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FCC Moves To Boost Wireless Speeds
coondoggie writes "The Federal Communications Commission said it wants to make up to 195 megahertz of additional spectrum in the 5 GHz band available to unlicensed wireless devices with the idea that such a move would enable Wi-Fi equipment that can offer faster speeds of one gigabit per second or more, increase overall capacity, and reduce congestion. 'Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure devices today operate in 555 megahertz of spectrum in the 5 GHz band, and are used for short range, high speed wireless connections including Wi-Fi enabled local area networks and fixed outdoor broadband transceivers used by wireless Internet service providers to connect smart phones, tablets and laptops to the broadband network,' the FCC stated."
It was discussed a month ago.
With no centralized interoperability specification -- the next iteration of whatever devices operate on that spectrum will interfere destructively with the previous generation. Remember pre-N gear when it first came out? Whole neighborhoods went dark while one guy sat in his basement browsing porn because he'd just gotten home with the latest and greatest from the store. Suddenly, everyone has to upgrade overnight. Then there's channel overlap... some jerk decides to set his wifi to channel 3 instead of 1 or 6 and now half the spectrum is fracked.
There will be no boost in wireless speeds. The only thing this has going for it is 5Ghz doesn't travel as far as 2.4Ghz, which doesn't travel very far anyway... and that'll mean by simple virtue of physics, devices will have a smaller surface area in which they can cause destructive interference.
No, if you ask me, the FCC's incompetence is not accidental... they don't want wireless internet because it would mean all those people they got BILLIONS OF DOLLARS from would be upset. Politics, blah blah. You get the idea. We'll never have high speed, ranged, wireless internet, unless we decide to go pirate and tell them to eat a bag of dicks. (puts finger to ear)
Oh wait... I hear some people have started doing that.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
It will help, but don't expect this any time soon. Because no existing device (probably 802.11ac or earlier) will support the new spectrum, we're not going to see much advantages to the new spectrum until whatever comes after 802.11ac (unless they try to brand it as a "v2" thing)
For me, the issue has never been speed. It has been "not enough channels" and/or "want more range". Of course, this move can at least help with channels. I don't think it will do much for range. But if devices are allowed to just spread spectrum across more and more of the frequencies, it won't help much with channels/congestion either.
Translation: FCC gets the fuck out of the way, our lives get better.
Please, radio signals aren't going to go any faster. They're trying to make more frequencies available thereby provide more bandwidth.
Where, worldwide?
The new spectrum allocation for unlicensed use around 5.9 GHz would conflict with previously-planned allocation for connected vehicle (aka "V2V") technology. The extent of potential interference between these differing uses is not yet understood. I hope this WiFi plan does not blow it for the auto and traffic safety industries.
See http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130221/AUTO01/302210334/1148/auto01/Auto-industry-worried-FCC-decision-open-Wi-Fi-spectrum-could-hinder-technology for more.
I wish FCC would do something about the miserable price/performance of most wired U.S. Internet service. As Bill Moyers reported, Hong Kong has service that's 50X the speed of my ADSL for 1/2 the price. Ouch.
I'd like to see commercial use of this spectrum illegal.
IMHO, the issue isn't too many consumer devices, it's too much commercial use of the spectrum (like the city-granted monopoly wireless franchise) that insists on using the good channels at max power everywhere.
I don't have an issue with businesses using wifi internally or the coffee shop, but I do think it's crappy that the spectrum meant for localized, low-power usage gets stepped on by entities broadcasting everywhere at max power.
It makes me want to point directional antennas at the municipal wifi antennas and just pump noise at them on all channels and let them "accept all interference."
The real problem right now with DFS is that a large chunk of the current 5GHz spectrum (5470-5725) is actually required to use it. So, of the 555MHz, 255 of it is actually more or less unusable for carriers due to the constraints imposed upon it. Since you typically provision a new sector with the current interference in mind, it's possible to set an AP to a "good" channel, and connect a client to it, only to have DFS kick it to a new channel when it hears relevant interference. Causing the AP to move to a subpar channel, possibly one that has a lot of interference on the client end (Because the AP does the choosing, and doesn't take into consideration client noise levels on every channel - too much work when you've got 20-30 clients on one AP).
Anyways, more spectrum is always good. But if we could somehow migrate radar and such away from 5GHz, that would be a huge improvement on wireless broadband speeds. 5GHz is actually used a lot for WISPs as it has a much higher throughput capacity and seems to do better over longer distances than 2.4Ghz.
I'd be interested in seeing what sort of catches comes with this new spectrum being freed up. If it's more DFS spectrum, I don't see how this is really going to help long-term. If it's actually free, clear spectrum being freed than it could actually greatly help WISPs gain more speed as they can reduce the overlap between channels.