Broadband India Forum (BIF) hosted a session of The Digital Dialogues on 6Ghz today. A Report commissioned by BIF on Frequency Sharing for Radio Local Area Networks in the 6 GHz Band in India was also released during the session by Abhay Karandikar, Director, IIT Kanpur. Also present on the occasion as Special Guests were Ted Kaplan, chief executive officer and chief systems engineer, RKF Engineering, Farinaz Edalat, senior scientist, RKF Engineering, Michael Mandall, chief scientist, RKF Engineering, Punit Rathod, lead technical standards, Qualcomm, Kiran Kuchi, dean research and development, IIT Hyderabad,
The session witnessed deliberation by the experts from the industry-academia highlighting the importance of delicensing of the 6GHz spectrum band which will be a critical spectrum to usher in the next-gen Wi-Fi technologies. The Outcome of the Report clearly shows that RLAN (Wi-Fi) operations in India for all three RLAN device classes (LPI, SP and VLP) in the entire 6 GHz band (5925-7125 MHz) will not cause any harmful interference to FSS (Fixed Satellite Services) or FS (Fixed Services viz. Pt-to-Pt. Microwave Links) incumbents.
It will also help provide the additional capacity that is required to complement mobile broadband to achieve the desired Quality of Service and ubiquitous broadband connectivity to end-users through Wi-Fi.
Commenting on the development, Abhay Karandikar, Director, IIT Kanpur, said, “India today has less than a sixth of the quantum of the unlicensed spectrum as compared to developed economies across the globe. One of the most suitable candidate bands for opening up for unlicensed usage to address this scarcity is the 6 GHz band. Opening this band will increase the amount of spectrum available for Wi-Fi by nearly a factor of three, and help improve rural broadband connectivity in India. With room for seven new 160 MHz channels, the 6 GHz band could potentially serve as a multilane superhighway for the latest Wi-Fi devices, all of them using the advanced Wi-Fi technologies viz. Wi-Fi 6/6E, which can help complement 5G by providing high speed and high-capacity broadband services”.
Meanwhile, Kiran Kuchi, Dean Research and Development, IIT Hyderabad, commented, “The 6 GHz band supports new and innovative applications and services, including Wi-Fi, providing a healthy complement to the use of Mobile Broadband. It would spur research and development in the country and lead to a growth in IoT services which would be critical for 5G.”
The Report titled “Frequency Sharing for Radio Local Area Networks in the 6 GHz Band in India”, has been prepared by RKF Engineering Solutions LLC, USA. RKF is reputed to have worked on similar studies with the FCC as well as the ITU, besides several others. The session also emphasised the highlights of the released report with respect to sharing of the 6GHz spectrum band, its benefits to the economy and how the band could be optimally utilised to provide Wi-Fi and other innovative services along with the incumbent services being already provided using the band in India.
Since there are incumbent users in the 6 GHz band in India, it was felt necessary that co-existence studies be carried out about the sharing of the entire 1200 MHz spectrum in the band for Wi-Fi usage along with the existing users, after according full protection in sync with the ITU-RR rules. Hence, this study was undertaken by BIF with the involvement of stakeholders from different and diverse sections of the digital services ecosystem, which included Wi-Fi service providers, satellite players, OEMs, academia, and others.
