The Dynamic Spectrum Alliance (DSA) has urged communications regulator Icasa to open the upper portion of the contested 6GHz radio frequency bands to Wi-Fi and other unlicensed uses – and not reserve its use for mobile operators.
Speaking at a conference hosted by the Wireless Access Providers’ Association (Wapa) on Tuesday, DSA president Martha Suarez said cellular companies have many bands already assigned to them (with more likely to follow), while Wi-Fi has not received new spectrum in more than 20 years.
“I have to be clear, we are not against having more spectrum for IMT (mobile services),” Suarez told Wapaloza conference attendees. “It’s just that there are already so many.
“There is the 800MHz, 900MHz, 1.8GHz, 2.5GHz, 3.25GHz and even millimetre-wave [already reserved for mobile services]. There are so many bands that are still being identified for IMT… So, we are convinced that the best use of the entire 6GHz band is for licence-exempt services.”
The battle over which services will be assigned access to the 6GHz band has manifested in different ways around the world. A fight is now brewing in Europe between the Wi-Fi industry and mobile operators over the band, with countries taking divergent views about how the frequencies in the band should be carved up.
Some countries – including the US, Canada, South Korea and Saudi Arabia – have allocated the full 6GHz band to Wi-Fi, with experts attributing the widespread adoption of Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7 in the US to the decision.
Spectrum split
Others, including the UK, have split the band in two, with the lower portion (6.925-6.425GHz) assigned to unlicensed Wi-Fi and the upper part (6.425-7.125GHz) to mobile services. China, by contrast, has dedicated the entire band to mobile operators for the 6G mobile services that are expected to be launched in the coming years.
In South Africa, the lower portion of the 6GHz band has already been allocated to unlicensed Wi-Fi services, but Icasa has not specified what will happen with the upper portion. Suarez argued the best returns will come from giving a larger chunk of spectrum to licence-exempt services instead of to mobile network operators.
Read: 2025 will usher in the era of ‘Wi-Fi everywhere’
In an interview with TechCentral on the sidelines of the conference, Suarez said mobile operators contribute to the communications landscape by making significant capital investments in networks. They also contribute to the fiscus through spectrum auctions.
However, recent trends have seen them struggle to realise a return on their investments in infrastructure and spectrum. Contributing to this is a decades-long decline in voice revenue as lower-margin data services came to dominate the landscape.
Another factor is the marginal benefit consumers experience moving between different generations of cellular technology, such as from 4G to 5G, which has seen operators – particularly in Europe – struggling to claw back the investments they poured into upgrading their networks.
Suarez said the results of a recent auction of 6GHz frequencies in Hong Kong, where 25% of the available spectrum went unsold, suggest licence-exempt services may be better suited to using the band.
According to Spectrum Tracker, Hutchinson Telecommunications, a large mobile operator in Hong Kong, refrained from participating in the auction. It cited several reasons for its reluctance, including:
- The immaturity of the device and infrastructure ecosystem in the 6GHz band, including a lack of compelling use cases;
- Limited global adoption of the frequency range for mobile services; and
- Existing spectrum being sufficient.
Licence-exempt services, on the other hand, lower the barriers to entry that high spectrum fees impose, creating a larger ecosystem of varied contributors that drive innovation and improve connectivity rates, said Suarez.
Chipsets
She also cited the more than 1 200 devices that already support the latest licence-exempt services, including those with Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 chipsets. These chipsets are found in the latest modems, routers, smartphones and laptops, meaning the ecosystem is ready to take advantage of the technology and the spectrum available in the upper 6GHz band.
Read: What to expect at Icasa’s next big spectrum sale
“In the case of licence-exempt services, you have a larger ecosystem, so you can have smaller investments from smaller players but really wonderful work for innovation, start-ups and new solutions. That is how the internet of things, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth – all those solutions that we now take for granted – were created,” said Suarez. – © 2025 NewsCentral Media
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