Multiple things can be true simultaneously. For instance:
* The reach for 6GHz by mobile service providers is straight-up greed, as Wi-Fi is a threat to their business expansions towards monopolization
* Wi-Fi is incredibly overcrowded, and a shift to 6GHz will not solve the underlying issues causing the crowding in the first place (mobile device density, over-reliance on Wi-Fi instead of running ethernet to capable devices and drop points)
* ISPs would prefer mobile service providers get 6GHz so they can get higher speeds to fixed receivers without the requisite network buildout
My personal position? Give 6GHz to Wi-Fi, but also make it clear that this is the last spectrum the standard will get. Simultaneously, promote (through regulations, subsidies, or municipal buildouts) wireline networking wherever practicable. The fact new construction in 2025 doesn’t mandate ethernet drops in every non-bathroom is what’s contributing to Wi-Fi crowding, and prevalent last-mile wired access ensures that mobile operators have to compete on cost rather than data caps - and thus hinders their monopolization efforts.
> In response, the Wi-Fi Alliance and the DSA are trying to stoke fears that such a move would severely dent Europe's digital development, claiming Wi-Fi is the primary way consumers access the internet and constraining it would impact progress.
Just today, there’s a news report in India where the major telecom companies have lobbied that the entire 6 GHz band be reserved for mobile services and that even part of it shouldn’t be left for unlicensed WiFi. [1]
The problem in India is that the penetration of wired broadband is very low, and the telcos don’t seem to be interested in expanding it as much as they are in grabbing more of wireless spectrum.
I don’t believe it’s a good move to reserve these exclusively for mobile services. We (in general) need more unlicensed spectrum for innovation. Let the companies figure out another way out.
I also know that these bands are already allowed for unlicensed WiFi use in the US.
I don't know, for better or worse mobile companies will probably make a more efficient use of the space, in a country like India it's probably the best choice to be honest. I can at least see why you would do this.
I don't know anything really about India's telecoms market, but I know in other 'similar' countries you can buy a mobile phone data plan for like a couple/few dollars a month, but a fixed line is 10X that. You could argue it's not very progressive to reserve the spectrum for the 'rich' who can afford fixed lines.
I live in a EU country in an apartment and 5GHz is completely crowded and pretty much unusable because of DFS (making your WiFi AP unexpectedly stop to do a complete scan and choose a new channel), so 6GHz is the only stable, high bandwidth option here, and we need more channels so that most peopole chan switch to it.
The cellular networks operators can have that shitty 5GHz part of the spectrum if they want it!
>And you think the same problem wouldn't exist with 6ghz?
Yes. Probably because they have some basic grasp of electromagnetic reality, which perhaps you might consider studying a bit before forming strong opinions?
>It will be as crowded as 5
Physically impossible. 6 GHz simply does not have the material penetration, that's the point. Having way more raw bandwidth on tap, all available all the time without DFS plopped in the middle too, is also extremely helpful of course too. But the signal just not traveling as far and not going through walls well is the core thing. You don't need special effort EM shielding for it so much, bulk material will do it. And WAPs are cheap now. Having a higher number of smaller cells has been best practice for awhile already, and 6 GHz takes that much further.
Or, if you are not being sarcastic, the solution to wireless networking issues is to… rebuild cities in which billions of people live and spread those people over… where? Never mind the fact that cities are the best way of arranging lots of people, where would you build those "houses not so close to each other" that is not a desert, a cliff, or an ocean?
Whether they’re joking or not, it’s a good example of the sort of reasoning you see in those town hall meetings where a bunch of ancient home owners come up with straight faced reasons for why an apartment complex shouldn’t get built.
“They’ll have congested internet!” would go well alongside “It will block the sun on my daily walk on that part of the street!”
This would come at the expense of lowering density and multiplying infrastructure costs by a few orders of magnitude, making everything less accessible in doing so.
I’m in France. I don’t get 30 a day, but at least 2 to 5. I automatically ignore unknown callers and my voice mail message basically says to send a SMS instead.
No, I'm talking about anyone with SS7 access basically has root on the whole network and can query for locations of any phone number anonymously... no audit trail, no access control.
No. SS7 predates cellphones. It's the legacy control plane for the PSTN (public switched telephone network). It was never designed for security since it originally never crossed corporate boundaries as everyone had to use the monopoly provider. (Except for international calls).
You can't shut down 2G, because there are a lot of devices, mainly embedded systems like alarms, lift emergency call button, GPS trackers, etc. that still use 2G. Also 2G is the only reliable network connection in a lot of areas that are not otherwise reached by 3G/4G/5G, mainly because a 2G connection is more tolerant to low signal and noise, and also is low frequency, thus 2G is the only option available in situations such as on top of mountains and stuff. And finally there is still a lot of people, maybe elders, that don't have/want a smartphone (mainly because they are more complex to use etc.) and still use an old Nokia with 2G networks (they only need to call or send SMS in the end).
