If this ever happens around here, I'm replacing my AP with an even louder one, as loud and disruptive as I can go without violating FCC requirements. I will drown out LTE-U in my area and do whatever it take to disable LTE-U detection on the AP (such as buying out of date APs that don't recognize it).

Qualcomm, who is leading the effort behind LTE-U, belongs to the Wi-Fi Alliance and submits things to the IEEE 802.11 Working Group, and its not like they're not making money no matter what they sell.

Maybe Qualcomm should be removed from the Wi-Fi Alliance and banned from the IEEE 802.11 Working Group if they continue to push for standards and "features" (term used loosely) that damage Wi-Fi.

5.8 GHz isn't even good for long distance transmission, this is why it was given away as an unlicensed block to begin with. So, what the hell?

Not only that, cell phone data already has tons of frequency space; they just keep wasting it on 2G, 3G, non-LTE 3.9G, non-VoLTE voice. It is not my problem that "oh, customers are still using hardware that doesn't support more efficient use of the spectrum"; I own a reasonably up to date LTE phone that can do VoLTE, I did not pay out my ass for one (its an original Nexus 5).

LTE is the first protocol that is meant to be fully backwards and forwards compatible, all previous protocols just muck up perfectly good spectrum. You know what happened when USB came out? Or HDMI and DisplayPort? Or PCI-E? Or SATA and SAS? They all quickly replaced all legacy standards and became the norm in short order. Their collective hallmark is easier and cheaper to produce hardware that has a protocol that is forwards and backwards compatible (something they all share with LTE).

LTE, however? In my town, about half the spectrum is dedicated to non-LTE usage, yet most phones around here are LTE data, with or without VoLTE capability, and the few dumb phones remaining are 3G voice.

You know what that means? 5 mbps or less is the norm for downstream data unless you're right in front of the tower, then I've seen it go past 50 mbps. If they shut off 2G completely, shut off 3G/3.9G data, moved all the VoLTE-capable customers over to VoLTE, and shrank the 3G voice segment down to only what we need to serve the area, we'd be getting 10 or 15 mbps instead of 5.

We don't need more cell phone spectrum, we just need to stop wasting it on ancient inefficient protocols.