The U.S. regulatory agency Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is preparing to vote on a proposal that will open the entire 6GHz band for use by unlicensed users. Officials said the move would help meet the rapidly growing demand for Wi-Fi services.

The plan was first proposed in October 2018 to use 1200MHz of spectrum for unlicensed operations, including low-power use cases for the entire frequency band and high-power operation in the smaller 850MHz range.

Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), emphasized in a statement that by 2022, nearly 60% of global mobile data traffic will be transferred to Wi-Fi networks, he added that the adoption of this proposal will “effectively increase the available spectrum of Wi-Fi by nearly five times.”

“Ultimately, I expect 6GHz unlicensed devices to become part of consumers’ daily lives,” he added in a blog, taking industrial sensors, networked devices, machines, meters and wearable devices as examples.

The move is supported by technology companies such as Apple, Facebook, Google and Qualcomm, as well as the Wi-Fi Alliance and the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association.  These companies believe that this move will stimulate innovation and provide critical relief for the increasingly crowded Wi-Fi band.

However, operators are opposed to this move, and industry organization CTIA believes that this plan missed the opportunity to provide key mid-band licenses for 5G.

CTIA Executive Vice President Brad Gillen pointed out in a statement that the U.S. IF spectrum is lacking and called on the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to “develop a road map to make up for this deficit and then continue to plan to give up. The 1200MHz band in the 6GHz band further limits some of our remaining options. “