You claim that they cannot be disabled, while this is already happening [0][1][2]. Some countries, like Switzerland, already completed the shutdown years ago [2].
I think you are wrong. 2g and 3g is slowly but surely being killed everywhere. Which is a shame because it's much easier on batteries then 4g, but they want that bandwidth.
Tbh it's probably much more useful for mobile operators than wifi. 6GHz does not propagate well at all at wifi power limits and as such one 320MHz band probably won't overlap much with neighbours, even in apartment buildings. This does preclude having 640MHz bands though in future wifi standards, but I'm not sure how important that is - Wifi7 on MLO could theoretically deliver 7.2gbit/sec in 2x2 config and double that again in 4x4. If devices need more speed (laptops more than phones) then they can move to 4x4 more?
Whereas for mobile operators it would be very useful in outdoor/indoor (airports etc) urban areas that are very busy.
2.4GHz is completely unusable in urban environments, because you're getting interference from two dozen neighbours. And everyone has a poor connection, so their "handy" nephew will turn up the transmission power to the maximum - which of course makes it even worse.
6GHz barely makes it through a concrete wall, so you're only receiving your own AP, so you have the whole bandwith mostly to yourself.
On the other hand, cellular networks are well-regulated: if an airport's entire network is managed by a single party they can just install extra antennas and turn down the power.
And it's not like cellular operators will be able to use it often: outdoor use falls apart the moment there are a bunch of trees or buildings in the way, so it only makes sense in buildings like airports and stadiums. Why would the rest of society have to be banned from using 6GHz Wifi for that?
Besides, didn't 5G include support for 30GHz frequencies for exactly this application? What happened to that?
> 6GHz barely makes it through a concrete wall, so you're only receiving your own AP, so you have the whole bandwith mostly to yourself.
I'm no expert and only speak from personal experience. When the signal is weak, you don't have the whole bandwith, you only get low throughput. Ideally you would want a strong, high penetration signal (low frequency) and all users on separate channels. It's of course impossible in densely populated areas.
Whenever I have to deal with setting up WLAN in the office or at home, I hate the experience and I try to use wired connections wherever possible.
That’s not how RF works (generally). It’s about signal/noise ratio.
It gets really bad when signal is difficult to distinguish from noise because (for example!) everyone is talking at roughly the same power level. Think crowded bar with everyone yelling at each other.
When one is significantly louder than others, even if the others are not that quiet, it’s not a big deal unless at your ear/antenna they have the same loudness. Think concert with big speakers for the main act.
6ghz is better for many isolated networks right next to each other precisely because the others ‘voices’ lose power so quickly. You don’t have the competition for attention. Think ‘every couple in the bar gets their own booth’.
Wired connections are even better, because the amount of noise required to be unable to tell apart signal from noise is orders of magnitude higher - like ‘noisy welder right on top/EMP’ levels. Because the wires can actually be shielded. It’s like having your own hotel room.
> 6GHz barely makes it through a concrete wall, so you're only receiving your own AP, so you have the whole bandwith mostly to yourself.
I agree with this and the fact that 6GHz should still be available for wifi, but this whole bandwidth frenzy over wifi has always seemed like a meme for anyone except power users. A 4K netflix stream caps out around 15mbps, so >95% of typical home users will be just fine using 2.4/5GHz inside their own homes.
You've got to take into account that those bandwidth figures exist on paper only - nobody is getting 5Gbps out of their wifi.
In practice it is all about degraded performance. If you're sitting in another room than the AP, close to your neighbour, do you want to be left with 50Mbps remaining out of the original 5000Mbps, or 2Mbps remaining out of the original 200Mpbs?
Yeah, but that's just because Netflix streams are ridiculiously over compressed -- they use extremely low quality encodes. It's technically a "4K" stream, sure, but at a bitrate only realistically capable of 1080p.
An actual 4K stream (one capable of expected resolution at 4K) is around 30 to 40mbps.
This ~10 to 20 Mbps is enough nonsense is like claiming that 24 fps is enough to play games.
I mean sure, its usable, but its not good. You can notice the differences in buffering / scrubbing speed well into the 100+ mbps range.
Plus being able to download and upload files quickly. Particularly from something like a home NAS, is important. 15 mbps is like using a shitty USB 2 stick for everything!
But your home NAS should be on ethernet? Who would buy a NAS and then not wire it in??
The point here is that only devices like a TV, mobile, tablet or laptop should be on WiFi and it's pretty hard to notice the difference between say 50Mbps and 500Mbps on any of those except maybe if you are moving files around on your laptop.
The question then is: do we really need the whole 1Ghz of spectrum for wifi, if it doesn't really propagate to your neighbour? It should be much easier to avoid interference than on 2.4Ghz, so you need less channels.
