Senators George Allen (R-Va.) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) plan to introduce a bill in January that will assign areas of the wireless spectrum to WiFi devices–which currently operate in unlicensed frequencies. Why legislate something that seems to be doing pretty much just fine without direct federal oversight?
Specifically, the bill asks that no less than 255 MHz of spectrum below the 6-GHz frequency be allocated for use by unlicensed Wi-Fi devices — as long as there is no interference with the U.S. Department of Defense's communications. There is a finite amount of the electromagnetic spectrum available for use by wireless devices, as well as by television, radio and the military.
The FCC licenses spectrum to radio and television stations, and the government uses portions of the spectrum for military communications. But thousands of wireless devices, such as cordless phones, garage door openers and current Wi-Fi devices, operate in the unlicensed spectrum bands.
Wi-Fi devices operate in the unlicensed 2.4-GHz frequency. This frequency is also used by many other wireless devices, and allocating more spectrum to Wi-Fi devices would be one way to avoid interference as the popularity of other 2.4-GHz wireless devices grows, the senators said.
The bill goes further, to require that all wireless Internet devices manufactured after 270 days from the bill's passage "be capable of two-way data packet communication … be designed and manufactured to maximize spectrum efficiency," according to a working draft of the bill (download PDF).
