Now that we have two months of the new year under our belts, it’s time to look out to the remaining ten months to see what areas of technology are going to have the biggest impacts on our lives. 

Before we look forward, let’s look back to the end of 2022 and see the trends that were forming and how they will affect our world in 2023. 

From a hardware perspective, it was an unexciting year. Both Apple and Samsung refreshed their flagship smartphones, but most reviewers rated the changes as incremental upgrades. Mark Zuckerberg, with his eyes on changing the way people work, introduced a $1,500 virtual-reality headset. But, with only a two-hour battery, most users will strap the new headset on for gaming.

From the online world, we saw huge changes at Twitter after Elon Musk spent $44 billion to buy the company. In the last few months, he has gutted the staff, suspended accounts for some journalists and reinstated several questionable users. All of this had driven Twitter users to seek alternative sites. Another social media company, TikTok, has been banned on government-issued devices at both the federal level and in several states.

Finally, in November, OpenAI introduced a chatbot called ChatGPT. In the first month of its availability, the online AI tool registered more than one million users. Given that is can produce seemingly intelligent responses to questions posed by users. Unfortunately, it can produce totally incorrect responses and couch those responses in wording that appears authoritative. 

This is just a taste of what's in store for us in the upcoming year. Together with the same trends that have persisted over the past few years, like developments in electric cars and the metaverse, we can anticipate many intriguing innovations in A.I.-powered, language-processing technology. Social media might even have a resurgence.

Here are the tech developments that will invade our lives in 2023.

1.New Embedded AI Assistants. Early adopters who were astounded by ChatGPT's verbal proficiency were equally astounded by how inaccurate it can be, especially with basic mathematics. Despite their flaws, it is reasonable to expect that software developers, led by Microsoft, will embed AI technology within familiar apps like Word, Excel, Google Sheets, Craft and others. It's important to note that many of the tasks these new AI modules will tackle will be summaries with a particular interest point in mind. 

Here’s an example. You’re writing a research paper on warfare and you have come across a 100-page essay on World War II. Imagine asking the AI tool to read the full document and highlight the key points regarding a certain facet of the war.

Yoav Shoham, a professor emeritus at Stanford University who contributes to the AI Index, an annual assessment on the development of artificial intelligence, said: "If you want to supplement your writing with a historical fact, you won't need to go and search the web and locate it. With just the click of a button, it'll be there."

2. Virtual reality, a.k.a. the metaverse. Tech firms have been advertising virtual reality headgear for gaming for most of the last decade, including the Quest 2, HTC Vive, and Sony PlayStation VR. Tech companies are making grand claims that these headsets will eventually transform our lives similarly to what smartphones have done so now that technology has advanced to become more potent and wireless.

One person who envisions the metaverse as a place where we may work, collaborate, and create is Mark Zuckerberg of Meta. The business thought the technology could be used as a multitasking tool for employees juggling meetings while skimming through emails and other duties when it unveiled the Quest Pro headgear this year. It remains to be seen whether Meta can realize its vision for the metaverse, given that the device's initial reception was unfavorable.

The VR drumbeat will continue in 2023. It is widely believed that Apple will unveil its first headgear, despite having previously stated that it would never use the term "metaverse." Apple's CEO, Tim Cook, has provided hints about the device even though the business has released no information about it. Cook has expressed his excitement about employing augmented reality to use digital data in the real world.

“You’ll wonder how you lived your life without augmented reality, just like today you wonder: How did people like me grow up without the internet?” Mr. Cook said in September to students in Naples.

Yet, he continued, the technology will not suddenly become significant. The first version of Apple's headgear will probably be used for gaming, just like many others before it, as wireless headsets continue to be large and only used inside.

In other words, 2023 will probably still not be the year that these headsets become widely used, according to Carolina Milanesi, a consumer tech analyst for the research firm Creative Strategies. However, there will be plenty of talk about the metaverse and virtual, augmented, and mixed goggles.

