2.4GHz wifi is not suitable for two big reasons, interference and low bandwidth. 2.4GHz wifi in any kind of suburban or city environment and sometimes even in rural will be congested with other networks, microwaves, other appliances, etc causing massive speed degradation or fluctuations. The range of 2.4GHz is just too large for all the equipment that uses it in today’s world. In my previous apartment complex for example my phone could see 35 distinct 2.4GHz wifi networks while only 3 at max can operate without interfering with each other. In that same building i could only see 13 5GHz networks. Which brings me to the second issue of bandwidth
2.4GHz at least here in the US only has channels 1, 6, and 11 that will not interfere with each other. if anyone puts their network between these three channels it will knock out both the one below and the one above. Channel 3 would interfere with both channels 1 and 6 for example. By going up to 5GHz you have many more free channels, fewer networks competing for those channels, and higher bandwidth channels allowing for much higher throughput. 2.4GHz allows 40MHz wide channels which in isolation would offer ~400mbps, but you will never see that in the real world.
Personally, i think OEMs should just stop including it or have it disabled by default and only enable it in an “advanced settings” area.
Edit: I am actually really surprised at how unpopular this opinion appears to be.
Wifi for rural services should be replaced with cellular connections. Let’s pivot
I’d rather not outsource my network infrastructure.
You mean like fixed wireless access? Because T-Mobile does that. And in my previous house that was very rural, it worked very well. I was able to get 100 megabits a second over the cellular network where my neighbors were only getting 10 megabits per second on DSL. And that’s all that was available.
Sorta, there’s a point to point frequency already were you using 4g+/5g for that previous one? Or was it the 2.5Ghz spectrum that the original doc I listed was using?
Either way, talk of 6g is already here. Let’s reassign 2.5Ghz
6G and wireless spectrum, at least in that regard, have very little to do with each other. T-Mobile is making very good use of that 2.5 GHz spectrum for offering very serious capacity for home internet and cellular usage.
Tough, more wires for the few homes that do benefit, more wifi for all. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few
Fair point.