old, with only 29% upgrading in the last two years.
  • Many ISPs market whole-home WiFi solutions. Surprisingly, customers of these packages have more problems than average.

What does all of this mean for ISPs? About one-third of customers are willing to pay extra for better WiFi performance, but if they pay extra, they expect coverage where they need it. The survey result that should concern ISPs is that nearly half of the people surveyed would switch ISPs to get better WiFi coverage and performance.

There is obviously a big gap between what ISPs promise for WiFi and what they deliver. Every ISP I know tells me that WiFi is their bane and the source of a majority of their customer complaints and unhappiness. Yet a lot of ISPs don’t have a truly premium WiFi service.

I’ve done a lot of customer surveys over the years, and I’m not sure that many ISPs fully grasp that many customers believe that WiFi is the direct signal from the ISP. Many customers use the term WiFi to refer to their broadband. This means they blame every WiFi quirk and weakness on the ISP.

I know a few ISPs that do this right. It’s not cheap to do it right, which means technician time with customers, but here is how the ISPs that do this well handle WiFi:

  • They do the full house sweep at installation and recommend a solution to improve WiFi. That might mean a better location for the primary WiFi router or installing WiFi extenders. They don’t leave an installation until WiFi is maximized. It means being honest about the parts of the home with the strongest and weakest coverage.
  • These ISPs help customers install new devices on the WiFi network if requested. This can be done remotely and lets them make sure the device is working right, and let a customer know if any problems are due to a device and not the WiFi network.
  • Some ISPs monitor WiFi usage and will contact a customer if performance degrades.
  • ISPs that charge a premium monthly WiFi fee are willing to visit customers to rebalance the network if the need arises.

Taking these steps can justify charging a significant monthly fee for premium or concierge service. Too many ISPs charge extra for nothing more than a one-time installation of WiFi extenders. Customers don’t view this as a premium service if WiFi still doesn’t work well.

This seems like an obvious service to offer if 68% of customers have WiFi problems. It’s particularly important if half of your customers are willing to change ISPs due to poor WiFi performance.

Speed Isn’t Everything

The marketing are of the broadband industry spends a lot of time convincing folks that the most important part of a broadband product is download speed. This makes sense if fiber of cable are competing in a market against slower technologies. But it seems like most advertising about speed is to convince existing customers to upgrade to faster speeds. While download speed is performance, the industry doesn’t spend much time talking about the other important attributes of broadband.

Upload Speed. Households that make multiple simultaneous upload connections like video calls, gaming, or connecting to a work or school server quickly come to understand the importance of upload speeds if they don’t have enough. This was the primary problem that millions of households subscribed to cable companies encountered during the pandemic when they suddenly were using a lot of upload. Many homes still struggle with this today, and too many people upgrade to faster download speeds, hoping to solve the problem. ISPs using technologies other than fiber rarely mention upload speed.

Oversubscription. Home broadband connections are served by technologies that share bandwidth across multiple customers. Your ISP is very unlikely to tell you the number of people sharing your node or the amount of bandwidth feeding your node. The FCC’s broadband labels require ISPs to disclose their network practices, but nobody tells you statistics like this that would help you compare the ISPs competing for your business. The cable industry ran afoul of this issue fifteen years ago when large numbers of homes began streaming video, and many ran into it again during the pandemic. It still happens today any time a neighborhood has more demand than the bandwidth being supplied.

Latency. The simple description of latency is the delay in getting the packets to your home for something sent over the Internet. Latency increases any time that packets have to be resent and pile up. If enough packets get backlogged, latency can make it difficult or impossible to maintain a real-time connection. Latency issues are behind a lot of the problems that people have with Zoom or Teams calls – yet most folks assume the problem is not having fast enough speed.

Prioritization. A new problem for some broadband customers is prioritization. Customers buying FWA cellular wireless are told upfront that their usage might be slowed if there is too much cellular demand at a tower. Cellular carriers clearly (and rightfully) give priority to cell phones users over home broadband. Starlink customers who buy mobile broadband are given the same warning. Starlink will prioritize normal customers in an area over campers and hikers. Most ISPs say they don’t prioritize, but as AI is introduced into networks it will be a lot easier for them to do so. Over the last few months I’ve seen that several big ISPs are considering selling a priority (and more expensive) connection to gamers at the expense of everybody else.