They are trying to improve service by avoiding noise. Something few realize is that all wireless technologies are, in effect, time-share: Every device on the channel, router/tower included, take turn to talk while everyone else shuts up and listens.
If other types of devices also use your channel, you'll have to shut up and wait for airtime even longer. Having WiFi and cellular co-exist mean that they are both fighting eachother over airtime, and both spending a lot of time silent.
It's preferable to avoid channel overlap when the services need to co-exist.
The Register, being British, should probably have gotten this right, but people constantly get this wrong. Even a lot of people living in the union don't even realize the different between EU, Europe, EEA, Schengen and all the other layers, so maybe it's hard to blame "outsiders" from not getting it either.
I'm guessing maybe the "European Commission" threw them off, because it's an EU entity (basically the executive branch), not "Europe wide" one, which the name kind of implies. But then "EU" also implies "Europe wide" in its name, and people seem to kind of get the difference most of the times.
The Register know very well what the EU is. However, in practice, the EU is colloquially referred to as "Europe" in many contexts in the UK.
The rules the EU establishes will also apply to the EEA, and in practice will almost certainly also be adopted by the UK, which has tended to take its lead from the EU on such matters since Brexit. So, while pedantically these are not rules for Europe, _for practical purposes_ they likely will be.
It's not obvious at all actually, since there are many European things that also affect Island, Norway and Switzerland for being part of EFTA, but an equally high number of things that don't.
And even the EU itself is pretty fragmented with various overlapping areas with different rules.
As someone who's studied European relations, I can tell you that it's a real mess, and the fact that journalists don't accurately reporting the facts definitely isn't helpful.
Whenever I go to the UK, people there seem to consistently refer to EU or the rest/continental europe in general as "europe", esp in political/economic context. My impression is that the UK is just too important to be grouped together with other countries.
I think most people realise there is a difference. If nothing else, Brexit made it very clear to those who didn't already know that you can be in this part of the world but not in the EU. But rightly or wrongly, people still use "Europe" as shorthand for "the European Union". It's no different to referring to the US as "America".
I do think the media should aim to do better so agree that the Register should have used the correct term.
I find your comparison not so convincing. While there is some common misidentification between the EU and Europe, I’ve never heard anyone in the world refer to “America” in a way that was not for the United States.
Maybe in English. In Spanish (and we’re a bunch, the native Spanish speakers) I guarantee that if you say “América” you’re referring to the continent. The country is “Estados Unidos” (United States) or its abbreviation, EEUU. And its citizens, “estadounidenses”, not “americanos”.
And in French the inhabitants of "les Etats-Unis" are "Etats-uniens". I've taken the habit of referring to them as USAians, which often gets negative reactionsand remains rare - but I find it is the most accurate demonym and I'll keep pushing it.
I look forward to the world inventing demonyms for the citizens of the European Union, because at least it will mean that our emerging national body is getting mindshare !
In my personal experience, people from Latin American countries will sometimes point out that they are American because they come from North or South America.
Which is, of course, true; however, in English conversation, it's often nothing more than pedantry. In Spanish it makes more sense, since there is a separate demonym for a US person that doesn't co-opt the term "American."
Outside of Romance language speakers born on the American continents, I agree that everyone seems fine calling US-born persons "Americans" without much confusion nor gnashing of teeth.
It’s even more amusing in some ways. A common way to refer to those from the USA in Brazil, for instance (even an official one!) is ‘Norte Americano’.
Which is all kinds of weird because - what about Mexico and Canada? And what about the ‘United states’ part?
It’s just to disambiguate from ‘Americano’ as in what others in South America sometimes use to refer to latin Americans and as a little bit of a FU to the USA, hahah.
Ahh, I forgot about that...and to be transparent, I actually have no idea what French Guyana, Haiti, or Belize typically do to differentiate between people of the American continent(s) and US persons. I should have said Hispanoamerica, but oh well.
> I actually have no idea what French Guyana, Haiti, or Belize typically do to differentiate between people of the American continent(s) and US persons.
In French, people from the Americas are américains. This includes, say québecois and Brazilians. When context matters, people from the US are états-uniens.
It is normal in Spanish-speaking countries (and probably others) to consider the entirety of North and South America to be one continent called “America”.
One of the most famous soccer teams in Mexico is even called “Club América”, obviously this doesn’t refer to the US.
"In 1492 Christopher Columbus discovered America" is a sentence I've certainly heard before, but he didn't at any point land on any area covered by the United States of America (except maybe Panama)
That ambiguity disappears if you call it "the Americas", but many places see America as one continent (including Latin America, parts of Europe and the Olympic flag)
And on top of that, when it comes to anything radio, ITU has quite the lot to say as well, and you got the ham radio community / IARU as well.
