“What we have now is not true 5G, but enhanced 4G.” Giovanni Zorzoni, president of the Italian Internet Provider Association has many doubts that we will soon reach true fifth generation networks: “In fact, Chinese producers have been excluded from the Italian market, offering a complete package of solutions and services, so now we need to recover lost time “. There is also another problem: “The operators have spent huge sums to secure the frequencies, and they are afraid of not being able to return on investments, so it will be a while before they decide to install totally new equipment and systems”.
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The alternative for many applications exists, and it is called Wi-Fi. Not the one we already know, but the new Wi-Fi 6E standard, which promises speeds much higher than the current ones, also because it does not use the current frequencies of 2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz which are now overcrowded. “The European Union facilitates the spread of WiFi 6E, freeing up the spectrum in the frequency band above 6 GHz,” explains Zorzoni. “Even in the Old Continent, as already happens in the United States (FCC approval dates back to last year), it will be possible to make the most of the new standard by speeding up the connection and making it less congested at the same time. The width of the spectrum has in fact tripled, going from 400 MHz to 1,200 MHz “. It improves the speed, which reaches up to theoretical 9.6 Gbps, and it is thus possible to make the most of the technology in terms of both speed and stability.
“For us it is important that a discussion be opened”, Zorzoni underlines, however. “In the sense that Wi-Fi 6E can allow you to build cheaper wireless networks in less time, to bring fast connections everywhere. In addition, it is an open standard, available to everyone and not only to mobile radio operators. It is backward compatible because it allows all the old terminals to continue working and to have incredible speeds for the new 6E terminals. The most immediate applications are in the IoT, for example Industry 4.0, but also in the private sector, with a wireless as fast as fiber, and in the public sector: you could easily have a very high quality network with widely improved security standards ” .
In addition, any interference between the 5G networks and the data transmission systems of aircraft and ships would be avoided: in Italy the issue is not as hot as in the US, but the danger exists.
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“For all these reasons – adds Zorzoni – we presented a note to the Government explaining how it is wrong to allocate frequencies around 6 GHz to 5G, which instead must be reserved for Wi-Fi 6E. Moreover, the new generation cars already do it all by themselves, there are already effective and low-cost solutions for the IoT, and consumers certainly don’t want to pay more for Internet connections from smartphones ”.
The unknown of chips
Beyond some questionable statements, the thesis of the president of AIIP is clear: Wi-Fi 6E can be combined with 5G, what we have and what will come, and in the meantime accelerate the spread of high-speed connections in Italy, where there is so much need. Especially in the white and gray areas, where even 5G is not economically viable. Given the less than overwhelming success of other public initiatives in support of Wi-Fi, however, the new standard is unlikely to reshape the wireless network narrative of the future. Unless another factor intervenes: “The chips needed for 5G are increasingly rare and expensive, those for Wi-Fi 6E are now more readily available”, concludes Zorzoni. So much so that 5.2 billion compatible devices are already estimated in the world by 2025.