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The Glen Echo Group is back in the swing of event hosting and coordinating: Happy to take up our mantle as conveners of the tech community once again, we kicked off our first in-person event for WifiForward in collaboration with the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) on Thursday, March 3 at the CTA Innovation House.

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What better way to celebrate the return of in-person events than to gather, champion and advocate for what kept us all together through social distancing and the pandemic — Wi-Fi and unlicensed spectrum!

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What’s spectrum—especially unlicensed spectrum!—you might ask? It’s the airwaves that allow Wi-Fi and other wireless technologies to operate. Learn something new about it in “Spectrum 101” here!

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Officially named “From Garage Door Openers to Wi-Fi: The Value of Unlicensed Spectrum,” our event brought together big-hitters Rep. Bob Latta (OH-5) and Rep. Jerry McNerney (CA-9) of the Wi-Fi Caucus (there’s a caucus for everything!) as well as FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr.

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The event ran without a hitch! Our panel of industry experts — Microsoft’s Paula Boyd, Cisco’s Mary Brown and Broadcom’s Robert Hoffman moderated by CTA’s J. David Grossman — bantered about the economic and social benefits of opening the 6 GHz band for unlicensed use.

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“Unlicensed spectrum drives the U.S. economy. Think about what would have happened if we didn’t have it during the pandemic.” - Rep. Bob Latta

“Think where [we] were 10 years and five years ago, and where we are today. We have a great reliance on unlicensed technology…and that’s the future. It’s a necessity and everything revolves around it. All revolves around one thing—if we don’t have that spectrum out there, it's useless. It’s our private sector that leads the way and we have Congress to help foster it. The U.S. needs to be a leader… [it] needs to be developed and used here to keep America moving forward.” - Rep. Bob Latta

“The value of unlicensed spectrum is absolutely undeniable!” - Rep. Jerry McNerney

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Check out more details on the event and photos of everyone at the WifiForward website.

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