Radio, by virtue of physically not caring about borders, is a really really hot mess, with lots of very powerful and very monied interests floating around.
You’re right, but this is probably a losing battle. People are probably never going to stop colloquially referring to the political entity that contains most of Europe’s land and population as “Europe”.
And, being on an island, British people are probably never going to stop thinking of “the continent” as at least a little bit of a different thing from themselves.
> To be really pedantic we should acknowledge there's no good reason to separate Europe from Asia, it's all one geographical continent.
To be even more pedantic you have to throw in Africa as well, as that is connected by land to Asia just like Europe is! Now we have the supercontinent Afroeurasia which contains like 85% of the worlds population.
Tell me more how Europe is separated by a canal from Asia ? There are benefits splitting America in two, splitting Africa from Eurasia, splitting Australia from Eurasia. What's the benefit of splitting Eurasia into Europe and Asia, besides catering to europeans who believe they're unique in the world ? It only creates more problems
Europe and Asia are separated by mountains. Geographically that's at least as valid as splitting America on a canal, and splitting Africa from Asia on a canal. If anything the mountains are a more significant barrier to travel and migration than those canals
If we were to rearrange the continents if anything we should split up Asia further, and split Africa into Northern Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa (maybe giving Sub-Saharan Africa to the same new continent as the Arabian peninsula, but that's debatable)
Are there? Most Latin American countries, who see all of America as a single continent, would disagree.
It really makes no sense to argue about this. As I already mentioned, there is no universally agreed model of which continents exist and where the boundaries lie. In the end people feel like they belong to one or the other and that's as far as it will probably ever get.
So Africa separated from Eurasia in 1869? And if canals count then Northern Germany is its own continent, Great Britain is several continents, etc. Man-made canals forming a meaningful geographical separation is a weird concept on so many levels
Obviously, but in case the sarcasm of my comment didn't come through: I was trying to make the point that you can't draw lines between continents just because of geography (or tectonic plates for that matter). It's arbitrary - after all we can't even agree which continents do exist.
It's an interesting topic since most people in a hypothetical Eurasia would probably never call themselves Eurasian, but would have a strong sense of being one or the other. But on the other hand there is also no universally agreed to boundary between the two as well. And maybe this imprecision the best representation of reality that we have for this.
It's essentially exactly the same as when people refer to the US as 'America'. While the US does not encompass all of the American continent, there is only one political entity called 'America' so it's not ambigious.
Multiple things can be true simultaneously. For instance:
* The reach for 6GHz by mobile service providers is straight-up greed, as Wi-Fi is a threat to their business expansions towards monopolization
* Wi-Fi is incredibly overcrowded, and a shift to 6GHz will not solve the underlying issues causing the crowding in the first place (mobile device density, over-reliance on Wi-Fi instead of running ethernet to capable devices and drop points)
* ISPs would prefer mobile service providers get 6GHz so they can get higher speeds to fixed receivers without the requisite network buildout
My personal position? Give 6GHz to Wi-Fi, but also make it clear that this is the last spectrum the standard will get. Simultaneously, promote (through regulations, subsidies, or municipal buildouts) wireline networking wherever practicable. The fact new construction in 2025 doesn’t mandate ethernet drops in every non-bathroom is what’s contributing to Wi-Fi crowding, and prevalent last-mile wired access ensures that mobile operators have to compete on cost rather than data caps - and thus hinders their monopolization efforts.
> In response, the Wi-Fi Alliance and the DSA are trying to stoke fears that such a move would severely dent Europe's digital development, claiming Wi-Fi is the primary way consumers access the internet and constraining it would impact progress.
Just today, there’s a news report in India where the major telecom companies have lobbied that the entire 6 GHz band be reserved for mobile services and that even part of it shouldn’t be left for unlicensed WiFi. [1]
The problem in India is that the penetration of wired broadband is very low, and the telcos don’t seem to be interested in expanding it as much as they are in grabbing more of wireless spectrum.
I don’t believe it’s a good move to reserve these exclusively for mobile services. We (in general) need more unlicensed spectrum for innovation. Let the companies figure out another way out.
I also know that these bands are already allowed for unlicensed WiFi use in the US.
[1]: https://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/industry/j...
I don't know, for better or worse mobile companies will probably make a more efficient use of the space, in a country like India it's probably the best choice to be honest. I can at least see why you would do this.
I don't know anything really about India's telecoms market, but I know in other 'similar' countries you can buy a mobile phone data plan for like a couple/few dollars a month, but a fixed line is 10X that. You could argue it's not very progressive to reserve the spectrum for the 'rich' who can afford fixed lines.
This is just corporate greed!
I live in a EU country in an apartment and 5GHz is completely crowded and pretty much unusable because of DFS (making your WiFi AP unexpectedly stop to do a complete scan and choose a new channel), so 6GHz is the only stable, high bandwidth option here, and we need more channels so that most peopole chan switch to it.
