Trump and Congress finalize law that could hurt your Wi-Fi
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If anything the CBRS should be moved to WIFI use... Not sold off for something else. Benefits of being a lower frequency but in theory faster than 2.4Ghz. As for 6 GHZ unless you use a AFC, 6GHz isn't even supposed to be used outside so its interesting that these frequencies aren't just used as shared spectrum by whoever they're selling to.
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Further proof that there is nothing—literally nothing, not even portions of the electromagnetic spectrum—that the current administration and its congressional enablers and lobbyists won't sell off to private interests.
Also: Cruz, Pai, Trump, and Carr is a top-tier list of "worst group of four people to be trapped on a lifeboat with."
Also: Cruz, Pai, Trump, and Carr is a top-tier list of "worst group of four people to be trapped on a lifeboat with."
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It's because the people who want to buy it are t-mobile and Verizon, and they want to broadcast with enough power to be received by handsets located indoors. So that's not really shareable with indoor wifi usage.
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The most frustrating thing here is, as usual, the level of DGAF about others: there is a need for spectrum coordination.
there are other users in those bands: there are other users in those bands in other countries.
so now, what, we will have to endure higher prices on some types of equipment to support the re-engineering for RF basebands that are no longer permitted to work in the US? (note: in a fair number of cases isn't not just a s/w patch)
(note: I used to be an RF test engineer and the 'entertainment' of dealing with test engineering on a piece of gear that needed to be multi-country capable, in the face of subtle differences in band availability between country A and country B -> so much fun)
(yes, 6GHz doesn't have a lot of reach: so this isn't a geographic issue so to speak)
there are other users in those bands: there are other users in those bands in other countries.
so now, what, we will have to endure higher prices on some types of equipment to support the re-engineering for RF basebands that are no longer permitted to work in the US? (note: in a fair number of cases isn't not just a s/w patch)
(note: I used to be an RF test engineer and the 'entertainment' of dealing with test engineering on a piece of gear that needed to be multi-country capable, in the face of subtle differences in band availability between country A and country B -> so much fun)
(yes, 6GHz doesn't have a lot of reach: so this isn't a geographic issue so to speak)
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Leave it to Pai to do a complete about-face.
Once again Trump and the GOP are showing they don't give two shits about the rural populations that will suffer the most under Trump's Big Steaming Turd.
Once again Trump and the GOP are showing they don't give two shits about the rural populations that will suffer the most under Trump's Big Steaming Turd.
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Pai. Lobbyists. Ugh.
Why does anyone listen to a man who will say anything he’s told to say? Like am I missing something or are huge swaths of the public and politicians just absolutely nonstop gullible fools?
Why’s isn’t everyone’s attitude something like: “oh look it’s another lying slime puppet who wants to make his masters rich by stealing from the rest of us” ??
Why does anyone listen to a man who will say anything he’s told to say? Like am I missing something or are huge swaths of the public and politicians just absolutely nonstop gullible fools?
Why’s isn’t everyone’s attitude something like: “oh look it’s another lying slime puppet who wants to make his masters rich by stealing from the rest of us” ??
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You can throw Bobby Kennedy into that life boat too. Of course, that would make it the “ worst group of five people…”
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Not sure this is new. Spectrum division is different in different countries. This might be just be a firmware update. Hope few people do the update though. Let them clean up the mess themselves.
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Not sure about that. You might be lauded as a hero if you are the sole survivor and had to manage via cannibalism.
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My guy, they don't care about anything if Trump tells them not to. Forget saying "jump" and asking "how high" they're just pulling their friends and family off the bridge with them.
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Expanding a bit. Does this mean that if spectrum is auctioned off there will be a legal requirement for networking vendors to push out updates that remove some spectrum usage from their gear?
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I would wager that there will be a firmware update that renders the frequency non-op. Given the importance of routers in the security of your home network, it will all but guarantee most routers will have the functionality patched out. The only way I could see keeping it would be not updating (and taking the security risks that entails) or running some sort of third-party firmware, if you are both comfortable with it and your router supports it.
This is just an uneducated WAG, however. I have zero receipts for it.
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Counterpoint: if in such a situation, you could punch a hole the lifeboat and do humanity a favor.
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I’ll speculate a little more and say that it’s possible you wouldn’t want to use 6GHz anymore if this all happens, given the potential for interference from carrier users.
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It will probably need a firmware update to enable only the right frequencies, once the FCC has decided what they will be.
Note that Europe only assigned frequencies up to 6425MHz to Wifi, so if I were to guess, I think FCC will do something similar - slice off the upper part of the band to give to some of the people who lobbied for this and leave the lower part for Wifi.
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“Um, actually” that would make it “the worst group of at least six parasites.”
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If you can arrange for me to be trapped on a lifeboat with them I'll enact meaningful change.
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The way I see the 6ghz is they want monopolies for in-home wifi. Live in an apartment, pay us $40 per month for "better" wifi channels(that used to be public-use).
Frankly though, I don't believe Trump's FCC has the knowledge or workers to technically enforce this spectrum inside homes.
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I don't like it. But I have to agree.
Pai:, "Big daddy says screw the poors. So I say screw the poors!"
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More and more publicly owned things given to the corporations with no real regard for the end users costs. This above everything else is really the whole problem with pay to play governance. We need to get all money out of politics as fast as possible to have any chance of saving our country. It is the root of nearly all the evils in our country. Greed after getting filthy rich is just bind bogglingly stupid and bad for all of us.
