Wi-Fi 6E prepares to expand next-gen wireless connections to 6GHz band

Months after Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai reiterated his support for plans to allocate more than 1,200 megahertz of unlicensed spectrum on the 6GHz band for Wi-Fi usage, the Wi-Fi industry is moving to hit the ground running with the additional real estate in 2020. To start, the Wi-Fi Alliance, fresh off of rebranding the newest generation of Wi-Fi technology as "Wi-Fi 6," is now introducing new "Wi-Fi 6E" terminology to help identify products capable of taking advantage of the additional spectrum. The Wi-Fi Alliance says that 6GHz is well suited to facilitate Wi-Fi's continued growth due to its adjacency to the 5GHz band, where Wi-Fi already operates. The 6GHz band also offers accessibility to clear spectrum with less interference from legacy Wi-Fi 4 or Wi-Fi 5 devices on the 2.4GHz band, as well as a greater availability of wider channel sizes -- enough to accommodate 14 additional 80MHz channels and seven additional 160MHz channels. With a total frequency range of 1,200MHz -- up from 70MHz on the 2.4GHz band and 500MHz on the 5GHz band -- the 6GHz band could play a key role in the development of high-bandwidth applications that require faster data throughput, like 4K video streams and virtual reality.