On February 3rd, Cisco released a joint statement (http://bit.ly/1T7Niet) with Apple that announced the death of the 2.4GHz spectrum. The 2.4GHz band, often referred as the Universal Band, was the primary spectrum leveraged when initial Wi-Fi standards were first introduced 17 years ago. Over the years, this spectrum has become jammed with traffic; it offers only 3 non-overlapping channels of which many devices and technologies make use.
2.4Ghz was the initial focal point for first to market Wi-Fi deployments. In 1999, the IEEE also created a Wi-Fi standard for operation in 5GHz which supports 24 non-overlapping channels with 8 times the capacity available in 2.4GHz.
