I was at a conference the other day and almost watched someone from a large WiFi AP get to fisticuffs with someone from the cellular industry about the upper 6Ghz band.

It got me thinking – I’m always hearing sob stories from the mobile lobby groups, positioning themselves as the most deserving of funding / spectrum / tax breaks, while the WiFi industry just quietly sits there and moves more data than the mobile industry by a significant margin.

So why does WiFi sit there so quietly I wondered?

The answer I came up with was that the WiFi industry sells APs but it doesn’t operate them.

I’m not an analyst, so I don’t know if the combined cost of WiFi APs exceeds the combined cost of building cellular networks, but I recently upgraded my home WiFi, and I paid for the APs and installed them myself, as the end consumer, whereas the cellular industry pays to upgrade it’s own stuff and tries to sweat those assets.

This is the best explanation I can come up with as to why we don’t hear as much from the WiFi lobby. I know ITU operates on getting all parties to agree, but I’d encourage more punch ons regarding spectrum in the future.