Comment FCC is wrong. Its power that matters. Low power. (Score 1) 300
The FCC person is wrong. Flat wrong.
Without new bandwidth being opened up he is wrong. Essentially, the amount of data that can be transmitted over say a city is determined by two things:
1) The frequency bands available.
2) The power of the transmitting device. The lower the power the more bandwidth we have. By factors of millions.
So in the old days (like now), a single TV channel covered a city, and gave 6 Mbits (or whatever the rate is) for the whole city. ie close to zero. The transmitter is 100,000 watts.
Now, imagine two 0.01 watt transmitters on the same channel. You can have literally millions of these pairs using the same channel in the same city, since they only have a range of say 100 m. The result is millions of times the bandwidth, along with lower powered devices.
Chips that do exactly that are being developed now. Its sort of like the ethernet protocol, in ethernet, the channel just wait for blank air time on the wire, while with devices, they just look for clear frequencies. Combine that with advances that use reflections and ghosting to improve signal, and you have an era where wireless wins.
Wires will still be handy for backbone, etc. Perhaps even one to your house if its easy.
It really is the power thats the factor.