Enough with wireless, it´s gonna get us all fried in microwaves

A lawyer or lawyer wannabe from Harvard (sorry I haven´t had time to check his credentials) writes: "I’m also big on open spectrum and unlicensed wireless"

I used the opportunity to write a comment in his blog about why I think wireless sucks and why we should stop polluting the airwaves just to give business to the RF equipment peddlers and  just postpone  DOING THE UNAVOIDABLE, which is eventually digging ditches and laying out fiber to every home.

Here´s my comment to him:

You advocate "open spectrum and unlicensed wireless"... OH YEAH, the one with the most big-ass signal booster wins, and "overlaps" the less powerfull transmitters. That anarchic scenario was tried: it was Citizen´s Band. The one with the biggest bad-add booster won, overlapping all others around.

 OF COURSE, I know, there are differences between wi-fi and CB.... modern technologies aren´t analog and they do spread spectrum and frequency hopping, along with time division and other techniques. BUT STILL, the base principles are the same: there is only a finite amount of bandwidth by going wireless. And in densely populated areas, there is not enough for everyone downloading 10mbit+ at once.

My biggest concern is that going forrward, advocates of this "free for all" mayhem are going to get us all cooked in microwaves. I´ve already seen Wi-Fi "signal boosters" available "under the counter" that exceed the FCC limits, yet are sold for point-to-point links to be installed by amateurs. And since they don´t have the technical means to aim the antennas correctly, it´s highly likely someone at a high rise flat is going to get beamed "by accident" with those signals.

THANKS VERY MUCH, but I pass. Why insist with wireless when FTTH is just around the corner?. With fiber, you can just lay out as many parallel fibres on a duct as you need, until you reach the bandwidth you need. If there´s more need, you dig another ditch and lay more pipes and fill those with fiber.

Give me a break with wireless, already.

Yeah, I know... but wireless broadband is so convenient! what´s the worst that could happen?

FC