Smart home devices hog the 2.4GHz band but won't connect to 5GHz

Most smart home devices — Ring doorbells, Wyze cameras, smart plugs, robot vacuums, smart locks — only support 2.4GHz WiFi. A typical smart home has 20-40 such devices, all crammed onto the 2.4GHz band which has only 3 non-overlapping channels (1, 6, 11) in the US. So what? The 2.4GHz band becomes saturated with dozens of low-priority IoT devices competing for airtime with the one device that actually needs reliable 2.4GHz: the smart lock on the front door. So what? Devices randomly go offline, security cameras miss motion events, and smart locks fail to respond — defeating the entire purpose of a 'smart' home. So what? Users spend hours rebooting devices, repositioning routers, and calling support for each individual device brand. So what? Many abandon smart home products entirely, or buy a second dedicated IoT router, doubling their network complexity. This persists because IoT manufacturers use the cheapest possible WiFi chipsets ($0.50-1.00 for 2.4GHz-only vs $2-3 for dual-band), and because 2.4GHz range is better — but range doesn't matter when the band is congested. There is no industry standard pushing IoT toward 5GHz or Thread/Matter adoption is glacially slow.