Speaking at a conference hosted by the Wireless Access Providers' Association Wapa on Tuesday, DSA president Martha Suarez said cellular companies have many bands already assigned to them with more likely to follow, while Wi-Fi has not received new spectrum in more than 20 years.
"I have to be clear, we are not against having more spectrum for IMT mobile services," Suarez told Wapaloza conference attendees. "It's just that there are already so many.
"There is the 800MHz, 900MHz, 1.8GHz, 2.5GHz, 3.25GHz and even millimetre-wave already reserved for mobile services. There are so many bands that are still being identified for IMT So, we are convinced that the best use of the entire 6GHz band is for licence-exempt services."
The battle over which services will be assigned access to the 6GHz band has manifested in different ways around the world. A fight is now brewing in Europe between the Wi-Fi industry and mobile operators over the band , with countries taking divergent views about how the frequencies in the band should be carved up.
However, recent trends have seen them struggle to realise a return on their investments in infrastructure and spectrum. Contributing to this is a decades-long decline in voice revenue as lower-margin data services came to dominate the landscape.