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Comment by abtinf | Hacker News Reader

Dumb question: why not drop/deprecate the WiFi standards and adopt 5G/6G across the board (operating on different spectrum depending on configuration)?

Naively, I would assume that would save money on the BOM and make devices more flexible.

Again, naively, why not build and sell consumer-grade 5G access points/routers?

This new WiFi standard is far enough out (2028) that it seems reasonable to fold it into the 6G standard (early 2030s per the article)?

It would be nice if all laptops were suddenly equally capable to WiFi and cellular connections.

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The real reason why 5G and Wifi are separate is because one is licensed spectrum, and the other is unlicensed spectrum.

I'm not talking about legal differences- laws can always be changed- but rather how bandwidth is allocated. The biggest benefits of cellular comes from:

  Verizon owns/controls channel
        ↓
  gNB decides:
  "You transmit here."
  "You transmit here."
  "You get 20 MHz."
  "You get these time slots."

Wifi needs to follow listen-before-talk rules:

  Everybody shares unlicensed spectrum.
  
  AP: "Is anyone transmitting?"
   ↓
  wait
   ↓
  transmit

So at the end of the day, even if you take all the fancy expensive 5G hardware and software algos and shove them into the wifi standard, you still won't get the benefits of 5G.

And furthermore, the unlicensed spectrum problem is complex. "Anyone transmitting" includes Bluetooth devices, and Zigbee, and many other protocols that will never even try to follow the 802.11 spec.

> many other protocols that will never even try to follow the 802.11 spec

Such as microwave ovens (although my microwave oven does indeed follow the 802.11 spec)

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