Ofcom to secure spectrum for cutting-edge Wi-Fi 6E

First Posted: Oct 08, 2020 01:56 PM EDT
Close
Ofcom to secure spectrum for cutting-edge Wi-Fi 6E

(Photo : pixabay)

British telecom regulator Ofcom confirmed its intention to free up a significant portion of the 6GHz band so that UK netizens are able to benefit from the most advanced Wi-Fi specification ever created. The standard in question - Wi-Fi 6E - has already been detailed by the Wi-Fi Alliance earlier this year, though it ceded the spotlight to its more accessible counterpart, the specification IEEE 802.11ax, also known as Wi-Fi 6.

More specifically, Ofcom is planning to free up half of the said 6GHz band, permit Very Low Power (VLP) outdoor applications, and eliminate the controversial DFS provisions from the 5.8GHz band. In effect, the United Kingdom will become only the second country in the world to have allocated 6GHz spectrum for Wi-Fi 6E applications. The first, naturally, is the U.S. which recently freed up three times as many frequencies for next-generation wireless connectivity.

London only the world's second adopter of Wi-Fi 6E tech

Ofcom is looking to act on its 6GHz Wi-Fi ambitions by this time next year. A more concrete timeframe is likely to follow in early 2021. That's also when Wi-Fi 6E is planned to reach first consumer-grade electronics including handsets, laptops, and the like. Naturally, new routers will be the key to enabling this technology, and some experimental hardware based on the latest specification draft can already be bought the world over. However, the first officially sanctioned gear is set to hit the store shelves in the fourth quarter.

The spectrum range that Ofcom is freeing up for Wi-Fi 6E applications in the country spans 5,925MHz to 6,425MHz, whereas the standard itself doubles down on the core principles of Wi-Fi 6 by providing a technological backend for significantly higher LAN capacities and low-latency connections.

Much like all wireless communications, a move to a higher frequency band will also bring significant data rate improvements at the expense of travel potential. In other words, Wi-Fi 6E probably won't be the cornerstone of any public hotspot infrastructure anytime soon but that won't stop it from ushering in a new era of high-speed Internet performance among power users. More telecom regulators across the planet are likely to follow Ofcom's lead in the coming months as the world prepares to embrace the most significant step forward in wireless Internet connectivity in over a decade.

See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone

©2017 ScienceWorldReport.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The window to the world of science news.
* This is a contributed article and this content does not necessarily represent the views of scienceworldreport.com

Join the Conversation

Real Time Analytics