Your Home Network. Everybody wants to blame the ISP when they have problems. However, a large percentage of broadband problems come from WiFi inside the home. People keep outdated and obsolete WiFi routers that are undersized for their bandwidth. Customers try to reach an entire home from a single WiFi device. Even when customers use WiFi extenders and mesh networks to reach more of the home, they often deploy the devices poorly. If you are having any broadband problems, give yourself a present and buy a new WiFi router.

Reliability. If operated properly, fiber networks tend to be the most reliable. But there are exceptions, and it all boils down to the quality of your local ISP as it does to the technology. It’s hard to say that any factor is more important than reliability if your ISP regularly has network outages when you want to use broadband.

Challenges of MDU WiFi

Park Associates, along with Xfinity Communities, recently conducted a big survey of multi-dwelling tenant landlords to explore the issue of offering WiFi to tenants. This differs from offering broadband inside of apartments or condominiums units and explored the issues associated with offering WiFi in community spaces or across an entire property. You can download the full whitepaper here. The conclusion of the study was not surprising – tenants like access to WiFi, but many building owners are reluctant to tackle it for various reasons.

The report notes that there are 29 million apartments and almost 10 million condos in the U.S., so there is a huge potential market for ubiquitous WiFi.

One part of the survey asked residents to rate the factors that are important for choosing an MDU. The most important attribute was good soundproofing, but broadband was number two. Broadband was more important than covered parking, a community pool, availability of office space, an on-site gym, or electric vehicle charging stations. 54% of apartment tenants and 61% of condo tenants said that low-cost broadband was important, and just slightly less wanted broadband that was available immediately after moving in. There was interest in having more than one ISP (40% and 53%) and having gigabit speeds (35% and 48%). The demand was less for ubiquitous WiFi, with the importance of WiFi in common areas at 32% and 52% and the ability to roam on WiFi at 29% and 49%.

The surveys of building owners uncovered some important trends. Landlords reported a lot of reasons to want ubiquitous WiFi that are unrelated to providing WiFi for tenants. A lot of landlords are now using smart technology throughout a building to manage a range of devices such as temperature controls, security cameras, security access, and monitoring devices like water leak detectors. Landlords operating multi-story apartment buildings noted that they can get a substantial discount on insurance rates if they have reliable leak detectors in place, since a water leak can be devastating in a multi-story building.

Building owners reported a huge difference in dealing with WiFi and broadband in newer buildings versus those that are more than ten years old. 82% of landlords reported having trouble maintaining device connectivity in older buildings compared with only 13% of new buildings. 77% of landlords reported having trouble connecting to the Internet in older buildings versus 19% in new buildings. These differences must stem from having new buildings that were prewired with fiber and designed with WiFi in mind compared to older buildings where this is an add-on.

Landlords that don’t offer WiFi to residents claimed a number of reasons for not doing so. 69% said that managing WiFi is a hassle. 64% said it costs too much. 53% said that residents don’t want to share a WiFi connection that is available to other tenants. 50% said that WiFi is not reliable. Any ISP or vendor that wants to sell a WiFi solution to landlords should be prepared to address these reservations.

Another issue noted by landlords is that they expect that any technology solution will last at least ten years. That’s been a problem in recent years as WiFi routers having improved dramatically year after year as modem technology gets better and as we see new WiFi standards.

Landlords also expressed a lot of concerns about smart home devices. They want devices that automatically work with existing administrative systems. They are always leery about bringing in different brands for different applications. They are naturally concerned with the cost of smart home devices. There is a lot of concern about the data security practices of smart device makers.

The Battle for Network Monitoring

An interesting battle is underway to capture the market for monitoring devices. The latest entry into the market is 5G RedCap. This is a technology that is currently under development in chipsets and ought to hit the market in 2025 and 2026.

RedCap is the latest attempt by cellular carriers to monetize 5G. RedCap was defined in the 5G specification 3GPP Release 17. The technology allows for 5G devices that are less complex, less costly, and more power efficient than conventional 5G devices like smartphones. RedCap will compete for monitoring devices like sensors that send small packets of information continuously and require a long battery life. This will include devices like industrial wireless sensors, health wearables, and surveillance devices. Traditional 5G is not good for such devices because 5G chips add too much cost and use too much power.

