At its February 20 meeting, the FCC will likely adopt a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking as a first step toward increasing the amount of spectrum available in the 5 GHz band for unlicensed devices. Up to 195 MHz might be made available, which is a 35% increase over the present 555 MHz. Chairman Genachowski announced this initiative at CES in January. A leading application for new spectrum would be IEEE 802.11ac, which could have four instead of the current two 160 MHz-wide channels.
Steven J. Crowley, P.E.
Consulting Engineer