May 12th, 2008
Is wireless mesh a game-changer?
The biggest untold tech story of this decade has been the overturning of Moore’s Law in the telecom sector.
Despite technology breakthroughs in optical fiber, in optical switching, and in wireless transmission, you’re still paying just as much for just as little bandwidth as you did a decade ago.
Thanks to policies which re-monopolized the last mile and allowed the owners of that infrastructure to buy the electromagnetic spectrum, costs for services like ADSL and digital cellular are little changed from 1998.
But progress is pernicious. Close the door and it comes in a window. And so we have 802.11s, the “wireless mesh” standard now approaching ratification.
How serious is 802.11s? Cablevision says it can cover New York in a wireless mesh network by 2010 for $350 million.
As equipment maker PacketHop explains on their Web site, wireless mesh works by having WiFi radios self-connect, extending the range of the connection almost indefinitely.
How can this be fought? One way is by hyping the scary implications of ubiquitous networking, like its use for surveillance. Another way is to force a dialing-down of the power, so only sensors can use the technology.
I think of technologies like this as being water before a dam, built of business and government power. The technology will flow where such dams don’t exist. Eventually this one will burst. My question is whether the flood which results will be foreign.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
