6GHz Wi-Fi Access Could Boost Speeds and Generate $183 Billion By 2025, Study Says (cnet.com) 59
The move to expand unlicensed Wi-Fi use into the much wider 6GHz band has the potential to generate more than $180 billion in U.S. revenue over the next 5 years, according to a new new industry-funded study, which comes 10 days before the FCC votes on the proposal. CNET reports: Released Monday, the report was funded by WifiForward, an industry advocacy group whose membership includes Google, Microsoft, Comcast, Charter, Broadcom, Arris and others. It was put together by Dr. Raul Katz, director of business strategy research at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information and president of Telecom Advisory Services, LLC. Its key takeaways (PDF) on the potential impact of the FCC's move include:
- The addition of $106 billion to the gross domestic product (GDP) by 2025 due to increased broadband speeds, accelerated deployment of the Internet of Things, and expanded market access for augmented and virtual reality applications.
- A producer surplus of $69 billion due to enterprise wireless traffic savings and the sales of Wi-Fi and AR/VR equipment.
- Consumer surplus of $8 billion from increased broadband speeds.
That adds up to a total of $183.44 billion added to the US economy by 2025. You can read the full report for yourself here (PDF), but here are a couple of highlights from the data.
- The addition of $106 billion to the gross domestic product (GDP) by 2025 due to increased broadband speeds, accelerated deployment of the Internet of Things, and expanded market access for augmented and virtual reality applications.
- A producer surplus of $69 billion due to enterprise wireless traffic savings and the sales of Wi-Fi and AR/VR equipment.
- Consumer surplus of $8 billion from increased broadband speeds.
That adds up to a total of $183.44 billion added to the US economy by 2025. You can read the full report for yourself here (PDF), but here are a couple of highlights from the data.
I can almost hear them now. (Score:3)
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I wonder what psychosomatic disease 6G will cause?
Oh, it'll probably do something like light the sky on fire and cause a massive increase in tin foil hat use.
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Re: I can almost hear them now. (Score:5, Funny)
Well 5G has been found to be very harmful to cell tower poles so surely 6G will be even worse.
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If you have a download cap (Score:3)
Then there are literally thousands of ways to capitalize on your Internet use.
Unification (Score:2)
Actually we need to unify 5G and WiFi.
Where did they pull those numbers out of? (Score:4, Interesting)
The only difference is, the the stupid stuff comes a bit faster into our social apps, the IOT of my mailbox also signals once a day when the mailman came, so I might get alerted a 1000th of a second earlier.
Since webpages waste 99% of their loading time to load 20 times the information worth on the page in JavaScript and other crap, there won't be any noticeable change.
Nobody will pay more for any of that.
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Yep correct. The rate at which you consume information is identical now as it was in the 40s when you got a letter. Streaming, and video conferencing a not a thing, just some scifi fantasy. We certainly don't move gigs of data around the internet on a daily basis. That's just fantasy.
Now that the sarcasm is over, let me also call out your ignorance:
Since webpages waste 99% of their loading time to load 20 times the information worth on the page in JavaScript and other crap, there won't be any noticeable change.
Javascript and other crap make up a small portion of any web page. Most tracking scripts are smaller than the damn graphic in the header bar. Your problem appear
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Yep correct. The rate at which you consume information is identical now as it was in the 40s when you got a letter. ....
Now that the sarcasm is over....
Funny, I was taking you seriously because I was in fact reading your post at exactly the same speed as I would read a letter.
... Waiting for DataScrape ... [etc]" and some of them were taking for ever.
It is also funny that the speed at which many web pages download increased significantly after I installed some strong ad and tracker blockers. It was nothing to do with my PC - it was the servers at the other end. I could watch the reports of "Waiting for AdSpy
I had also nearly given up watching
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People will pay for reduced congestion and interference. 6G has even less penetrating power than 5G, which is good when you have dozens of networks all close to each other.