“From a consumer perspective, it’s still very uncertain what you’re spending your thousand bucks on when you’re buying a headset,” she said. “Do I have to do a meeting with V.R.? With or without legs, it’s not a necessity.”

3.Electric Vehicles Beyond Tesla. Last year, Tesla continued to dominate the market for electric vehicles (EVs), but 2023 might mark a turning point for the sector. Since Mr. Musk's takeover of Twitter, Tesla's shares have fallen precipitously this year, and its reputation has suffered. The market's competitiveness is also escalating as EV manufacturers, including Ford Motor, Kia, General Motors, Audi, and Rivian, increase their output of electric vehicles.

Tesla also declared in November that it would allow other electric vehicles to use its charging port design. That would make it possible for owners of other makes of vehicles to refuel at Tesla's charging stations, which are much more numerous than other kinds of chargers.

Also, sales of gas-powered cars will be prohibited in both California and New York by 2035. All of this creates the ideal conditions for the electric car market to grow significantly beyond just one brand in 2023.

4.New Social Media Choices. Most of 2022 saw Twitter in disarray, and 2023 is expected to be no different. Last month, in reaction to the criticism, Mr. Musk conducted a Twitter "poll" asking his fans if they thought he should step down as the company's CEO. Ten million users, or a majority, chose yes, but Mr. Musk said he wouldn't leave until someone "foolish enough to do the job" was found.

TikTok is still in trouble after its Chinese parent firm, ByteDance, revealed that an internal probe had revealed that staff members had improperly collected user data from American users, including that of two journalists. The information puts pressure on the Biden administration to think about imposing even stricter limitations on the app in the US.

Whatever happens to Twitter and TikTok, it's certain that social media is undergoing a significant change. A social network called Mastodon, which resembles Twitter in appearance, has attracted many journalists, techies, and influencers. Yet many younger people have already switched to more recent apps like BeReal, where pals can keep in touch by simultaneously taking and sharing selfies.
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Which new social networking app will be a huge deal in 2023 is a mystery. Mastodon has lost about 30% of the million users they gained because of changes at Twitter. Yet, one thing is for certain: Those who are offended by Twitter are looking for a friendly environment where they can hang around.

Employees and managers alike continue to debate the pros and cons of working remotely. Many workers desire to keep their flexible schedules, lower costs, and improved work-life balance. On the other side, some managers and executives believe that for employees to be fully engaged in their work, they must be present in the workplace.

A Harvard Business Review (HBR) article claims that reducing employees' sense of alienation from their coworkers and the corporate culture is a compelling justification for getting them back to the office. Studies have shown that remote workers are more inclined to leave their jobs when they feel alienated and separated.

These emotions of loneliness can be lessened by encouraging employees to socialize and assigning them a talking companion. For remote and hybrid workers who live in the same city, employers can arrange gatherings to lessen their sense of loneliness.

Many firms argue that returning to the workplace is necessary to boost worker productivity, since people are less productive at home than they are at work.

But the HBR analysis shows just the opposite. Following the COVID-19 lockdowns in April through mid-May 2020, researchers collected metadata from all Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and WebEx meetings (with webcams on or off) from ten sizable international organizations. They then compared this set of six weeks in 2021 and 2022 with the same set of six weeks in 2020.

The study concluded that, while remote work doesn't reduce productivity; it does alter how both employees and employers define productivity. The habits of remote employees changed in 2022 as compared to 2020, when it was novel.

The survey found virtual meetings are more common today. They’re more spontaneous, condensed, and with fewer people. We can assume that as remote working became more ubiquitous, people realized that sometimes it's unnecessary to have a 30-minute to an hour-long meeting.

The HBR study found that meetings were 10 minutes shorter in 2022 than they were in 2020, and 66% of one-on-one meetings were unscheduled. In contrast to the strict timetables organizations followed prior to the epidemic, these statistics can be attributed to managers and employees arranging meetings on an as-needed basis.

Another interesting fact from the research found that meeting attendance decreased by 50%, from an average of 20 participants to 10. According to HBR, this decline was brought on by a rise in one-on-one meetings in 2022, when 42% of meetings were one-on-ones, up from 17% in 2020.