The cellular networks operators can have that shitty 5GHz part of the spectrum if they want it!
And you think the same problem wouldn't exist with 6ghz?
It will be as crowded as 5
>And you think the same problem wouldn't exist with 6ghz?
Yes. Probably because they have some basic grasp of electromagnetic reality, which perhaps you might consider studying a bit before forming strong opinions?
>It will be as crowded as 5
Physically impossible. 6 GHz simply does not have the material penetration, that's the point. Having way more raw bandwidth on tap, all available all the time without DFS plopped in the middle too, is also extremely helpful of course too. But the signal just not traveling as far and not going through walls well is the core thing. You don't need special effort EM shielding for it so much, bulk material will do it. And WAPs are cheap now. Having a higher number of smaller cells has been best practice for awhile already, and 6 GHz takes that much further.
Higher frequency, more bandwidth.
There's still a load of non-DFS channels you could be using? At least in an apartment you can run an ethernet cable for the most important devices.
So few devices have Ethernet ports these days.
You say that but my TV, Games console, computer, smart lights bridge, printer etc all do.
Having said that I'm still mad they removed it from the MacBook pro and that was like 14 years ago now so I feel you.
that's why I'm running only 2.4Ghz APs, enough bandwidth for mobile common uses, all static hardware has wires to them. Far better then 5GHz band
Realn solution is to have houses not so close to each other.
Not a realistic solution at all
Great one!
Or, if you are not being sarcastic, the solution to wireless networking issues is to… rebuild cities in which billions of people live and spread those people over… where? Never mind the fact that cities are the best way of arranging lots of people, where would you build those "houses not so close to each other" that is not a desert, a cliff, or an ocean?
Whether they’re joking or not, it’s a good example of the sort of reasoning you see in those town hall meetings where a bunch of ancient home owners come up with straight faced reasons for why an apartment complex shouldn’t get built.
“They’ll have congested internet!” would go well alongside “It will block the sun on my daily walk on that part of the street!”
This would come at the expense of lowering density and multiplying infrastructure costs by a few orders of magnitude, making everything less accessible in doing so.
Hard, hard no.
I wish govt would put a condition on the mobile carriers to fix SS7 vulnerabilities.
Yeah, but how could their secret services then snoop on everyone?
update to the latest software
I get 20 to 30 spam calls a day now.
In EU? Where are you located?
I’m in France. I don’t get 30 a day, but at least 2 to 5. I automatically ignore unknown callers and my voice mail message basically says to send a SMS instead.
this would require some encryption and still can be intercepted. Any ideas how to fix that?
No, I'm talking about anyone with SS7 access basically has root on the whole network and can query for locations of any phone number anonymously... no audit trail, no access control.
https://youtu.be/xfWyU5iXJ3I?t=860
https://youtu.be/wVyu7NB7W6Y
Why when we have bandaids like ss7 firewalls.
Isn't that simply fixed by shutting down the old 2G and 3G networks, like is happening in a lot of countries now?
No. SS7 predates cellphones. It's the legacy control plane for the PSTN (public switched telephone network). It was never designed for security since it originally never crossed corporate boundaries as everyone had to use the monopoly provider. (Except for international calls).
You can't shut down 2G, because there are a lot of devices, mainly embedded systems like alarms, lift emergency call button, GPS trackers, etc. that still use 2G. Also 2G is the only reliable network connection in a lot of areas that are not otherwise reached by 3G/4G/5G, mainly because a 2G connection is more tolerant to low signal and noise, and also is low frequency, thus 2G is the only option available in situations such as on top of mountains and stuff. And finally there is still a lot of people, maybe elders, that don't have/want a smartphone (mainly because they are more complex to use etc.) and still use an old Nokia with 2G networks (they only need to call or send SMS in the end).
You claim that they cannot be disabled, while this is already happening [0][1][2]. Some countries, like Switzerland, already completed the shutdown years ago [2].
[0]: https://newsroom.vodafone.de/2g-abschaltung-macht-lte-und-5g...
[1]: https://www.telekom.de/hilfe/2g-abschaltung
[2]: https://www.rosenberger-telematics.com/en/news/switching-off...
I think you are wrong. 2g and 3g is slowly but surely being killed everywhere. Which is a shame because it's much easier on batteries then 4g, but they want that bandwidth.
I can tell you that here in Australia we shut down 2G in 2011 and 3G in 2022-2023.
And yes many things broke, train ticket vending machines stopped working, smart meters stopped working, etc. But then the got replaced.
2G and 3G is a horrible waste of bandwidth compared to 5G. Keeping them on and wasting all that bandwidth is borderline negligence.
For the context - what do US, UK and China do?
