Specifically, I am a tech writer working with WiFi hardware, and I need to understand why the 2.4GHz frequency band has only three channels, while the 5.0 GHz band has so many more.
I would presume that, since they're both "frequency bands", they would both have about the same bandwidth, and so would have about the same number of channels. Yet it appears that the 5.0GHz spectrum is divided into channels about 5MHz wide, and occupies the 4.9GHz to 5.9GHz spectrum, while the 2.4 GHz band has only three or four usable channels (1, 6, 11, and 14), and occupies only the 2.4~2.5GHz spectrum.
Were these allocations strictly arbitrary, or is there some sort of physical explanation for these allocations? Does anyone know why the decision was made to allocate these frequency bands in the way they have been set up?