A Wi-Fi 7 router advertises 320 MHz channels. The standard does define them. Whether your country has released enough spectrum for even one is a separate question, and across South East Asia the answer is no.
Six ASEAN countries have opened the 6 GHz band to Wi-Fi. Every one of them opened the bottom 500 megahertz and stopped. The United States released all 1,200. China released none of it to Wi-Fi at all, and said so first.
Who has opened what
| Country | Released | Range | In force |
|---|---|---|---|
| Singapore | Lower band | 5945–6425 MHz | 1 Sep 2023 |
| Thailand | Lower band | 5925–6425 MHz | 29 Apr 2023 |
| Philippines | Lower band | 5925–6425 MHz | signed 5 Jul 2024 |
| Indonesia | Lower band | 5925–6425 MHz | 7 Feb 2025 |
| Vietnam | Lower band | 5925–6425 MHz | 15 May 2025 |
| Malaysia | Lower band | 5925–6425 MHz | 24 Jun 2025 |
| Brunei | No | — | — |
| Cambodia | Could not be established | — | — |
Two of those rows need their honesty declared. The Philippine circular takes effect fifteen days after a newspaper publication it doesn't name, so its start date is unknown. Cambodia is a gap: we could find no published national allocation table or licence-exempt list for the band. This means the allocation is undocumented, not explicitly forbidden. Brunei, by contrast, is a confirmed no — its spectrum plan allocates the whole range to fixed, fixed-satellite and mobile services, and its short-range device list runs to 5.850 GHz and then jumps to DECT.
Singapore starts twenty megahertz above its neighbours
Five of the six begin at 5925. Singapore begins at 5945, holding the bottom slice back for urban rail systems. Europe drew its line in the same place and for the same reason — the European decision's own recitals explain that coexistence studies found communication-based train control needed the guard band, which is why the EU allocation is 5945 to 6425 rather than the 5925 its original mandate proposed.
So the two jurisdictions that start higher both did it for trains. This small difference has a concrete cost. That twenty megahertz represents one 20 MHz channel that cannot be bonded into anything wider.
Nobody in the region runs the coordination database
The American release has three power classes, and the top one — standard power, at full outdoor strength — is permitted only where an Automated Frequency Coordination system can check the location against incumbent microwave links first. Seven such systems were approved for commercial operation in February 2024.
No ASEAN country has authorised anything of the kind. Every release in the table is two fixed power classes with rules attached rather than a database: an indoor class around 200 to 250 milliwatts, and a very low power class at 25 milliwatts that may go outdoors. Singapore's regulator said explicitly that it chose those two classes to avoid a more complex interference-management approach.
These regulators don't use American terms. Indonesia's regulation does write "Low Power Indoor (LPI)" and "Very Low Power (VLP)". Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines use none of those terms — they publish two power rows with indoor and outdoor conditions attached, and Malaysia's instrument does not contain the words Wi-Fi, WLAN or RLAN anywhere in its seventy-five pages. The band is authorised there as a short-range radiocommunication device, generically.
The arithmetic that empties the marketing claim
Channel centres in this band sit at 5950 plus five times the channel number, in megahertz. Work through what fits:
| Channel width | Full 1,200 MHz | Lower 500 MHz |
|---|---|---|
| 160 MHz | 7 | 3 |
| 320 MHz | 3 | 1 |
One 320 MHz channel fits in the lower band, and it consumes two-thirds of the spectrum available, leaving 160 MHz behind it. Two neighbouring flats cannot both run a 320 MHz network without colliding, because there is no second channel to move to. In a country with the full band there are three, which is enough to plan a building.
The result is that Wi-Fi 7's headline feature has no channel reuse anywhere in ASEAN. It works, once, per neighbourhood.
Two things everyone says about 6 GHz that are backwards
The first is that Wi-Fi 6E is faster than Wi-Fi 6. They are the same amendment and the same radio: 802.11ax covers 2.4, 5 and 6 GHz, and the industry body describes 6E as the features of Wi-Fi 6 extended to the new band. Identical modulation, identical per-stream rate at a given channel width. What 6 GHz actually provides is empty spectrum — more wide channels, no legacy devices forcing protection mechanisms, and no radar detection forcing evacuations. The same engine on a clearer road.
