FCC Touts New Wi-Fi Band of As Much as 195 MHz

The Federal Communications Commission says it will “soon” move to allow spectrum sharing between Wi-Fi service providers and licensed government users of spectrum in the 5-GHz range.

Such unlicensed spectrum could represent up to 195 megahertz of spectrum, the largest block of unlicensed spectrum to be made available for expansion of Wi-Fi since 2003, the Commission says.

Regulators also are looking at something similar 5-GHz spectrum in Europe. Separately, the FCC also is looking at spectrum sharing for other frequencies as well, such as spectrum in the 3.5-GHz band envisioned for use by operators of “small cell” networks. 

Spectrum sharing is not rare in the frequencies above about 3 GHz, NTIA says.