The fight for the airwaves in your house

For years, big consumer-tech companies like Meta, Apple and Google have been leaning on the government to free up little pieces of the wireless spectrum as “unlicensed” airwaves — meaning anyone can use those airwaves for free. What are they after, exactly? Their interest in the airwaves says a lot about where they think the future of human connection will be. And it’s partly inside your house. Bluetooth devices and home routers use “unlicensed” parts of the spectrum, which means that anyone can make devices that use those airwaves. The consumer-tech companies notched a big win in 2020 when they convinced the Federal Communications Commission to free up a giant band known as the 6 GHz for unlicensed use — giving home Wi-Fi devices access to new bandwidth that boosted their capacity fivefold. More unlicensed spectrum means less congestion for Wi-Fi and other devices that send data wirelessly. These Wi-Fi advocates are now pushing US federal regulators to both target brand-new chunks of spectrum — like the adjacent 7 GHz band — for unlicensed use, as well as to allow even more freedom for how companies can tap into the 6 GHz band. The underlying goal of these tech companies and their allies in the push for unlicensed spectrum, like cable operators, is to free up a pipeline of available, unlicensed frequencies enabling the huge amounts of data transfer needed for futuristic apps like augmented and virtual reality.