The goal of the HBR study was to refute the claim that remote workers are not interacting with their coworkers. Unplanned one-on-one meetings, according to the report, may take the place of the face-to-face interactions that employees once had at work.
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Although the ways that we work now are different and might change more over time, it's clear that people are still working. Bottom line: Does it really matter where employees are working as long as they finish their tasks on time and meet their targets?

Last month consulting firm McKinsey & Company released their newest edition of their American Opportunity Survey on remote work. There are many statistics from the survey, but the bottom line is that the flexible work arrangements companies put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic are here to stay.

“After more than two years of observing remote work and predicting that flexible working would endure after the acute phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, we view these data as a confirmation that there has been a major shift in the working world and in society itself,” the report states. 

The survey is a joint effort between McKinsey & Company and market-research firm Ipsos. Around 25,000 Americans 18 and older completed the survey and the report shares the number of people working remotely, how many days per week they have flexible arrangements, the gender, ethnicity, and education level of those wanting to work remotely, and more. Another important fact is that respondents come from many different careers, not only with “white collar” jobs.

The first interesting result was that 58% (the equivalent of 92 million people) have the opportunity to work remotely at least one day a week. 35% have the option to work remotely up to 5 days a week. 42% had no opportunity to work from home.

Another striking result from the survey is that when offered, almost every employee would take the opportunity to work remotely. 87% of employees offered at least some remote work embraced the opportunity and spent an average of 3 days per week working from home.

The report stated that flexible work arrangements vary by occupation, age, gender, and income level. Young, educated people with high incomes had the most remote work possibilities. Men (61%) did better than women (52%). 47% of those with incomes between $25,000 and $49,000 had remote opportunities. 75% of those with incomes over $150,000 had remote work opportunities.
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Because the survey was conducted online, McKinsey admits the results could be biased against people with lower incomes, less education, and people living in rural areas, as these groups tend to be underrepresented on the internet. The firm attempted to overcome any possible bias with weighted models. 

Microsoft's new, flat-price version of its Office productivity software will arrive on Oct. 5—the same day Windows 11 begins rolling out, according to a company blog post Thursday. 

Microsoft previously emphasized that while its major focus remains in its subscription offering, Microsoft 365, it will release the onetime purchase Office 2021 for those who aren't ready to move to the cloud.

Office 2021 arrives in two versions: one for commercial users, called Office LTSC (Long Term Servicing Channel), and one for personal use. Office LTSC is available now, the post said, and includes enhanced accessibility features, performance improvements across Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and visual improvements, like dark mode support across apps. It's meant for specialty situations, as opposed to for an entire organization, such as process control devices on the manufacturing floor that are not connected to the internet. 

Meanwhile, Office 2021 for personal use will arrive on Oct. 5, though Microsoft has not yet announced pricing information. 

Both versions of Office will be supported on Windows and Mac, and will ship with the OneNote app. They will also ship both 32- and 64-bit versions, according to the post. Microsoft will support the software for five years and said it does not plan to change the price at the time of release. 

In April 2020, Microsoft transitioned Office 365 into Microsoft 365, a subscription service that added more features to the suite of software tools, but required a monthly payment of $7 for an individual plan or $10 for a family of up to six people (that price will be increasing in March 2022). The company said that its focus will continue to be on the cloud, but it understands that not everyone is ready to take that step. While you can use Microsoft 365 apps like Word, PowerPoint, and Excel online for free with limited functionality, you'll need either a perpetual version or a subscription to take full advantage of their capabilities.
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Some wondered if Office 2019 would be the last perpetual version of the software since Microsoft 365 came along. But then, Microsoft announced its plan for a perpetual release of Office in a September blog post.

The biggest change to Microsoft’s Office documents in decades is coming to life soon, as the company’s Fluid framework arrives in Microsoft Teams, OneNote, Outlook, and Whiteboard. Microsoft first unveiled Fluid last year, showing how the framework allows blocks of Office content to live independently across the web. That idea is now becoming a reality, with collaborative content that can be copied, pasted, and shared with others.