In the US, it's open for unlicensed use for very low power devices. That is, it's open for WiFi. It's used by WiFi 6E, 7, and 8.
https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-opens-entire-6-ghz-band-ver...
Perhaps not for much longer:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45785987
They're also planning some overlap.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/spectrum/innovative-use-of-spectrum...
Tbh it's probably much more useful for mobile operators than wifi. 6GHz does not propagate well at all at wifi power limits and as such one 320MHz band probably won't overlap much with neighbours, even in apartment buildings. This does preclude having 640MHz bands though in future wifi standards, but I'm not sure how important that is - Wifi7 on MLO could theoretically deliver 7.2gbit/sec in 2x2 config and double that again in 4x4. If devices need more speed (laptops more than phones) then they can move to 4x4 more?
Whereas for mobile operators it would be very useful in outdoor/indoor (airports etc) urban areas that are very busy.
That's exactly why it should be used for wifi!
2.4GHz is completely unusable in urban environments, because you're getting interference from two dozen neighbours. And everyone has a poor connection, so their "handy" nephew will turn up the transmission power to the maximum - which of course makes it even worse.
6GHz barely makes it through a concrete wall, so you're only receiving your own AP, so you have the whole bandwith mostly to yourself.
On the other hand, cellular networks are well-regulated: if an airport's entire network is managed by a single party they can just install extra antennas and turn down the power.
And it's not like cellular operators will be able to use it often: outdoor use falls apart the moment there are a bunch of trees or buildings in the way, so it only makes sense in buildings like airports and stadiums. Why would the rest of society have to be banned from using 6GHz Wifi for that?
Besides, didn't 5G include support for 30GHz frequencies for exactly this application? What happened to that?
> 6GHz barely makes it through a concrete wall, so you're only receiving your own AP, so you have the whole bandwith mostly to yourself.
I'm no expert and only speak from personal experience. When the signal is weak, you don't have the whole bandwith, you only get low throughput. Ideally you would want a strong, high penetration signal (low frequency) and all users on separate channels. It's of course impossible in densely populated areas.
Whenever I have to deal with setting up WLAN in the office or at home, I hate the experience and I try to use wired connections wherever possible.
That’s not how RF works (generally). It’s about signal/noise ratio.
It gets really bad when signal is difficult to distinguish from noise because (for example!) everyone is talking at roughly the same power level. Think crowded bar with everyone yelling at each other.
When one is significantly louder than others, even if the others are not that quiet, it’s not a big deal unless at your ear/antenna they have the same loudness. Think concert with big speakers for the main act.
6ghz is better for many isolated networks right next to each other precisely because the others ‘voices’ lose power so quickly. You don’t have the competition for attention. Think ‘every couple in the bar gets their own booth’.
Wired connections are even better, because the amount of noise required to be unable to tell apart signal from noise is orders of magnitude higher - like ‘noisy welder right on top/EMP’ levels. Because the wires can actually be shielded. It’s like having your own hotel room.
> 6GHz barely makes it through a concrete wall, so you're only receiving your own AP, so you have the whole bandwith mostly to yourself.
I agree with this and the fact that 6GHz should still be available for wifi, but this whole bandwidth frenzy over wifi has always seemed like a meme for anyone except power users. A 4K netflix stream caps out around 15mbps, so >95% of typical home users will be just fine using 2.4/5GHz inside their own homes.
You've got to take into account that those bandwidth figures exist on paper only - nobody is getting 5Gbps out of their wifi.
In practice it is all about degraded performance. If you're sitting in another room than the AP, close to your neighbour, do you want to be left with 50Mbps remaining out of the original 5000Mbps, or 2Mbps remaining out of the original 200Mpbs?
The problem is not bandwidth. The problem is inconsistent performance and latency spikes caused by interferences.
> A 4K netflix stream caps out around 15mbps
Yeah, but that's just because Netflix streams are ridiculiously over compressed -- they use extremely low quality encodes. It's technically a "4K" stream, sure, but at a bitrate only realistically capable of 1080p.
An actual 4K stream (one capable of expected resolution at 4K) is around 30 to 40mbps.
This ~10 to 20 Mbps is enough nonsense is like claiming that 24 fps is enough to play games.
I mean sure, its usable, but its not good. You can notice the differences in buffering / scrubbing speed well into the 100+ mbps range.
Plus being able to download and upload files quickly. Particularly from something like a home NAS, is important. 15 mbps is like using a shitty USB 2 stick for everything!
But your home NAS should be on ethernet? Who would buy a NAS and then not wire it in??
The point here is that only devices like a TV, mobile, tablet or laptop should be on WiFi and it's pretty hard to notice the difference between say 50Mbps and 500Mbps on any of those except maybe if you are moving files around on your laptop.
> But your home NAS should be on ethernet? Who would buy a NAS and then not wire it in??
