LAS VEGAS – The FCC is moving to free up a “substantial” amount of additional spectrum for Wi-Fi in order to relieve network congestion issues. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski made the announcement at CES while being interviewed on stage at CES by Consumer Electronics Association President Gary Shapiro.
Genachowki plans to free up additional wireless spectrum for unlicensed use to reduce the potential of hitting a “Wi-Fi wall.” He called Wi-Fi an integral part of the broadband ecosystem both wired and wireless.
"We're moving to free up a substantial amount of spectrum for WiFi to relieve WiFi congestion and improve WiFi speeds at conferences, airports and ultimately in people's homes," said Genachowki. Unlike 3G and 4G mobile traffic Wi-Fi data travels over unlicensed spectrum.
The commission will begin a proceeding next month to set aside an additional 195MHz of bandwidth in the 5GHz band for Wi-Fi use, expanding the 5GHz Wi-Fi band by 35%.
The bandwidth is currently in use by the Department of Defense and other federal agencies, but Genachowski argued that the spectrum can be shared.
"We'll keep nurturing today's Wi-Fi as we also develop a next generation of spectrum policies to drive our mobile future for our innovators and our economy," Genachowski said.
The additional spectrum would “relieve congestion and improve Wi-Fi speeds at conferences, airports and ultimately peoples’ homes,” he added.
He noted that planned auctions of TV-broadcast spectrum to create more licensed mobile broadband spectrum could also increase the amount of unlicensed spectrum available. These auctions are designed to free up unused broadcast-spectrum or white space that could be used to create a contiguous block of spectrum across the country.
Genachowski said that with FCC incentives, more television broadcasters are re-considering giving up some of their TV-spectrum in the auctions.
He said for example it doesn’t make sense that 28 full-power New York TV stations are each using 6MHz of spectrum. Some of that spectrum must be used to support “the innovation economy,” he added.
The FCC chairman called on engineers and businesses to work together to get the incentive auction right if the U.S. is to remain competitive in the mobile market.
During the interview he also cautioned that there is growing trend in some areas of the world to censor the Internet. He added that ISPs outside the U.S. are trying to solve their business model challenges by changing the business model of the Internet.
