Australia approves Wi-Fi 6E – lower 6GHz band with initial 500Mhz of spectrum

Catching up with news from the international Wi-Fi Alliance I noticed that on 3 March, the Australia Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) officially opened the lower 6 GHz band (5925-6425 MHz) on a license-exempt basis.

As well as authorizing low power services indoors, the decision allows very low power portable operations, enabling Australians to use Wi-Fi 6E to connect wearables, such as AR headsets, on the move.

New 6Ghz Wi-Fi Spectrum

A new Wi-Fi 6E router/mesh system will have 3 bands your devices can connect to: 2.4Ghz, 5Ghz and 6Ghz.

I would prefer the option of having a different SSID for each band but many router/mesh system manufacturers will probably default to one SSID and band steering.

The ACMA is also considering opening the upper 700Mhz of 6 GHz band as well (for a total range of 5925-7125 MHz) for Wi-Fi 6E like the USA and Canada have.

At the moment it looks like the EU may only approve the bottom 500Mhz of 6Ghz band for Wi-Fi6E so Wi-Fi 6E products sold Worldwide may need 2 different physical versions or ask you to choose your country during the setup process.

For early adopters

Something to bear in mind when buying a Wi-Fi 6E router/mesh system is that slow 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi has the largest coverage, 5Ghz Wi-Fi 6 offers substantially less coverage area and 6ghz Wi-Fi 6E will have about 10% less coverage area again.

You can probably expect some Wi-Fi 6E routers and mesh systems to be sold by the usual big players such as Netgear, D-Link, TP-Link and ASUS in Australia later in 2022 but they will be strictly for early adopters for two reasons.

Firstly if you don’t own any Wi-Fi 6E products like phones, laptops, tablets etc then you won’t be able to make use of your router/mesh system extra Wi-Fi 6E 6ghz band connectivity.

Very few Wi-Fi 6E phones are available in Australia at present, I’m only aware of the Google Pixel 6 Pro and Motorola Edge 30 Pro.

Secondly, you can expect Wi-Fi 6E router/mesh systems in Australia to be very expensive. My guess is $1000-2000+ depending on how many access points are in the system.

This means they’re only likely to be purchased by people who “must have” the bleeding edge technology and have plenty of spare cash in their budget for consumer electronics.