Instead of tables, graphs, and lists that are static and bound to specific documents, Fluid components are collaborative modules that exist across different applications. They will begin showing up in Microsoft Teams first this summer, embeddable in meetings and chats. 

The launch of Fluid documents coincides with employees returning to their offices and the rise of a new hybrid work experience. “We were excited about going hard and fast with Fluid, and then the pandemic hit,” says Jared Spataro, head of Microsoft 365. “So we largely put a lot of our energy onto Teams, and we think of Teams as the scaffolding that creates the connection, but now as we move back to hybrid, we increasingly believe we need more innovation in what I call the canvas that gets collaboration done.”

What Microsoft has created with Fluid is the biggest change to Office in decades. While Fluid seemed like a great future-facing concept during its reveal last year, watching Microsoft demonstrate it recently has really highlighted how transformative this could be. 

Every Microsoft Teams meeting will soon come with a built-in notes experience that’s collaborative. Notes will show up within a Teams meeting or in an Outlook calendar, and anyone on the invite can just start typing away in real time. If you add a task, it immediately syncs to your other tasks across Microsoft 365, and the meeting notes are automatically synced to your Outlook calendar where you can also edit them in real time.

“We want collaboration to be able to start before the meeting starts, so as soon as the invite goes out,” explains Ron Pessner, a director of program management working on Fluid at Microsoft. As the meeting notes in this example are live and real time, you can even copy them into an app like OneNote and you’ll still see everyone making edits to them.

This living Fluid component has the potential to shift how everyone gets work done across Microsoft Teams and Office. It’s impressively quick, with no sync time, just like Google Docs. Microsoft has had similar collaboration tools in Office for a while now, but they’ve been restricted to static documents and nothing on this level of freedom.

“We’re going to be launching the components in Teams this summer,” says Pessner. The meeting notes experience will be available in preview later this year, alongside some tests integrating it into the desktop version of Outlook. It’s likely that as we see Fluid components roll out, they’ll appear first in Teams and on the web parts of Office before making their way to desktop.

Microsoft is also transforming its Whiteboard app into a canvas to host Fluid components. Whiteboard has long existed as Microsoft’s first big collaborative tool, and this summer it’s being overhauled with the help of Fluid.

New collaboration cursors will appear in Whiteboard, letting you see coworkers’ additions to a document in real time. There’s even a new virtual laser pointer that you can use to get people’s attention, or reaction stickers to make the Whiteboard canvas feel a little more alive.

Fluid components like tables or task lists can also be embedded into Whiteboard, and the entire app will now look and feel the same across all devices and platforms. With Whiteboard, you could almost use the app as a dashboard to watch colleagues editing Fluid components in real time.
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This is just the start of Fluid making its way to Microsoft 365, and we expect to see more throughout this year and beyond. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft integrates Fluid more deeply into both Teams and Outlook, the main communications tools used by businesses that rely on the Office suite. If Microsoft gets the integration of Fluid right, it will forever change the way documents are created, shared, and, ultimately, how work gets done.

Amazon plans to expand its virtual health service benefit to all its U.S. employees this summer while also making it available to other companies.

Eighteen months ago, the tech giant announced it was piloting a new virtual health service benefit for employees and their families in the Seattle region called Amazon Care.

The service offers virtual visits, in-person primary care visits at patients' homes or offices and prescription delivery. The on-demand healthcare service enables employees to connect with medical professionals via chat or video conference, typically in less than 60 seconds, and eliminates lengthy wait and travel times to get medical attention, Amazon said in a press release.

Starting Wednesday, Amazon Care is available to serve other Washington-based companies. Beginning this summer, Amazon Care will expand its virtual care to companies and Amazon employees in all 50 states. Amazon Care’s in-person service will expand to Washington, D.C., Baltimore and other cities in the coming months, the company said.

Services include video care, in-app text chat with clinicians, mobile care visits, prescription delivery from a care courier and in-person care, where Amazon Care can dispatch a medical professional to a patient’s home for services ranging from routine blood draws to listening to a patient’s lungs.

