The Tech Blog

Small good news for wireless in India this week. The government has finally delicensed part of the 6 GHz band for Wi-Fi at home. I see a new rule came about this week to open up 5925-6425MHz for low power indoor and very low power outdoor devices on a licence free, shared basis. This means routers and clients that support 6 GHz can now legally use it in India alongwith 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz.

6GHz gives Wi-Fi 6E/7 a lot more clean spectrum than 5 GHz. We have 500MHz Bandwidth free because of the de-licensing. That is still big enough for three 160 MHz channels (3×160 = 480 MHz, plus guard) or one 320 MHz channel with some spectrum left. Wider channels means faster traffic. That lets a good router plus a 6GHz phone or laptop move traffic faster with less interference when both ends support it. Notification says low power indoor access points can radiate up to 30 dBm(1W) Radiated Power, while very low power outdoor devices are capped to 14 dBm. Emissions outside 5925-6425MHz must sit below −27dBm/MHz, so there cannot be any power leakage into neighbouring bands. Equipment also needs integrated antennas and Indian type approval, so no giant external 6GHz sticks.

All of this means if you have a home server and connected devices like NAS or TVs, you can now get superfast speeds. But Physics still applies here. Compared to 5GHz, you see approx 1-2 dB extra loss through a wall for 6GHz, which means about 10-20% less usable range. Meaning, ideally you might want to have direct Line of light or an access point in the same room for full speed benefits. If you have those high-end routers I would configure all the high bandwidth devices dedicated on this 6GHz channel and others on a separate longer range 2.4GHz channel.

Many recent phones, laptops and routers already ship with 6 GHz capable radios, but had the band disabled in India. Most likely you will see firmware updates from these vendors to enable the 6GHz bands in India, though some gear will probably never be updated. So be on the lookout.