5G RedCap devices will use fewer antennas and will support less bandwidth than a typical 5G connection. Fewer antennas, lower bandwidths, and different modes of operation will help to reduce power consumption. RedCap devices can transmit data without having to connect to a network – the RedCap device can transmit its bits and hope a network is receiving it.

Cellular carriers will be working on ways to monetize the new capability – perhaps by selling monthly subscriptions for all of the devices at a given site.

This contrasts with the other technologies used to monitor devices. For devices inside or near buildings, the monitoring technology of choice is free wireless connectivity using WiFi or Bluetooth. Devices can be monitored with these technologies without paying an additional fee. However, WiFi devices can still require more power than is being envisioned by RedCap. Most WiFi monitoring devices have to periodically be recharged, which is not always practical for a small device like a sensor that alerts the network if somebody walks through a hallway.

WiFi is not a good solution for monitoring outdoor devices that are not located very close to a WiFi network. WiFi also isn’t a good solution for something like a portable health wearable unless the user always carries a cellphone – an impractical requirement.

The other interesting player in the market is Amazon. The company launched its Sidewalk network in 2021. Amazon has created a local network that is established between Amazon devices in the home and neighborhood. The network uses a combination of Bluetooth and 900 MHz LoRa signals. This network can communicate with Amazon from devices inside a home, and the LoRa spectrum can pick up devices outside and in neighboring homes. Amazon says that it already covers over 90% of homes and wants to move that to over 95%.

A fourth technology in use today is using satellites to monitor remote devices. However, the electronics for such devices are neither low-cost nor low-power.

In looking at the various technologies, it’s clear that each technology will find a niche. RedCap seems best aimed at the mobility market. The technology will make it easier to sell wearable technology and anything else that is not stationary. RedCap might always fit into industrial situations where an operator is attracted to large numbers of low-power and low-cost sensors. But RedCap will come with a price, so when you buy a wearable device, be prepared for a monthly 5G fee.

Community-Wide WIFI

Somebody sent me an article from BocaNewsNow that talks about the trend that Hotwire is seeing in communities that want broadband everywhere. Residential communities in Florida are investing in outdoor WiFi networks that allow residents to connect to broadband from everywhere on a property, including tennis courts, lakefronts, and common community areas.

Communities are advertising ubiquitous broadband as an attractive amenity, and homeowners associations are investing in the technology at the prompting of residents.

It’s an interesting idea, but not a new one. Folks might remember the municipal WiFi craze of twenty years ago when cities everywhere were considering installing massive outdoor WiFi networks as a way to provide broadband to everybody. This was such a hot topic that there was even a magazine for municipal WiFi and conventions where folks came to learn about it. The largest such experiment was in Philadelphia, but there were many other cities that tried this on a smaller scale.

All of the early attempts for creating massive outdoor WiFi failed. The main reason for the failure was technical. The technology required deploying large numbers of pole or building-mounted radios that operated in a mesh network. The radios were mounted fairly close to each other so that there was a radio every several blocks in all directions. The advantage of a giant mesh network was that a customer walking around a community never left the network and didn’t have to keep logging in to keep the same connection.

But there was a giant downside that was never solved. The mesh radios constantly communicated with neighboring radios so the network could reconfigure to avoid a faulty or overloaded radio. It turns out that large early mesh networks spent more bandwidth communicating between neighboring radios than in providing bandwidth to users. The whole concept crumbled once a few cities tried this on any scale.

The other issue that killed the idea was that home broadband was improving drastically during this same time period. Speeds were climbing from cable companies and telcos, and folks were suddenly able to buy speeds of 6 Mbps to 12 Mbps, which quickly made the 1-2 Mbps speeds on wireless mesh networks feel glacial.

Over the years, outdoor WiFi technology has improved dramatically like other technologies. Since the early days of the technology, the FCC approved the 5 GHz, and more recently the 6 GHz bands of spectrum for use in WiFi networks. Outdoor hotspots that are fed with significant backhaul can now easily deliver speeds that are adequate for most of the kinds of uses of broadband that would be expected outdoors. Folks can watch videos, join Zoom calls, and use the outdoor WiFi network to stay connected.

