This ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit does not appear to impact Amateur Radio Super High Frequency (SHF) operation since—according to the ARRL US Amateur Radio Frequency Allocations page and Wikipedia ITU Region 2 frequency allocation chart—the 6GHz band is outside the Amateur Radio 5cm allocation (5.650–5.925 GHz).
A ruling (pdf) last week by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has paved the way for deployment of faster, better Wi-Fi, while simultaneously cementing the FCC’s authority to make important decisions related to spectrum and interference concerns.
Last year, the FCC voted to open up a chunk of spectrum in the 6GHz band for unlicensed use , providing more airwaves to be used by Wi-Fi and other technologies. Wi-Fi is the most immediate beneficiary; this posed the biggest expansion of available spectrum since Wi-Fi was first unveiled back in 1989. The expansion, and the new standards making more efficient use of more spectrum, should result first in better, more reliable Wi-Fi, and ultimately faster speeds of 1-2 Gbps connections over Wi-Fi. That means better broadband, and more innovation in the band: 1
Big news! Today the DC Circuit unanimously upheld the FCC's decision to free up the 6 GHz band for more unlicensed use. This decision = more Wi-Fi in more places and it matters because it comes at a time when being connected is more important than ever. https://t.co/jjN4G8ALzA
— Jessica Rosenworcel (@JRosenworcel) December 28, 2021
“Court Ruling Paves The Way For Better, More Reliable Wi-Fi”, techdirt, accessed January 5 2022, https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20220103/07173148222/court-ruling-paves-way-better-more-reliable-wi-fi.shtml. ↩︎
