Worse is the OEMs all gradually removing the ability to operate modems intended for general purpose devices as APs in the 5 GHz range. The trend is to lock the firmware to only reply as a client in those bands. Meanwhile it isn't uncommon to encounter cheap dedicated APs that operate under the incorrect regulatory domain for the country they're sold in. So the cure doesn't work yet we lose the ability for P2P outside of 2.4 GHz.

(If they happen to be reading I'd like to offer a hearty fuck you to whoever at Intel and Qualcomm initially decided on these absurd policies.)

Spectrum used to be a lot more limited when frequencies had to be exclusive and baked into hardware designs. Now we have agile radios that can tx/rx across wide bands and dodge other peoples' traffic, so the motivation for exclusivity is a lot weaker. If you walk around with a spectrum analyzer you will see traffic voting with its feet and overwhelmingly choosing the free-for-all ISM bands because dodging other peoples' packets is easy compared to obtaining spectrum licenses around the world.

So: the optimal regulatory approach changed, the laws didn't keep up, and now we have suboptimal regulation that isn't bad enough to spur a fix and vested interests (spectrum owners) who don't want it fixed so I expect it to continue for a very long time. So it goes. It's not great but if all the world's problems were as small as this one it would be a much nicer place.

My spark gap transmitter doesn't care about your spectrum. Regulation is important.