Hotwire claims that the demand for outdoor WiFi has also grown due to people now working from home. It’s attractive for employees to take a laptop to the pool or a park rather than be tied to a desk all day.

I’ve talked to a lot of cities that have already expanded or are considering expanding public WiFi to parks and other public areas. The pandemic showed a lot of city officials that there are a lot of folks who need broadband access and don’t have it at home for some reason. It’s one of those amenities that, once you have it, you wonder how you lived without it.

More WiFi Spectrum

There is more WiFi spectrum on the way due to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that rejected a legal challenge from the Intelligent Transportation Society of America and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials that had asked to vacate the FCC’s 2020 order to repurpose some of the spectrum that had been reserved for smart cars.

The spectrum is called the 5.9 GHz band and sits between 5.85 GHz and 5.925 GHz. The FCC had decided to allocate the lowest 45 MHz of spectrum to WiFi while allowing the upper 30 MHz to remain with the auto industry.

The process will now begin to make the transition to WiFi. The FCC had originally given the auto industry a year to vacate the lower 45 MHz of spectrum. The FCC is likely going to have to set a new timeline to mandate the transition. The FCC also needs to rule on a waiver from the auto industry to redeploy technology using the Cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) technology from the lower to the higher frequency band. This is the technology that most of the industry is using for testing and deploying self-driving vehicles.

The lower 45 MHz of the new spectrum sits adjacent to the existing WiFi 5.8 GHz spectrum. Combining the new spectrum with the existing band is a boon to WISPs, which now get a larger uninterrupted swath of spectrum for point-to-multipoint broadband deployment. During the early stage of the pandemic, the FCC gave multiple WISPs the ability to use the 5.9 GHz spectrum on a trial basis for 60 days, and many of them have been regularly renewing that temporary licenses since then.

When the FCC announced the resolution of the lawsuit, the agency issued a press release discussing the benefits touted by WISPs for using the new spectrum. Some of them claimed to see between a 40% and 75% increase in throughput bandwidth. This was mostly due to less congestion on this spectrum, which is rarely used. There was little or no interference during the last year. The spectrum also provided a clear path for wireless backhaul between towers. Of course, once this is made available to all WISPs, it’s likely that much of this benefit will disappear as everybody starts vying to use the new spectrum. But it is an increase in bandwidth potential, and that has to mean higher quality wireless signals.

This spectrum will also be available for home WiFi. However, it takes a lot longer for the home WiFi industry to respond to new spectrum. It means upgrading home WiFi routers but also adding the capability to use the spectrum to the many devices in our homes and offices that use WiFi. Everything I’m reading says that we are still years away from seeing widespread use of the 6 GHz WiFi spectrum, and this new bandwidth will likely be rolled out at the same time.

This was an interesting lawsuit for several reasons. First, the entities filing the court suit challenged the FCC’s ability to change the use of spectrum in this manner. The court decision made it clear that the FCC is fully in the driver’s seat in terms of spectrum allocation.

This was also a battle between two large industries. The FCC originally assigned this spectrum to the auto industry twenty years ago. But the industry was slow to adopt any real-world uses of the spectrum, and it largely sat idle, except for experimental test beds. There is finally some movement toward deploying self-driving cars and trucks in ways that uses the spectrum. But even now, there is still a lot of disagreement about the best technology to use for self-driving vehicles. Some favor the smart road that uses spectrum to communicate with vehicles, while the majority opinion seems to favor standalone smart-driving technology in each vehicle.

Between this order and the 6 GHz spectrum, the FCC has come down solidly in favor of having sufficient WiFi spectrum going into the future. It’s clear that the existing bands of WiFi are already heavily overloaded in some settings, and the WiFi industry has been successful in getting WiFi included in huge numbers of new devices. I have an idea that we’ll look back twenty years from now and say that these new WiFi spectrum bands are not enough and that we’ll need even more. But this is a good downpayment to make sure that WiFi remains vigorous.

