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40 I ICT TODAY Cellular The growing demand for 5G and cellular services is not going to slow down anytime soon. Distributed power across all of these towers is expected to grow. 5G antennas consume three times more energy on average than a 4G antenna but provides five times the bandwidth and can simultaneously serve more users. The power consumed is expected to decrease with advancements in innovation, which is a plus considering that at the end of 2019, there were 395,562 mobile tower sites across the U.S., each requiring 5.9kW in power and peak power of 7.3kW per antenna. 5 There are many more worldwide. For cellular providers to offer these cellular services, there needs to be 5G upgrades of many edge devices, which is part of the hype around adoption. The increase in bandwidth may be a game-changer when it is finally available every- where. Not all 5G devices are the same nor are the commu- nications they support. There are multiple frequencies used. Within each frequency spectrum, there is a tradeoff between usable bandwidth and distances supported. Wi-Fi Wi-Fi is considered one of the smart city services most in demand. Residents and visitors want to be able to communicate via Wi-Fi. In fact, many carriers and operators prefer Wi-Fi browsing and calling for their customers. The data collected when people browse, walk, talk, and search the internet is a valuable asset anonymized or not. Also, because Wi-Fi operates in different spectrum ranges, it may work where cellular fails. The converse is also true. Planning for multiple spectrum ranges is imperative. The Wi-Fi Alliance and IEEE are excellent sources of information for routers, access points, and end devices, as is ANSI/BICSI 008-2018, Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) Systems Design and Implementation Best Practices. This standard assists ICT designers and installers in understanding concepts within wireless transmission for developing wireless system deployments. BICSI ICT Cabling Installation Program Visit bicsi.org/installation for information. The latest version, Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax), introduces new technologies to provide more reliable commu- nications by letting routers communicate with more devices simultaneously, which supplies high through- put, low latency, and increased network efficiency. In short, Wi-Fi 6-enabled devices can work faster, last longer, and have a larger radius of coverage than pre- vious Wi-Fi iterations. The routers offer eight-stream uplink and downlink Multi-User Multiple Input Output (MU-MIMO), so streams can happen simultaneously rather than sequentially. Wi-Fi 5 topped out at four channels. The new routers also handle the latest WPA3 encryption, making it more difficult to hack into a network. Not all wireless devices support Wi-Fi 6 yet, but the routers are backward compatible.