Also the web is just a very, very small part of what people use WiFi for. The major bandwidth hog is streaming, and not just from the internet but form local devices. Phone/tablet to TV is already a standard feature on even mid range sets. The industry thinks it can sell people on eliminating HDMI cables with a super high bandwidth short
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It's not how fast your internet is, it is how many iot devices can simultaneously connect "for marketing reasons"
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Hyperbole all the way. (Score:2)
Can we just Merge Wifi and 5G already? (Score:2)
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They are already starting to sell 5G mobile to the home, however the issue is speed.
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The cellular network is built to allow a subscription system for follow-you-anywhere phone service. You can drive from Seattle to Miami or NYC to LA and your phone will constantly check in with the network and inform it where you are and how to route any calls to your cell phone.
WiFi is a temporary connection to the internet that doesn't know who you are or mostly care where you are located. If you connect at Starbucks, check Google maps, then shutdown, it doesn'
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So... (Score:2)
People will use more Wi-Fi, which means they will get faster broadband connection which means more money for the economy.
Is this really the best justification they could come up with? On the other hand the idiot Pai will probably lap it up.
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Re: So... (Score:2)
Yes exactly. I would add that at least in the US broadband speeds are bad and prices high due to lack of competition. Better Wi-Fi doesnâ(TM)t fix that. As for AR/VR itâ(TM)s such a lame excuse. These technologies donâ(TM)t necessarily need any more data than any other online app. The assumption it that weâ(TM)ll all be streaming their displays but that is unnecessary at best and literally nausea-inducing at worst.
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> AR/VR ... don't necessarily need any more data than any other online app
Actually they kind of do - at least compared to their non-AR/VR alternatives. Watching a video? In VR it's probably going to be 3D, which means up to twice the bandwidth needed to deliver stereoscopic video streams. And probably you're going to have the option to look around, which means far more bandwidth required to deliver a much wider field of view than the user is actually looking at - internet lag is far too high to react
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Stereoscopic and immersive videos combine the whole view for both eyes into a single frame that’s no larger than 4k, and usually much less. Current AR/VR displays don’t have enough pixels to warrant larger frame sizes and thus bitrates.
As for games, I did say “necessarily”. Not all online games transmit head and hand positions and conversely many non-VR games transmit player data that VR games don’t. The point was that a game being XR has no explicit bearing on its bandwidth re
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Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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> accelerated deployment of the Internet of Things
Right, because 5GHz really proved to be superior to 2.4GHz for IoT.
Of course it did. Having 1300mbps bandwidth is important for getting those 200bytes of data to the cloud *FASTER*!
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Indeed it is for things like media streaming and wireless peripherals. IoT isn't just light bulbs.
competition (Score:2)
Did anyone think about what lives at 6-7 Ghz? (Score:2)
Apparently not, 6 GHz is the uplink for the C-Band distribution that delivers TV to your friendly cable company. And 7 GHz? Who uses that? All your TV stations, many moved their ENG to 7 GHz when the 2 GHz was repurposed for Sprint PCS back in the day.
We could make so much money if we could get rid of everyone whose currently using that spectrum!! It'll be great!
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yeah but the friendly cable company uplink is miles away, so who gives a shit?
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FCC e-docs (Score:2)
18-295 documents [fcc.gov] and filings [fcc.gov]
18-122 documents [fcc.gov] and filings [fcc.gov]
One comment from a mobile company said they won't interfere with the satellite Earth stations, and those should switch to fiber anyway!
No. (Score:2)
How will it make this money? (Score:3)
I live in a pretty urban area, I can see dozens of Wifi networks from my livingroom, yet my 5Ghz Wifi consistently gives 400mbit+ of bandwidth. While my internet connection is capped at 150mbit, so I don't even know what I'd do with faster Wifi unless I can get faster broadband. But even if they give me a gigabit of internet bandwidth, it's not clear how that's worth money to society in general, unless they are counting the $$$ I'd be paying for it.
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Let's face it; the 'researchers' only care about the money they and the people funding them can earn. Speed should be listed second in that title.
