Trump’s ‘big beautiful bill’ could mean slower Wi-Fi for you

The Senate version of the budget reconciliation bill, backed by President Donald Trump, removes protections for unlicensed spectrum that broadens the capacity of the 6GHz Wi-Fi band. This could result in slower Wi-Fi speeds. Under the bill, the Federal Communications Commission would sell off some of that spectrum to mobile carriers such as AT&T, which could use it to improve the speed of their mobile data. The bill includes a provision requiring the FCC to auction 800MHz of spectrum, including bands allocated by the FCC in 2020 for unlicensed use. The version of the bill that passed the House excluded the band of frequencies between 5.925 gigahertz and 7.125 gigahertz, which includes 6GHz; however, there’s no such exclusion in the Senate version. The FCC could be “forced to sell off as much as half” of the unlicensed spectrum currently in the 6GHz band, according to Public Knowledge. Removing this spectrum from unlicensed use could negatively impact the 6GHz Wi-Fi band, which added a huge swath of capacity to Wi-Fi when former FCC Chairman Ajit Pai made 1,200 megahertz of spectrum available for unlicensed use in 2020.