Officials said Amazon Care will be able to help with urgent issues like colds, allergies, infections, minor injuries, preventive health consults, vaccines, lab work, sexual health services like contraception and sexually transmitted infection testing and general health questions. 

Patients also can access preventive care such as annual vaccinations, health screenings and lifestyle advice. The service also supports patients’ wellness needs including nutrition, pre-pregnancy planning, sexual health, help to quit smoking and more, the tech giant said.

Amazon and other companies are increasingly focused on the home as a site of care. The company joined with Intermountain Healthcare and Ascension along with other health systems and home care companies to form the Moving Health Home coalition, which aims to change the way policymakers think about the home as a site of clinical service. The group is lobbying Congress to make permanent changes to home health care reimbursement policies.

Amazon officials said the program has received positive feedback from employees as the service is uniquely focused on patients and their changing needs. During shutdowns forced by the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors’ offices were seeing fewer children for pediatric vaccines, so Amazon Care quickly adjusted its services to offer the vaccines in families’ homes, the company said.

Gina Baird, whose spouse works at Amazon, participated in the Amazon Care pilot program when her three-year-old daughter woke up at 2 a.m. with a terrible cough.

"Of course we were worried about COVID-19 and certainly did not want to go to an urgent care center or emergency room if we could avoid it,” said Baird in a statement in the Amazon press release. “Using Amazon Care, we were able to connect with a clinician in under a minute who provided medical advice that helped us get through the night. She also prescribed a medication that was delivered to our doorstep by 9 a.m. the next day. Thanks to Amazon Care, we were able to manage her illness without ever having to leave the house.”

Ashley Bennett, senior operations manager at Amazon’s fulfillment center in Kent, Washington, said the on-demand healthcare services offered by Amazon Care make her feel that she has more control over the system.

"It’s at my leisure. That’s power. I’m not waiting on someone else to show up on their schedule," Bennett said in a statement. 

Amazon has been rapidly expanding its reach in the healthcare space, most notably in 2018 with its acquisition of online pharmacy PillPack. In November, the tech giant launched Amazon Pharmacy, the long-anticipated online storefront that will enable customers to purchase prescription drugs online and have them shipped to their homes.

Amazon started an ambitious health tech startup, Haven, with JPMorgan Chase and Berkshire Hathaway in 2018, but that venture shuttered in January.
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The tech giant has instead pivoted to address healthcare costs by focusing on employee healthcare through primary care models. Amazon teamed up with trendy tech-enabled primary care group Crossover Health to launch health centers in five major regions—Dallas-Fort Worth, Phoenix, Louisville, Detroit and two California metro areas—to serve Amazon employees and their families.

Microsoft, IBM, Hyperledger, and other technology and financial organizations have formed an alliance to develop global standards for tokenized ecosystems. 

Microsoft’s principal architect, Marley Gray, and Enterprise Ethereum Alliance’s former executive director, Ron Resnick, recently launched the InterWork Alliance (IWA), a nonprofit organization aimed at bringing global standards to the token-based ecosystem.

At launch, the IWA included more than 28 blockchain, technology, and financial organizations from around the world, including Microsoft, Chainlink, Hyperledger, IBM, Nasdaq, Accenture, and others.

The IWA indicated that startups presently working on tokenized ecosystems are mostly focusing on their individual solutions and marketing their platforms to other businesses.

Setting global standards, it said, will help focus this wide-scale innovation to make a collective impact on businesses. Resnick, IWA’s president, stated:

“For this approach to work, standards are urgently needed around defining what a token is and how its contractual behaviors will work.”

Common Frameworks. InterWork Alliance plans to work on three different frameworks of global standards for tokenized ecosystems. First, the Token Taxonomy Framework will provide a common language and toolset so that multiple parties can agree on the same terms that define a token and its use. 

The InterWork Framework will help businesses compose multiparty contracts from standard, globally recognized clauses set by the IWA. Lastly, the Analytics Framework will help companies to analyze multiparty deals and utilize artificial intelligence services and market-driven data reporting.

