Lower frequency Wifi

[Valley_]

So I've noticed that higher frequency WiFi is becoming more and more popular. And one thing I was curious about was, why can't the wireless industry focus more on improving lower frequency connections as lower frequency connections are harder to interrupt with walls and metal etc...It might be a stupid question, but I don't know. Hoping someone could explain it to me  

[W-L]

3 minutes ago, GlynDavies said:

So I've noticed that higher frequency WiFi is becoming more and more popular. And one thing I was curious about was, why can't the wireless industry focus more on improving lower frequency connections as lower frequency connections are harder to interrupt with walls and metal etc...It might be a stupid question, but I don't know. Hoping someone could explain it to me  

Those bands are designated for other use and you would be interfering with the signals from that frequency, there is a very specific band that consumer electronics are allowed to operate within. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_spectrum

[Donut417]

3 hours ago, GlynDavies said:

So I've noticed that higher frequency WiFi is becoming more and more popular. And one thing I was curious about was, why can't the wireless industry focus more on improving lower frequency connections as lower frequency connections are harder to interrupt with walls and metal etc...It might be a stupid question, but I don't know. Hoping someone could explain it to me  

Look up 802.11 AH. It will use 900 Mhz which was previous used in Cordless phones, thought the standard has not be released yet. The issue is, speed wise it can do maybe 30 Mbps. The higher the frequencies the faster the speed generally. But as it stands its up to the government of what ever country you live in to make the rules regarding wireless spectrum use. In my case its the Federal Communications Commission. 

 

It just like here in the US on 2.4 Ghz we can only use channels 1-11, there are 14 channels I believe. Some countries use some of the other channels. 

[dj_ripcord]

Frequency is directly correlated to speed. Think of it this way, frequency is the number of cycles per second. In this case, we're speaking radio waves. That frequency also determines the wavelength, which correlates to how well the radio waves can penetrate walls. We know that lower frequencies can penetrate walls much better than higher frequencies. But the problem arises when you see the kinds of speed differences between the two. 2.4Ghz used to be the common frequency for Wi-Fi and It still is, but 5Ghz is more preferred now. 2.4Ghz radio is capable of about 22mbps average when on 802.11g protocol. 802.11ac uses 5Ghz and is capable of 1.3 gigabits  per second (or 1300 Mbps) That's a big difference. But guess what? ac can't get through walls as easy.

 

This is why we use high frequencies instead of low frequencies. The low frequencies can go further, but act as a bottleneck against throughput.