The Battle for IoT

There is an interesting battle going on to be the technology that monetizes the control of Internet of Things devices. Like a lot of tech hype, IoT has developed a lot slower than originally predicted – but it’s now finally becoming a big business. I think back to a decade ago when tech prognosticators said we’d soon be living in a virtual cloud of small monitors that would monitor everything in our life. According to those early predictions, our farm fields should already be fully automated, and we should all be living in the smart home envisioned by the Jetsons. Those predictions probably say more about the tech press that hypes new technologies than about IoT.

I’ve been noticing increasing press releases and articles talking about different approaches to monetizing IoT traffic. The one that we’ve all heard the most about is 5G. The cellular companies told Wall Street five years ago that the monitoring of IoT devices was going to fuel the 5G business plan. The wireless companies envisioned households all buying a second cellular subscription to monitor devices.

Except in a few minor examples, this business plan never materialized. I was reminded of it this week when I saw AT&T partnering with Smart Meter to provide patient monitoring for chronic conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure. The monitoring devices worn by patients include a SIM card, and patients can be monitored anywhere within range of a cellular signal. It’s a great way for AT&T to monetize IoT subscriptions – in this case, with monthly fees likely covered by health insurance. It sounds like an awesome product.

Another player in the IoT world is LEO satellites. In August of last year, Starlink made a rare acquisition by buying Swarm. This company envisions using satellites to be able to monitor outdoor IOT devices anywhere in the world. The Swarm satellites are less than a pound each, and the Swarm website says the goal is to have three of these small satellites in range of every point on earth by the end of 2022. That timeline slowed due to the purchase by Starlink, but this could be a huge additional revenue stream for the company. Swarm envisions putting small receivers in places like fields. Like with Starlink, customers must buy the receivers, and there is an IoT data monitoring plan that will allow the collection of 750 data packets per month for a price of $60 per year.

Also still active in pursuing the market are a number of companies promoting LoRaWAN technology. This technology uses tall towers or blimps and CBRS or some other low-power spectrum to communicate with IoT monitors over a large geographic area. The companies developing this technology can be found at the LoRa Alliance.

Of course, the current king of IoT is WiFi. Charter recently said it is connected to 5 billion devices on its WiFi network. WiFi has the advantage of a free IoT connection for the price of buying a broadband connection.

Each of these technologies has a natural market niche. The AT&T health monitoring system only makes sense on a cellular network since patients need to be monitored everywhere they go during the day. Cellular should be the go-to technology for mobile monitoring. The battle between LoRaWAN and satellites will be interesting and will likely eventually come down to price. Both technologies can be used to reach farm fields where cellular coverage is likely to never be ubiquitous. WiFi is likely to carry the signals from the devices in our homes – the AT&T vision of everybody buying an IoT cellular data plan sounds extremely unlikely since we all can have the same thing for the cost of a WiFi router.

Courts Uphold 6 GHz WiFi Order

The right to use spectrum is turning into one of the most valuable pieces of real estate in the country. Cellular carriers have been paying huge sums in FCC auctions to get the rights to use spectrum. Perhaps the biggest sign of the value of spectrum is that there is seemingly a lawsuit every time the FCC makes a spectrum decision by those who want to see the spectrum used in other ways.

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia recently upheld the FCC’s April 2020 order that assigned 1,200 MHz of the 6 GHz spectrum band for public use. That order was challenged by a coalition of Apple and cellular carriers like AT&T. The challengers wanted some of the 6 GHz spectrum to be auctioned to those willing to pay the most for it – presumably the cellular carriers. Not surprisingly, the intervenors supporting the FCC decision were the big cable companies who take the most advantage of WiFi.

The original FCC order clearly supports the idea that the public needs better WiFi. The 6 GHz spectrum band will revolutionize the way we use WiFi in homes and businesses. WiFi performance is already slated to improve due to the new WiFi 6 technology. But adding the 6 GHz spectrum will drive performance to yet another level by adding seven 160 MHz channels to the WiFi environment.

The legal challenge followed the lines of other recent spectrum challenges that question the FCC’s technical assumptions used in making the order. Since this new spectrum band is open to everybody, including the cellular carriers – the challengers argued, among other technical points, that there will be too much interference to make the spectrum useful for cellular data.