With these, the IWA will eventually work on interoperability between decentralized applications from different blockchain networks. 

Standardization for Wider Adoption. Organizations involved with the IWA are highly optimistic about how bringing global standards to the token ecosystem will further the adoption of distributed business models.

Gray noted that providing indstry participants with token standards for a variety of distributed technology use cases can help foster interoperability and drive widespread adoption. 

Brian Behlendorf, the executive director of Hyperledger (an IWA member), said:

“Standards play a critical role in the evolution and adoption of any emerging technology. Distributed applications and token-based services will require established frameworks that assure solutions interwork on the business level, regardless of underlying technology platforms.”
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“The Alliance will help establish a foundation not only for technology and business but for the changing tokenization landscape as well. A platform-neutral alliance is critical for the entire industry,” said Nitin Gaur, the director of IBM WW Digital Asset Labs.

Google might be about to disrupt the business card — and it’s starting with a trial in India.
In a new blog post, the company announced it is rolling out its ‘people cards’ across the country. It’s like a business card that will appear on top of Search when someone looks up your name. Google first began trialing the feature about six months ago, and it seems it’s finally ready to make it more widely available.

Up until now, you could only find detailed information about celebs and well-known public figures on Search, but the latest change will make it possible for civilians to control what people see when someone searches their name.

“If you’re a business professional, performer, or anyone looking to build up your online presence, you might have a website, social profiles, and other information spread across many sites,” Google product manager Lauren Clark said. “If you’re just getting started, you may not have a website or much of an online presence at all.”

“Today, we are solving these challenges with a new feature called people cards,” she added. “It’s like a virtual visiting card, where you can highlight your existing website or social profiles you want people to visit, plus other information about yourself that you want others to know.”

To create a ‘people card,’ you need to simply log into your Google account, search for your name or “add me to Search,” and then follow the prompt. You can then choose a profile pic (it will default to your Google account avatar), craft a description for yourself, and also add social media links and contact details.

In case you were worried about your privacy, the feature seems to be opt-in – and you can always delete your card if you so wish.

Google will allow only one card per account to prevent malicious actors from impersonating real people. It’ll also ask you to authenticate your account with a phone number. In case fraudulent cards slip through the cracks, there’ll also be a dedicated button to report them.

Alright, but what about people who share the same name, you might wonder. Well, Google says there will be a module that lets you compare people based on their location and profession, which should make it easier to find the right person.
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That said, there are specific challenges ahead of it. The fact that Google highlighted the numerous measures it has taken to prevent abuse makes it abundantly clear that the company foresees certain issues with the new feature. If it manages to stop users from gaming the system to gain an unfair advantage, ‘people cards’ can kill the business card as we know it.

Zoom has reversed its controversial decision to restrict access to end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for some users and will now offer the feature to customers of both its free and premium services.

The video conferencing app said it had consulted with rights groups, child safety advocates, government representatives, encryption experts, and its security council to gather feedback.

“We are also pleased to share that we have identified a path forward that balances the legitimate right of all users to privacy and the safety of users on our platform,” the firm’s CEO Eric Yuan said in a recent blog post.
“This will enable us to offer E2EE as an advanced add-on feature for all of our users around the globe – free and paid – while maintaining the ability to prevent and fight abuse on our platform.”

Users of the free service will be required to authenticate in a one-off process with information such as their phone number, for the platform to “reduce the mass creation of abusive accounts,” Yuan added.

The news came as rights groups, tech firms, and internet users petitioned the firm to reverse its policy on E2EE.

They argued that E2EE is too essential to be a premium feature, especially in the context of global protests against racial injustice and government oppression. The technology protects activists, journalists, and other vulnerable parts of the population from government repression and surveillance, as well as from cyber-criminals, they said.

Mozilla welcomed the news. The tech non-profit, which wrote an open letter to Zoom earlier in the week signed by tens of thousands of internet users, argued that E2EE should always be the default setting, not a luxury.