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No, we fucking didn't. stop with the broad brush "all rural peiple vote the same" malarkey. you are doing nothing but perpetuating a manufactured division between rural and urban people.
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I have to wonder too what this could mean for systems and standards already implemented. Wifi 6E and 7, which are international standards, are already using the 6ghz frequencies. I thought part of the standard was that they had the entire range from 5.9 to 7.1GHz available. So if they suddenly block off part of 6GHz from unlicensed use that they'd have to get all the vendors and IEEE to retroactively change it, wouldn't they? How would that even work? The standard is already there, and has been approved, and is already in active use worldwide.
Would love to see a more in-depth analysis of what could actually happen here, if there's a way to break it all down, Ars team. (Or maybe it's too speculative at this point?)
On the surface, the about-face in this is absolutely stunning. But if you think about it for a minute, it all makes sense in a "whoever pays the bills" kind of way.
"5 years ago, when I worked for the American people and chaired the agency that was supposed to manage these sorts of things and provide fair, reliable access to all Americans, we said that that leaving it open for unlicensed use as part of an industry standard was the best thing to do.
But today I work for the industry, not the American people. So the best thing to do now is to give it to the telecommunications industry."
So it's really consistent, in that he's saying the best thing to do is the thing that benefits whoever writes his paycheck.
Would love to see a more in-depth analysis of what could actually happen here, if there's a way to break it all down, Ars team. (Or maybe it's too speculative at this point?)
On the surface, the about-face in this is absolutely stunning. But if you think about it for a minute, it all makes sense in a "whoever pays the bills" kind of way.
"5 years ago, when I worked for the American people and chaired the agency that was supposed to manage these sorts of things and provide fair, reliable access to all Americans, we said that that leaving it open for unlicensed use as part of an industry standard was the best thing to do.
But today I work for the industry, not the American people. So the best thing to do now is to give it to the telecommunications industry."
So it's really consistent, in that he's saying the best thing to do is the thing that benefits whoever writes his paycheck.
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Seize control of something managed by the federal government? Sell it at an 'auction' to wealthy bidders? Decide who gets it by 'complex technical' criteria? This is an open invitation to graft. That fits with their plans for federal lands and federal contracts. Not to mention their plans for the wealthier universities. All that expensive research needs a little sugar to sweeten the palate of the grantors.
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But considering that most home users never update their firmware, imagine what happens if you have an existing 6GHz wifi network and then your phone gets an update that removes it's ability to connect to networks in the upper half of the band. The wifi router still thinks that the entire band is available and is happily broadcasting in forbidden spectrum. All of a sudden, your phone which just got an update is no longer able to connect to your wifi. You're going to think it's your phone that's defective, not your network. I can see this being a major headache for Apple, Google, and Samsung.
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It'd just be an update of the regulatory domains definitions, if you really want to keep using it you'd need to set your WAP to act like it's in another country.
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LOL don’t tell Carr that, they’ll slice off the lower part of 6ghz just for funsies.
I go back to my point I made last Ars article - 6GHz, even at higher power that cell companies would use, would require another round of cell tower densification if the MNOs wanted to use this similarly to C-Band.
Do they want to spend the CapEx for both purchasing the licenses at auction as well as building another new dense layer of towers?
More 3GHz spectrum would be useful because then it’s only tower upgrades and spectrum purchase. Not more towers.
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Frequency allocations have always varied quite a bit across the world.
So the standard covers more than can be used on any given country and then devices are shipped witg different firmware for different markets.
E.g. the standard for 2.4 GHz WiFi has 14 channels but 13 isn't available in a few countries (most notably US) and 14 is only available in a few (most notably Japan).
The variations for 5 GHz WiFi are even more.
And AFAIK only the US had allocated the entire 6 GHz band (and a bit) for WiFi.
So far EU has only allocated half of it while the other half is reserved and will likely be allocated for cell service.
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Rural areas are majority trump supporters. The broad brush is accurate.
Same thing applies. Vote against it instead of sitting on your ass.
Or get angry enough to be active in your community because you are being screwed by their votes.
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1) That's capitalism. Everything becomes someone's capital eventually. And usually in the worst possible way. See: for-profit healthcare, for-profit education, for-profit prisons, etc, etc.
2) Only if you're interested in seeing them safely back to land....
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The takeaway from this story is if you want to get anything done, hire the former FCC chair.
The revolving door of corruption is alive and well.
The revolving door of corruption is alive and well.
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The FCC started requiring the router manufacturers to permanently fix the enabled frequency bands for the US into the modems so they would be out of reach of open source firmware like OpenWRT and Tomato. This was done to prevent users of the open source firmware from enabling additional channels not licensed for Wi-Fi use in the US.
I now wonder if this may prevent a firmware update that would disable the repurposed 6 GHz channels in the modem or not. Guess a firmware update could always block the channels in the GUI for manual channel selection and in whatever algorithm is used to automatically assign channels if channels aren't manually assigned even if they are not disabled in the modem.
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As a rural person, I didn't; and a lot of rural people didn't.
But worse: the people really screwed are the local network providers who work their asses off to create a local land-based system, people who are honestly heroes, serving users that the mobile, regional, and national carriers didn't care to bother with until they were really really bored.
The people you think are going to get their comeuppance won't even notice. They will just shrug their shoulders, say, dang, my movies are slower and I'm tired of the commercials buffering, and they'll switch to Starlink. Which I suspect may also be welcome by the folk deciding this. (Or who knows, maybe not by the time it happens, these mercurial billionaires.)
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