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so I don't even know what I'd do with faster Wifi
Why is it about you? Why isn't it about improved efficiency in offices? Why isn't it about point to point systems that require high bandwidth (VR mentioned in TFS, removing cables from them would be a game changer but right now attempting to do so is laggy as crap).
If you asked people in the 80s if they wanted 10mbit home network they would have thought you're smoking crack. These days that would be a disaster for internet let alone home network. We have shown to be horrible in predicting applications for t
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Next time you have your walls re-plastered or build your own house remember to install a wire mesh Faraday cage in the walls. Super fast wifi, no snooping neighbours armed with a Pringles can.
Only good in the same room as the router (Score:3)
Unless your house is made of rice paper, you will not like 6GHz band when you walk around the corner or into another room. This is what people don't understand about "5G" as well. To see the 1-2Gb/s claimed by 5G, they will need to use the millimeter wavelengths 24GHz-72GHz. At these frequencies, the signal will not even pass through window glass - it is strictly line of site in open air.
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eh, I have 5GHz on my router up on top a bookcase and it works well enough at the other end of a 70 foot long townhome. How would 6GHz be that much different?
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60 GHz has crazy high attenuation just due to oxygen though, 6 Ghz doesn't
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It depends on the structure of your house. I have a home with some internal brick walls. When I go into the bedroom and close the door, it is like turning off a switch - the 5GHz signal from my router 6 meters away just stops.
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only wood with drywall on it here. thank goodness not like my parents home built in the same era but with plaster on mesh, game over for signal.
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Depending on the material 5GHz propagation is approximately half the distance than a 2.4GHz signal. Presumably 6GHz is a little worse still.
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Unless your house is made of rice paper, you will not like 6GHz band when you walk around the corner or into another room. This is what people don't understand about "5G" as well. To see the 1-2Gb/s claimed by 5G, they will need to use the millimeter wavelengths 24GHz-72GHz. At these frequencies, the signal will not even pass through window glass - it is strictly line of site in open air.
Indeed. And there are lots of applications for high speed line of sight links.
Incidentally what people (along with I assume you) don't understand about "5G" was well, is that there are no airquotes around it. 5G isn't 4G but faster, it's a whole set of new standards bringing hundreds of new features and capabilities to the cell infrastructure not the least of which being a massively larger subscriber count per base station. Even without mm-wavelenghts 5G will provide a massive improvement over 4G in many sc
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That's what makes it good. Less interference, dedicated per-room bandwidth. No need for cables to connect your media player to the TV and your wireless speaker setup. No stuttering in your VR setup when someone else is downloading a big patch or printing something to the wireless printer in the next room.
Even for computer use it's great. You only need one fast backhaul per room (ethernet) and then instead of half a dozen cables trailing around the skirting boards you just have a nice fast 6GHz wireless link
Re: Only good in the same room as the router (Score:2)
You had me until you said "ethernet per room."
I want to get rid of both device-to-device cables and room-to-room cabling.
How awesome would it be if WiFi 6 devices could intelligently and simultaneously mesh 2.4Ghz signals? But to match the speeds you'd need to greatly expand the size of the 2.4 band. Oh well.
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Devices like that already exist, they are called WiFi Extenders. You can get ones that use WiFi for backhaul. Most have simple antennas but you can fit a directional one and use 5 or 2.4GHz as needed.
They can be a bit tricky to get the best from, you need to position them so that the backhual works well. It can take a bit of trial and error to find good spots, get the channels and TX power just right and keep latency reasonable.
The wise man said (Score:2)
... the purpose of technology is to change getting something you need in a couple days to having it the same day. That is a technology revolution.
The argument whether you get it in 3 hours or 0.3secs. isn't revolutionary. The work product remains, not lost, whether it takes seconds or hours. There is nothing revolutionary in speed, i.e. how fast.
Speed is a strawman argument for a spectrum that is inherently less useful (read high freq) over longer distances so 6G cannot transport work product long haul in
How does faster wifi help (Score:2)
When my only internet choice is comcast charging me a dollar Mb