from Hacker News

Senate GOP budget bill has little-noticed provision that could hurt your Wi-Fi

by spenvo on 6/30/25, 8:04 PM with 7 comments

• by SoftTalker on 6/30/25, 8:25 PM

  It's really frustrating that bills can include so many unrelated issues. It just makes it impossible for representatives to vote for or against individual provisions. It will never happen but I'd like to see a requirement that bills be limited to one or at least closely related issues. If you want to allocate some wireless spectrum for commercial use, vote on that and that alone. It won't happen because it's too easy for each representative and senator to get their pet causes buried deep in some massive omnibus bill where it won't get much notice.

• by piperswe on 6/30/25, 8:22 PM

  How would they re-allocate ISM space? 6GHz Wi-Fi is widely deployed enough that it would be just about impossible to force an update to every single device to stop using part of the band.

  EDIT: looks like it's not ISM, maybe they'd continue allowing Very Low Power devices on 6GHz while auctioning out higher power licenses?

• by gruez on 6/30/25, 8:31 PM

  At the risk of sounding like a mobile industry shill, what practical use case is there for 6 ghz wifi? The article mentions:

  >Calabrese said he expects the biggest impact of reducing Wi-Fi's use of 6 GHz at "busy venues such as schools, airports, sporting arenas, shopping malls, all the different places where many people gather together and try to get on the same access points and unlicensed spectrum through Wi-Fi."

  but I don't think I can remember the last time I connected to wifi at some sort of public venue. In most cases I'm there to do something, and don't mind burning a bit of my data allotment to avoid going through the hassle of connecting to wifi. Even at places like airports I don't think bandwidth was ever an issue. I'm typically not doing bandwidth intensive tasks like downloading Steam games.

  The only other use case I can think of is wifi in apartment buildings, but most uses of home internet don't really require fast speeds. 4K streaming only takes around 25-30 Mb/s. Bandwidth heavy stuff like game updates can be done using wired, and in my experience 5 ghz's penetrating power isn't good enough that the airwaves end up getting congested.

• by tedunangst on 6/30/25, 8:24 PM

  Extremely hard working "could".