[csirac2]

> ...makes me wonder about the future, since the trend for pretty much every category of device is towards "cheaper/integrated products". You mention that some SoCs blur the lines already.

Yes, that's a legitimate concern, but there's a small consolation that this is a problem only for existing SoC architectures doing 5GHz. The new regs don't rule out new SoC architectures which would implement the enforced separation in silicon somehow. Although you're still stuck not having access to modular transmitter rules but that was the case already.

> To make sure I understand, this would be an incentive for mobile phone manufacturers (for example) to continue to have separate radio firmware, even if they move to cheaper SoC designs, correct?

Indeed, although I have oversimplified somewhat - some basebands do run on the same CPU as the OS, but something resembling a secure hypervisor (with secured boot, among other things) is used to enforce isolation between the baseband and OS (see OKL4).