The second is that 6 GHz reaches further. It doesn't; it reaches less far, for two compounding reasons. Path loss rises with frequency, costing about 1.5 dB against 5.5 GHz and 8.5 dB against 2.4 GHz. The power rules are the larger effect. An indoor access point is capped by spectral density, so its permitted power depends on its channel width. On a 20 MHz channel an American indoor 6 GHz access point may run 18 dBm where the same device at 5 GHz may run 30 — twelve decibels down before the frequency penalty is counted at all. ASEAN's indoor classes sit lower still, at 24 dBm or below.
Six gigahertz trades range for width. It is a same-room band, and the wide channel is the thing you are buying.
China identified the band for something else entirely
China's frequency allocation regulations took effect on 1 July 2023, and the ministry's own announcement claimed a first: 6425 to 7125 MHz allocated, in whole or part, to mobile service for IMT — that is, to 5G and 6G rather than to Wi-Fi. The footnote adds that deployment waits until planning and coexistence conditions are settled.
The lower half is not open either. It carries no wireless-LAN footnote, and the licence-exempt catalogue that governs what may be sold without a frequency licence lists 2400–2483.5 MHz and 5725–5850 MHz and then nothing until 24 GHz. So a Wi-Fi 6E or Wi-Fi 7 device sold in mainland China has no 6 GHz band to operate in — not because a rule tells it to switch the radio off, but because there is no band underneath it.
The timing is significant. China did this about five months before the 2023 World Radiocommunication Conference identified the same range for IMT in Region 1.
Why the router decides this and you do not
The regulatory domain is fixed at manufacture rather than chosen by the user. American equipment authorisation requires the applicant to show the device cannot be modified by third-party software to operate outside its authorised parameters, and names country-code settings as a compliance-relevant control. On top of that, a 6 GHz client cannot transmit until an access point enables it, and a standard-power access point cannot operate without a coordination grant it will not obtain abroad.
A device bought overseas doesn't become legal just by travelling. Legality follows the country you're standing in, and the hardware has already fixed its operating domain.
What is still moving
Europe has not settled the upper band. Its spectrum policy group recommended in November 2025 that 6585–7125 MHz be prioritised for mobile and that 6425–6585 MHz be held as a guard band, released to neither service, pending the next conference. The United Kingdom reportedly went its own way in July 2026, prioritising 6425–6585 MHz for Wi-Fi. This report could not be confirmed from the regulator directly, so treat it as a lead, not a fact.
For ASEAN the upper band is not merely unreleased but occupied: Malaysia assigns 6425–7110 MHz to fixed wireless systems and Indonesia restricts the same range to microwave links. Anyone waiting for the other 700 megahertz to arrive here is waiting for incumbents to move, not for a decision to be taken.
The documents behind the table
Singapore is the exemption notification gazetted as G.N. S 588/2023 together with the regulator's technical specification for short range devices; Thailand an NBTC notification in the Royal Gazette of 28 April 2023; the Philippines NTC Memorandum Circular 002-07-2024; Indonesia Ministerial Regulation No. 2 of 2025; Vietnam Circular 01/2025/TT-BKHCN of 31 March 2025; Malaysia Class Assignment No. 2 of 2025; Brunei the national radio spectrum plan. China is Ministry Order No. 62 and footnote CHN45, with the licence-exempt catalogue published as Announcement No. 52 of 2019. The American rules are the 2020 report and order in dockets 18-295 and 17-183, the current Part 15 rule text, and the coordination approval notice of 23 February 2024. Europe is Commission Implementing Decision 2021/1067 as amended in May 2025. All were read on 18 September 2026.
Three gaps are left open rather than filled. Cambodia could not be established either way. The Philippine commencement date is not in the instrument, and its licence-exemption chain does not visibly reach this band — the circular is silent on licensing, and the older instrument it routes to is scoped to bands ending at 5850 MHz. The Malaysian gazette number for the class assignment was not confirmed. Where a regulator's site refused automated access, its own documents were read through other means rather than replaced by a vendor summary; one compliance newsletter reading Indonesia's 2026 allocation table as extending Wi-Fi into the upper band is mistaken, having quoted an international footnote that applies to a different ITU region.
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