FCC plans to free up spectrum, boost Wi-Fi speeds

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The FCC has announced its plans to free up 195 megahertz of spectrum in the 5 gigahertz band as high-traffic congestion continues to rise and impact wireless networks.

Speaking at CES on Wednesday, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski said that the new scheme, aimed at increasing speeds and alleviating congestion in public areas including airports, conventions and conferences, will soon be launched. Next month, the commission will begin releasing up to 195 megahertz of spectrum in the 5 gigahertz band.

The agency hopes that the new initiative will result in speed increases of up to 35 percent. The spectrum expansion is also of importance to home users, as freeing up the unlicensed spectrum block -- the largest chunk made available since 2003 -- will also help people using unlicensed Wi-Fi spectrum to stream high-definition video on their personal devices.

Read more at source:
FCC plans to free up spectrum, boost Wi-Fi speeds | ZDNet

 

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Those speeds can only increase if people start using the newer 802.11ac along with channel bonding turned on.

Until devices are actually built with the new 802.11ac technology they won't be seeing much extra speed at all. For people using 802.11n, the additional bandwidth would allow more people to connect with less chance of channel crossover.

I believe the actual reason they are increasing the bandwidth is so that this new multiple channel bonding technology can be used to it's fullest potential. Up too 8 channels in the 5Ghz range can be bonded for increased bandwidth and therefore much faster wireless speeds.

At Wiki they say the theoretical maximum throughput for an 8 antenna 802.11ac A/P using 160Mhz spatial streams "all 8 channels bonded" is 6.93Gbit/s.

In reality they are seeing maybe, 1.3Gbit/s using a 4 antenna PCI/e NIC card and new 802.11ac router.