 Welcome to the World Radio Communication Conference 2023, WRC 23, being held in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, where I've got the great pleasure of enjoying the studio by Mr. Alex Roitblat, who is the Vice President of Regulatory Affairs for the Wi-Fi Alliance. Alex, welcome to the studio. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Now perhaps we could talk a little bit about the Wi-Fi Alliance. What is it and why is WRC 23 important to it? Well, Wi-Fi Alliance is an organization that essentially brings Wi-Fi to the world. We are advancing the technology and providing the seamless connectivity that everyone enjoys with Wi-Fi technology. We also facilitate the certification of Wi-Fi devices to ensure the compatibility between the latest device you may buy and devices you may have had for years. So we have a number of certification programs that ensure that compatibility. Wi-Fi Alliance has over 900 members around the world. So basically every facet of the Wi-Fi ecosystem is represented in Wi-Fi Alliance from our member companies. Excellent. WRC is all about spectrum allocation. I wanted to ask you what spectrum areas are of interest to your association and how do they impact the future development of Wi-Fi services around the world? I think that this conference actually exemplifies the need for Wi-Fi because we have over 4000 delegates that are all enjoying the Wi-Fi connectivity and I can't even imagine how this conference would progress in the absence of Wi-Fi or if Wi-Fi were underperforming. So I think it's truly amazing that we could gather this many people from around the world and all of them would be capable of getting this Wi-Fi connectivity and the capability to participate in the conference. But what's important for Wi-Fi is that over time, over the last 25 years, Wi-Fi has become an essential component of the telecom infrastructure. And as such, its performance is critically important for developed countries as well as developing countries. I think everyone in the world is relying on Wi-Fi. In fact, Wi-Fi carries over 80% of the internet traffic worldwide. But to deliver this capability, to deliver this connectivity, Wi-Fi needs access to spectrum especially in light of the fact that we were seeing new use cases that require extremely high data throughput and extremely low latency. To deliver this kind of connectivity, Wi-Fi needs access to bandwidth or spectrum. And at this conference in particular, the conference is considering the future of the 6 GHz band, as you may know on their agenda, I don't want that too. 6 GHz is critically important to the future of Wi-Fi because this is where the Wi-Fi is developing. There is no alternative spectrum for Wi-Fi technology. Right now, Wi-Fi is moving forward. We're deploying products. We have already over 2,000 products on the market with 6 GHz Wi-Fi in them. Every flagship smartphone has 6 GHz Wi-Fi. Most of the routers that you would buy right now have Wi-Fi, television sets, pretty much any appliance, electronic appliance that you would go for would have a 6 GHz Wi-Fi build-in. But to support that capability, we need access to 6 GHz because that's where the current generation of Wi-Fi and future generation of Wi-Fi will deliver the ultimate performance. And we're here to share with the world the benefit of Wi-Fi and to explain to the delegates how important making sure that the 6 GHz is available for Wi-Fi accesses. And currently, Wi-Fi is running on two specific spectrum bands, is that right? Well, Wi-Fi started out at 2.4 GHz and then we moved on to 5 GHz. But neither of those spectrum bands are optimal for Wi-Fi performance because they don't have the bandwidth. There are very limited number of channels at 2.4 and at 5 GHz as well. And of course, as an unlicensed technology, Wi-Fi shares spectrum with all kinds of other devices, including Bluetooth and garage door openers and toys and all that making it quite challenging. Whereas 6 GHz offers this green field spectrum where Wi-Fi can operate, but importantly, while protecting incumbent services. So as we have seen at this conference, there are a number of critically important services in the 6 GHz bands such as satellites, fixed service and others, and Wi-Fi can coexist with these services. They don't need to move out if Wi-Fi moves in. In fact, Wi-Fi operates in a way that protects them and doesn't encumber their operations. I'm sure there would be nobody who would disagree to say, I want nice, clean, clear, faultless, seamless Wi-Fi because I think that's one of the major complaints of this century. In terms of the future, is Wi-Fi the technology of the future when it comes to delivering connectivity on mobile devices? Well, yes, and that's a very good question. So we're seeing a number of trends. So as I already mentioned, one trend is offloading most of the mobile traffic on Wi-Fi because when we're indoors, our phones automatically switch over to Wi-Fi. My phone is on Wi-Fi, I'm sure yours is as well. And so, considering that we spend most of our lives indoors, we spend most of our lives connected through Wi-Fi and so Wi-Fi is already delivering over 80% of traffic. But we're seeing applications that are coming online that require extremely low latencies like virtual reality or artificial intelligence or cloud computing. And those technologies cannot be supported, or in most use cases, they cannot be supported by a network that has connectivity maybe several kilometers away from the end user because simply propagation time from the base station to the end user is too long for that low latency. So these applications can only be delivered through local connectivity and Wi-Fi is the ultimate solution for that because everyone has it, it's readily available and it's quite inexpensive. And so we are seeing a trend towards that type of connectivity. And in terms of the outcomes of this conference, are there any particular outcomes that you would like to see emerge from WRC 23? Well, so we have already seen a number of countries around the world take action on a 6 GHz band because they prioritize Wi-Fi performance and they understand that the future depends on Wi-Fi connectivity. So 6 GHz is absolute priority for our industry and we're hopeful that delegates at this conference will recognize how important Wi-Fi is and would also prioritize Wi-Fi access in the 6 GHz by making the right decision to ensure that all technologies can operate in 6 GHz including Wi-Fi. Alex Royd, Vice President of Regulatory Affairs for the Wi-Fi Alliance, thank you so much for joining us in the studio. Well, thank you for having me, it was a pleasure speaking with you. It's been fascinating, thanks very much indeed. Thanks. And if you've enjoyed this interview, then why not check out our other interviews on our YouTube channel as well as podcasts on our podcast channel SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts for further information, visit our website at www.itu.int. Thanks for tuning in.