“We’re heartened that Zoom listened to consumers, especially at a time when millions of people are relying on the platform to stay connected amid the pandemic and to organize in support of Black lives,” it said in a statement.
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“Zoom’s decision is part of an emerging trend: Consumers are demanding more of the technology products and services they use every day. And companies are changing their products to meet these demands.”

During the Federal Communications Commission’s monthly meeting last week, it ratified unlicensed use of the 6GHz radio frequency spectrum in the USA. This decision opens the way for the proposed Wi-Fi 6E standard to move forward.

Industry giants Intel and Broadcom began planning for this move two years ago. Broadcom released its first Wi-Fi 6E chipset in February, targeted at mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. Intel hasn’t released any actual products using it yet, but an Intel rep has now confirmed that they’re on the way.

Intel’s spokesperson said that the company’s own working prototype devices were part of the presentations given initially to the FCC to facilitate the decision-making process and described Intel’s and Broadcom’s work on devices before the FCC’s decision as a risky but rewarding two-year investment on both companies’ parts.

The Rules So Far. Although the FCC was widely expected to ratify unlicensed use of the 6GHz spectrum in general unanimously, the associated usage rules were less certain. Until last week, the 6GHz spectrum was for licensed use only – but that doesn’t mean it isn’t already in use.

Licensed use of the 6GHz spectrum includes point-to-point microwave backhaul (used by commercial wireless providers), telephone and utility communication, and control links. It also includes Cable Television Relay Links – which are mobile links used by newscasters doing onsite live reporting – and radio astronomy.

The truly excellent news for Wi-Fi 6E backers – and future users – is that the FCC has ratified unlicensed use of the entire 1.2GHz spectrum for low-power indoor devices. Separating unlicensed outdoor and high-powered usage from indoor and low power allows for the maximum utility of spectrum in the most common (and most crowded) Wi-Fi environments while preserving the utility of incumbent licensed users.

FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly’s statement released last week discussed this in greater detail, making it clear that Automatic Frequency Control (AFC) – the type of technology that limits the use of 5GHz on DFS frequencies in modern Wi-Fi – will not be required for most devices on the 6GHz band:

All of these enormous benefits can only be realized by authorizing both standard-powered operations and Low-Power-Indoor ( LPI) devices, which, unlike the higher-power systems, do not need an AFC.

While there has been much debate about whether LPI use can cause interference to fixed networks, electronic news gathering, and other incumbent applications, the studies in the record and the analysis of the talented professionals in the Office of Engineering and Technology are quite clear: unlicensed use – with the technical rules set in this item – can be introduced without causing harmful interference.

Commissioner Geoffrey Starks points out that even those who aren’t early adopters of Wi-Fi 6E technology stand to benefit since those who do will compete less for available 5GHz spectrum:

Even for those who can’t afford the new equipment that will take advantage of the new spectrum and the latest iteration of Wi-Fi, speeds for their devices should increase as existing Wi-Fi traffic moves to the new spectrum. Wi-Fi channels within their homes [will] become less congested, and data flows more freely.

The FCC’s vote to ratify unlicensed 6GHz use was bi-partisan and unanimous, with supporting statements made by organizations including the Internet & Television Association, Charter, Comcast, Public Knowledge, and the Wi-Fi Alliance.

Still to Come. With the general use of 6GHz secured, the FCC expects to see great offloads of current mobile traffic to local Wi-Fi – Commissioner O’Rielly cited a Wi-Fi Forward assessment when claiming that 76% of all mobile traffic will be offloaded to Wi-Fi in the next two years.

Not all of O’Rielly’s suggestions were ratified at last week’s meeting. In particular, the commission is still deliberating extensions to allow Very Low Power (VLP) devices to operate outdoors without the use of automated frequency control. This would encourage the use of 6GHz for wearable devices, such as VR headsets and smartwatches, which would only need extremely short-range connections to linked devices.
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With usable rules for unlicensed 6GHz spectrum use defined, analysts expect to see Wi-Fi 6E devices beginning to become available to consumers in late 2020 or early 2021.