This week, Wi-Fi got a name change. Nothing drastic but pretty cool: the Wi-Fi Alliance, the body that certifies wireless networking standards announced that the newest generation of Wi-Fi–802.11ax–will now be known as “Wi-Fi 6”. Now, 802.11ac will be known as “Wi-Fi 5,” and 802.11n as “Wi-Fi 4,” making it easy for people to tell at a glance if the Wi-Fi they’re connected to is the newest and fastest standard.

And it’s good timing. Bigger, faster better wireless experiences have captured our national imagination and everyone, from consumers to policymakers to companies, seems to be talking about the future. It’s incredible to imagine the possibilities: robotic surgery and remote medical telemetry, immersive virtual and augmented experiences, gigabit connected homes, cloud-based services and businesses we haven’t even thought of. All of this requires a future of ubiquitous, high speed, high capacity connectivity. And nearly everyone agrees these networks will be built with a variety of advanced wired and wireless technologies.

This consensus was on display at the White House’s 5G Summit last week which brought together industry leaders to tell policymakers how to help consumers get the best networks possible. As National Economic Council Chair Larry Kudlow pointed out, the discussion was only the beginning, and policy makers need to hear from the companies and organizations working to build these networks and experiences.

For our part, WifiForward was pleased to see balanced spectrum policies as part of the discussion. In his opening remarks Senate Commerce Chairman Thune explained that Wi-Fi is the workhorse of our mobile broadband networks and that 5G networks would require even more unlicensed spectrum to support consumer experiences. And FCC Chairman Pai put unlicensed spectrum front and center as part of the Commission’s spectrum strategy to get to “5G FAST.”

Wi-Fi and other unlicensed technologies are already delivering pieces of the 5G promise, and will remain essential to the way we connect at home, in our offices, at venues, hotels, hospitals, airports and beyond. Wi-Fi already delivers over 50 percent of all internet traffic and over 60 percent of all mobile traffic, and those numbers are expected to increase over the next few years. Cisco estimates that 86 percent of all wireless traffic will go over unlicensed wireless technology (primarily Wi-Fi) versus the 14 percent expected over licensed mobile networks by 2021.

So for Wi-Fi to continue to deliver a high-quality consumer experience–including unleashing the newly named Wi-Fi 6–while handling the data traffic explosion anticipated with 5G, we will need more unlicensed spectrum, particularly in the mid-band range.

Thousands of companies, organizations and institutions have already invested significantly in parts of this ecosystem, with uses of unlicensed spectrum already adding over $525 Billion to the U.S. economy in the last year alone. And we’re ready for more, with the next generation of Wi-Fi and emerging technologies prepared to meet the latency, connectivity and efficiency goals for next-generation networks and 5G experiences.