Yesterday a friend of mine asked me this question: “Why does Wi-Fi use unlicensed spectrum whereas WiMax, GSM and other cellular networks use licensed?”. That was a good question which I haven’t thought of before. I thought briefly and realized that I couldn’t come up with one answer. Could it be because of:
- Wi-Fi operates on that specific frequency band that happens to be for free (2.4GHz)?
- To make Wi-Fi a more cost effecient network so that more users can benefit from it (since licensed networks costs more)?
- Since it operates in a small range, it doesn’t need to be licensed?
- To make it easy to deploy?
- High level security is unneeded, since unlicensed networks is unprotected by the government and do not have the authentication and security that licensed networks have?
- The technology itself won’t work on any licensed frequncies?
- The government?
After noticing I gave too many answers, I knew that there must be a better clearer answer to that, so I decided to look it up..
At wikipedia they say: “The regulations for unlicensed spread spectrum enabled the development of Wi-Fi, its onetime competitor HomeRF, Bluetooth, and many other products such as some types of cordless telephones.” So I guess that means that if it were to operate on a licensed frequency it wouldn’t of have developed the way it currently has.
In the mid 80’s the FCC made the unlicensed spectrum available and many countries followed as well which now allows the technology to be used anywhere in the world regardless of service provider and manufacturer.
At WiMax.com an article called Licensed or Unlicensed Spectrum: What are the options? shows the differences between licensed and unlicensed frequencies, the different frequency bands and their usages and some of the technologies used to prevent interference in unlicensed networks.
After reading a couple of other articles I noticed that some of my answers are valid reasons to why Wi-Fi took advantage of the unlicensed spectrum and perhaps there is no one reason for it. Do you have anything else to add?
