A brief catalogue of the most popular, but irrelevant, arguments, and the key issue that’s often neglected.

How we work, learn, play, entertain ourselves, maintain our households, and advance our businesses are today fully intertwined with one technology that is largely invisible, but in constant use: Wi-Fi.  The compact, low power Wi-Fi router sitting on the countertop connecting our devices at home or attached to a ceiling in a business has changed not just our lives but the trajectory of our economy, making our country both more productive and resilient. 

Too often when decision-makers are evaluating proposed uses for spectrum bands, the allure of how much a particular spectrum band might be worth at auction tends to drown out other considerations.  Revenue from spectrum sales can be a siren song for government officials trying to fund important government programs.  But that’s an alluring trap, and if decision-makers fall into it, all of us may be missing out on many more significant benefits. In fact, if auction revenues were considered the “end-all, be-all” for spectrum policy, unlicensed spectrum and Wi-Fi as we know (and love) it today may not exist, along with its unquestionable positive impact to the economy. 

This month’s publication of a Phoenix Center paper in the Federal Communications Law Journal is a good reminder that auction revenue should be, as the authors say, “nearly irrelevant” when identifying a specific band for commercial use.  The paper, “How to Allocate New Spectrum Among Alternative Uses” by T. Randolph Beard, PhD, George Ford, PhD and Michael Stern PhD, analyzes spectrum allocation to come up with optimal principles that policymakers should apply. What do economists have to teach us? 

• “[I]t is the marginal benefits among services and not the present stock of spectrum that is important.” The argument “some other radio system has more spectrum than mine does” (e.g., comparisons of the amount of unlicensed spectrum to the amount of licensed spectrum or the quantity of US licensed spectrum relative to China’s) is irrelevant for decision-making and should be ignored.   

• Auctions, and auction revenue, do a good job of identifying the highest marginal benefits for a spectrum band once policymakers have designated the band as licensed and have competing bidders – but they do an extremely poor job of telling you whether you should have made the band licensed to begin with. 

• When allocating new spectrum, it is far more important to consider marginal societal benefits of competing approaches (what marginal benefits flow from a particular choice?), as well as spectrum exhaust conditions (is new spectrum needed now or in the near future?).  

“While the analysis is somewhat technical, the findings are simple. What matters is how much benefit is created—at the margin— when spectrum is assigned to one use or another. If one service creates more value than another for some small increment of spectrum, then the spectrum should be put to that higher-valued use.” 

At WifiForward, we can confidently assert that the societal benefits of allocating spectrum to Wi-Fi have been significant and continue to increase in size year over year.  For example, in “Wi-Fi Works: The Success of Wi-Fi Drives U.S. Job Creation,” Telecom Advisory Services analyzed job creation as a result of the decision to open the full 6 GHz band to Wi-Fi, compared to an alternative policy path the Trump Administration elected not to pursue that would have used the upper 6 GHz band for licensed cellular. The report concludes:  

“Comparative analysis further underscores the advantage of allocating additional mid-band spectrum to Wi-Fi technologies rather than to licensed mobile services. Specifically, allocating 500 megahertz of 7 GHz spectrum to Wi-Fi 7 would generate an estimated annual employment gain of approximately 1.5 million jobs in the U.S. in 2032 alone. In stark contrast, allocating a comparable mid-band spectrum of 400 megahertz to mobile services is projected by one analysis to generate 407,000 jobs by 2032.” 

More generally, Telecom Advisory Services (2024) has found that the annual economic value of Wi-Fi to the U.S. economy in 2027 is projected to reach $2.4 trillion, including an estimated $514 billion in consumer benefit, $624 billion in producer surplus, and $1.286 trillion in GDP contribution.  The marginal benefits of allocating the 6 GHz band to unlicensed have also been evaluated by Telecom Advisory Services (2025), affirming that the choice made by the first Trump Administration to enable unlicensed Wi-Fi throughout the 6 GHz band was the correct one.   

“Over 2025-2027, the economy would forfeit $2.11 trillion [if the use of upper 6 GHz changed from existing law and regulation (Wi-Fi) to cellular mobile], equivalent to 72 percent of the baseline benefit. Economic losses rise from $567 billion in 2025, $689 billion in 2026, and $850 billion in 2027.”  

Common sense from the economists: marginal societal benefits shouldn’t be neglected but should be at the heart of decision-making when it comes to spectrum.