Today, The Senate Commerce Committee and a wide variety of stakeholders from the automotive and telecommunications industries announced progress initiating the testing of spectrum sharing between connected vehicles and Wi-Fi and other technology in the 5.9 gigahertz band, in a pair of letters from lawmakers and industry stakeholders to the heads of three federal agencies. (Senate letter on 5 GHz , Letter on testing)

Below is a statement by WifiForward:

“We applaud the leadership of Chairman Thune and others to develop general agreement around an open framework for testing spectrum sharing in the upper 5 GHz band. As the FCC and Congress have recognized, the next step is for the FCC to open the 5.9 GHz portion of the band – so that consumers, businesses, libraries and schools will realize the full potential of “Gigabit Wi-Fi”. This call for all parties to work together is exactly what we need to enable the growth of Wi-Fi and other unlicensed technologies that would spur innovation, add value to the U.S. economy and help fulfill our nation’s goals of ubiquitous, affordable broadband access.”