Tomorrow (4/23/2020) is going to one of the biggest days in Wi-Fi history. The FCC will vote on their proposed rules for the 6 GHz band. Adding 1,200 MHz of technology-neutral, unlicensed spectrum will spark innovation in the wireless and mobile connectivity space for decades.

Interesting bit of trivia: IDC's semi team looked at the 2019 semi space (research to come to clients soon) and 8 of the top 10 (including all of the top 4) semiconductor companies (when excluding memory) offer Wi-Fi and other wireless connectivity chipsets.

A lot of companies are exciting about the innovation and products to come. It's not "Wi-Fi spectrum," but Wi-Fi will be an initial and key technology using the 6 GHz band, followed by the 5G cellular air interface, 5G NR. Inevitably, we will see more innovation beyond that.

IDC's Enabling Technology and Semiconductor group has had forecasts for Wi-Fi 6, but a new presentation we posted for clients has updated Wi-Fi 6E data by market segment, a comparison of Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi 6, & Wi-Fi 6E, and Wi-Fi 4/5, 6, and 6E chipset revenue. https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=US46220720

Wi-Fi 6 modernized and improved Wi-Fi greatly. Its expansion into the 6 GHz band will provide a lot of clean spectrum and room to use many larger channels in the same area.

Without older Wi-Fi protocols to slow down Wi-Fi 6 (because it's backwards compatible with everything before it), the performance of Wi-Fi in this greenfield spectrum will be top notch with with higher data rates and lower latency than one would typically see in the 5 GHz band.

And as Wi-Fi grows into the 6 GHz band over the next 4 to 5 years, it will pave the wave for the next Wi-Fi protocol to come in 4 years: 802.11be.

With OFDMA, larger channels, and more MIMO being used on average . . . and a massive amount of unlicensed spectrum becoming available soon, the Wi-Fi from 2020 to 2040 will be very different than the Wi-Fi most people know today (from 2000 to 2020).