Your smartphone is not talking to your NAS over Ethernet.
Doesn’t 6ghz have essentially the same penetration as 5ghz and thus in a few years will have all the same problems as people shift to 6ghz?
The question then is: do we really need the whole 1Ghz of spectrum for wifi, if it doesn't really propagate to your neighbour? It should be much easier to avoid interference than on 2.4Ghz, so you need less channels.
And why does it need to be reserved exclusively for them?
Can’t they be just another user of a well established standard or do they want to abuse the crap out of it?
They are trying to improve service by avoiding noise. Something few realize is that all wireless technologies are, in effect, time-share: Every device on the channel, router/tower included, take turn to talk while everyone else shuts up and listens.
If other types of devices also use your channel, you'll have to shut up and wait for airtime even longer. Having WiFi and cellular co-exist mean that they are both fighting eachother over airtime, and both spending a lot of time silent.
It's preferable to avoid channel overlap when the services need to co-exist.
EU, not Europe.
The Register, being British, should probably have gotten this right, but people constantly get this wrong. Even a lot of people living in the union don't even realize the different between EU, Europe, EEA, Schengen and all the other layers, so maybe it's hard to blame "outsiders" from not getting it either.
I'm guessing maybe the "European Commission" threw them off, because it's an EU entity (basically the executive branch), not "Europe wide" one, which the name kind of implies. But then "EU" also implies "Europe wide" in its name, and people seem to kind of get the difference most of the times.
The Register know very well what the EU is. However, in practice, the EU is colloquially referred to as "Europe" in many contexts in the UK.
The rules the EU establishes will also apply to the EEA, and in practice will almost certainly also be adopted by the UK, which has tended to take its lead from the EU on such matters since Brexit. So, while pedantically these are not rules for Europe, _for practical purposes_ they likely will be.
Also, most people are aware that "Europe" the continent is unlikely to make such decisions, so it's pretty obvious what's meant by context.
There are others ways to coordinates european countries than EU institutions
It's not obvious at all actually, since there are many European things that also affect Island, Norway and Switzerland for being part of EFTA, but an equally high number of things that don't.
And even the EU itself is pretty fragmented with various overlapping areas with different rules.
As someone who's studied European relations, I can tell you that it's a real mess, and the fact that journalists don't accurately reporting the facts definitely isn't helpful.
>the EU is colloquially referred to as "Europe" in many contexts in the UK.
It really should have been EUR for Europe, and EU as in European Union.
What continent does UK consider itself part of then?
Ask two different people and get three different answers.
Whenever I go to the UK, people there seem to consistently refer to EU or the rest/continental europe in general as "europe", esp in political/economic context. My impression is that the UK is just too important to be grouped together with other countries.
It likes to believe it is somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
Context matters; you can generally tell whether someone's talking politics or geography.
Switzerland is not in the EU but they follow EU legislation.
It's kinda like Canada and the US.
I think most people realise there is a difference. If nothing else, Brexit made it very clear to those who didn't already know that you can be in this part of the world but not in the EU. But rightly or wrongly, people still use "Europe" as shorthand for "the European Union". It's no different to referring to the US as "America".
I do think the media should aim to do better so agree that the Register should have used the correct term.
I find your comparison not so convincing. While there is some common misidentification between the EU and Europe, I’ve never heard anyone in the world refer to “America” in a way that was not for the United States.
Maybe in English. In Spanish (and we’re a bunch, the native Spanish speakers) I guarantee that if you say “América” you’re referring to the continent. The country is “Estados Unidos” (United States) or its abbreviation, EEUU. And its citizens, “estadounidenses”, not “americanos”.
> estadounidenses
And in French the inhabitants of "les Etats-Unis" are "Etats-uniens". I've taken the habit of referring to them as USAians, which often gets negative reactionsand remains rare - but I find it is the most accurate demonym and I'll keep pushing it.
I look forward to the world inventing demonyms for the citizens of the European Union, because at least it will mean that our emerging national body is getting mindshare !
Whenever I’ve heard the term américain it’s been used to refer to a US citizen, not a mexicain or citizen of some other American country.
In my personal experience, people from Latin American countries will sometimes point out that they are American because they come from North or South America.
Which is, of course, true; however, in English conversation, it's often nothing more than pedantry. In Spanish it makes more sense, since there is a separate demonym for a US person that doesn't co-opt the term "American."
Outside of Romance language speakers born on the American continents, I agree that everyone seems fine calling US-born persons "Americans" without much confusion nor gnashing of teeth.
It’s even more amusing in some ways. A common way to refer to those from the USA in Brazil, for instance (even an official one!) is ‘Norte Americano’.
Which is all kinds of weird because - what about Mexico and Canada? And what about the ‘United states’ part?
It’s just to disambiguate from ‘Americano’ as in what others in South America sometimes use to refer to latin Americans and as a little bit of a FU to the USA, hahah.
