Last Monday, FCC Commissioner Nathan Simington participated in a WifiForward event, interviewed by Deborah Collier, Vice President of Policy and Government Affairs at Citizens Against Government Waste. During the event, the Commissioner highlighted the importance of Wi-Fi as an American-led industry and the 6 GHz band and its role in global spectrum harmonization.

“All the fundamentals of modern telecommunications were born in the US — at least a vast majority, whether we are talking about the transistor, radio, cellular phone, communications satellite or a host of other technologies,” he said. “American advances in telecommunications have been fantastic in the past and they will be fantastic in the future. And Wi-Fi is an American success story.”

And Commissioner Simington is right: Wi-Fi represents a quintessentially American story of innovation and it was born due to the ingenuity of American engineers. In 1985, the FCC did something it has never done before and opened up a few swaths of airwaves for use by anyone who followed the rules in that spectrum. Engineers began experimenting and using it for things like baby monitors and garage door openers. Several years later, engineers in warehouses used the airwaves to connect multiple computers — and Wi-Fi was born.

At the WifiForward webinar, Commissioner Simington further stated that US wireless innovation continues on in the 6 GHz band. The FCC led the way in designating this band for unlicensed use and many other nations have followed suit — a win for our connected future. He said, “In my view, the more countries we see using 6 GHz for Wi-Fi, the better chance we’ll have for the adoption of new and next-gen Wi-Fi technologies across a broad range of applications, including industrial IoT and manufacturing.” He reiterated that this is a “good direction for technology.”

But there is no international consensus on the future of the band, and Commissioner Simington called for efforts “to ensure the US approach is adopted in other regions,” including advocacy at the World Radiocommunication Conference. The Commissioner supports advocacy “through an international forum to enable the benefits of these technological advances to be impactful worldwide.”

To watch the webinar in full and hear additional remarks from Commissioner Simington, follow this link.