The Court came down clearly on the side of the FCC. The court said that the courts owe ‘significant deference’ to the FCC and its technical staff in deciding complicated technical issues. Intervenors had raised the same interference issues at the FCC during the deliberation of the issue – and the courts were not having any rehashing of issues that the FCC had already considered.

The court did remand one minor issue related to interference back to the FCC raised by the National Association of Broadcasters about interference in the 2.4 GHz WiFi band. The FCC will revisit that issue.

The court decision finally frees up the 6 GHz spectrum for WiFi use. Vendors have assumed this would be ordered and have been building the capability to use the spectrum into devices over the last few years.

I think we’re going to look back at the FCC’s decision to expand WiFi and the Court’s backing of that order as the most important spectrum decision of our time. The current WiFi spectrum is overtaxed and growing busier by the day. This new spectrum will revitalize the WiFi distribution of bandwidth around the home and the office that we’ve all been wanting.

Industry vendors haven’t been sitting still and have already started to develop the next generation of WiFi that will create another big leap in performance.

LAA and WiFi

University of Chicago students conducted a study on and near the campus, looking at how LAA (Licensed Assisted Access) affects WiFi. Cellular carriers began using LAA technology in 2017. This technology allows a cellular carrier to snag unlicensed spectrum to create bigger data pipes than can be achieved with the traditional cellular spectrum. When cellular companies combine frequencies using LAA, they can theoretically create a data pipe as large as a gigabit while only using 20 MHz of licensed frequency. The extra bandwidth for this application comes mostly from the unlicensed 5 GHz band and can match the fastest speeds that can be delivered with home routers using 802.11AC.

There has always been an assumption that the cellular use of LAA technology would interfere to some extent with WiFi networks. But the students found a few examples where using LAA killed as much as 97% of local WiFi network signal strength. They found that when LAA kicked in that the performance on nearby WiFi networks always dropped.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Back when the FCC approved the use of LAA, the cellular carriers all said that interference would be at a minimum because WiFi is mostly used indoors and LAA is used outdoors. But the study showed there can also be a big data drop for indoor WiFi routers if cellular users are in the vicinity. That means people on the street can interfere with the WiFi strength in a Starbucks (or your home).

The use of WiFi has also changed a lot since 2017, and during the pandemic, we have installed huge numbers of outdoor hotspots for students and the public. This new finding says that LAA usage could be killing outdoor broadband established for students to do homework. Students didn’t just use WiFi hotspots when they couldn’t attend school, but many relied on WiFi broadband in the evenings and weekends to do homework. Millions of people without home broadband also use public WiFi hotspots.

LAA usage kills WiFi usage for several reasons. WiFi is a listen-before-talk technology. This means that when a WiFi device wants to grab a connection to the router that the device gets in line with other WiFi devices and is not automatically connected immediately. LAA acts like all cellular traffic and immediately grabs bandwidth if it is available, This difference in the way of using spectrum gives LAA a priority to grab frequency first.

LAA connections also last longer. You may not realize it, but devices using WiFi devices don’t connect permanently. WiFi routers connect to devices in 4-millisecond bursts. In a home where there aren’t many devices trying to use a router, these bursts may seem continuous, but in a crowded place with a lot of WiFi users, devices have to pause between connections. LAA bursts are 10-milliseconds instead of 4-ms for WiFi. This means that LAA devices both connect immediately to unlicensed spectrum and also keep the connection longer than a WiFi device. It’s not hard for multiple LAA connections to completely swamp a WiFi network.

This is a perfect example of how hard it is to set wireless policy. The FCC solicited a lot of input when the idea of sharing unlicensed spectrum with cellular carriers was first raised. At the time, the technology being discussed was LTE-U, a precursor to LAA. The FCC heard from everybody in the industry, with the WiFi industry saying that cellular use could overwhelm WiFi networks and the cellular industry saying that concerns were overblown. The FCC always finds itself refereeing between competing concerns and has to pick winners in such arguments. The decision by the FCC to allow cellular carriers to use free public spectrum highlights another trend – the cellular companies, by and large, get what they want.

It will be interesting to see if the FCC does anything as a result of this study and other evidence that cellular companies have gone a lot further with LAA than promised. I won’t hold my breath. AT&T also announced this week that it is starting to test LAA using the unlicensed portion of the 6 GHz spectrum.