Ahh, I forgot about that...and to be transparent, I actually have no idea what French Guyana, Haiti, or Belize typically do to differentiate between people of the American continent(s) and US persons. I should have said Hispanoamerica, but oh well.
> I actually have no idea what French Guyana, Haiti, or Belize typically do to differentiate between people of the American continent(s) and US persons.
In French, people from the Americas are américains. This includes, say québecois and Brazilians. When context matters, people from the US are états-uniens.
[delayed]
If I’ve learned anything in Brazil, it’s that it’s all good bro - as long as you aren’t Argentinian. Then we need to fight, or something hah.
It is normal in Spanish-speaking countries (and probably others) to consider the entirety of North and South America to be one continent called “America”.
One of the most famous soccer teams in Mexico is even called “Club América”, obviously this doesn’t refer to the US.
Kind of up to the US border. Canada gets lumped up in with the USA hah.
"In 1492 Christopher Columbus discovered America" is a sentence I've certainly heard before, but he didn't at any point land on any area covered by the United States of America (except maybe Panama)
That ambiguity disappears if you call it "the Americas", but many places see America as one continent (including Latin America, parts of Europe and the Olympic flag)
And on top of that, when it comes to anything radio, ITU has quite the lot to say as well, and you got the ham radio community / IARU as well.
Radio, by virtue of physically not caring about borders, is a really really hot mess, with lots of very powerful and very monied interests floating around.
You’re right, but this is probably a losing battle. People are probably never going to stop colloquially referring to the political entity that contains most of Europe’s land and population as “Europe”.
And, being on an island, British people are probably never going to stop thinking of “the continent” as at least a little bit of a different thing from themselves.
I think people understand that a continent isn’t making decisions.
To be really pedantic we should acknowledge there's no good reason to separate Europe from Asia, it's all one geographical continent.
The distinction between EU and Europe is very important. They're "word stealing" something as neutral as a geographical concept, to make it political.
But in this case here, probably if EU legislate on this, others non-EU european countries will follow
> To be really pedantic we should acknowledge there's no good reason to separate Europe from Asia, it's all one geographical continent.
To be even more pedantic you have to throw in Africa as well, as that is connected by land to Asia just like Europe is! Now we have the supercontinent Afroeurasia which contains like 85% of the worlds population.
Tell me more how Europe is separated by a canal from Asia ? There are benefits splitting America in two, splitting Africa from Eurasia, splitting Australia from Eurasia. What's the benefit of splitting Eurasia into Europe and Asia, besides catering to europeans who believe they're unique in the world ? It only creates more problems
Europe and Asia are separated by mountains. Geographically that's at least as valid as splitting America on a canal, and splitting Africa from Asia on a canal. If anything the mountains are a more significant barrier to travel and migration than those canals
If we were to rearrange the continents if anything we should split up Asia further, and split Africa into Northern Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa (maybe giving Sub-Saharan Africa to the same new continent as the Arabian peninsula, but that's debatable)
> There are benefits splitting America in two
Are there? Most Latin American countries, who see all of America as a single continent, would disagree.
It really makes no sense to argue about this. As I already mentioned, there is no universally agreed model of which continents exist and where the boundaries lie. In the end people feel like they belong to one or the other and that's as far as it will probably ever get.
Suez Canal exists and cuts off Africa from Eurasia
So Africa separated from Eurasia in 1869? And if canals count then Northern Germany is its own continent, Great Britain is several continents, etc. Man-made canals forming a meaningful geographical separation is a weird concept on so many levels
Obviously, but in case the sarcasm of my comment didn't come through: I was trying to make the point that you can't draw lines between continents just because of geography (or tectonic plates for that matter). It's arbitrary - after all we can't even agree which continents do exist.
Relevant watching: Map Men: How many continents are there? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrsxRJdwfM0)
Yes it is arbitrary (like most of things actually) but the distinction between Europe and Asia is the most arbitrary of all of them
It's an interesting topic since most people in a hypothetical Eurasia would probably never call themselves Eurasian, but would have a strong sense of being one or the other. But on the other hand there is also no universally agreed to boundary between the two as well. And maybe this imprecision the best representation of reality that we have for this.
Do you also write "USA, not America" for every headline that uses the later?
As others mentioned, this is British press and Britts tend to colloquially refer to EU as 'Europe'.
EU is more Europe than USA is America, yet you don't see much complaining about the latter.
You are the one who corrects america with usa?
It’s called a metonymy and is purposeful.
Everyone understood that it was the relevant nearly pan-European political entity which was actually designed by the geographical designation.
It's essentially exactly the same as when people refer to the US as 'America'. While the US does not encompass all of the American continent, there is only one political entity called 'America' so it's not ambigious.
Thank you Europe?
No worries brother