FCC votes to open up more Wi-Fi spectrum

There’s going to be a little more room for Wi-Fi. The Federal Communications Commission voted today to open up a small amount of additional wireless spectrum for unlicensed indoor use, which should help to improve speeds and reduce congestion on 5GHz Wi-Fi networks.

The new swath of spectrum (which falls around 5.9GHz) was previously reserved for vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications — but since being set aside two decades ago, the auto industry hasn’t done much with it. So now the FCC is taking away a little more than half of the airwaves it reserved and offering them up to the public for use as Wi-Fi. (Despite getting nowhere with this spectrum, the auto industry is nonetheless annoyed that the FCC is taking...

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