WiFi is a domestic solution (Score 1)

It is interesting to read the entire set of comments on this article based on a primarily US viewpoint. In Australia, PBA (Personal Broadband Australia, http://www.pba.com.au/) has opened it's WiMax network across the major centres of population on our East Coast, and has been running for over two years. Called iBurst, it offers city wide 1meg/384k transfer speeds and is resold through a number (currently about 12) of ISP's. There are a number of issues that this then brings up regarding the installation of WAN Wifi. Firstly, there is the costs of installation for reception density across an area of population, and the density required to achieve transfer speeds without the transfer rate across the WiFi link decreasing. This brings the simultaneous issue of RF interference between multiple base stations, not necessarily from the public network, but from private nodes that do not have their channel allocation controlled. The number of nodes required in a city such as Melbourne, Australia (where I am writing from) to cover even our densest areas of population is large enough that between the cabelling, WiFi nodes and back end network would out weigh the return that could possibly be generated. Secondly, the dual faces of the security issues. Face one is the network security issues that plague all network administrators 24 hours a day. But for a person like myself with multiple email accounts, having to modify that many settings to be able to send through remote mail servers becomes a major issue. And then what occurs if Port 25 is blocked? No need to discuss this any further. Face two, especially after the the events of the last few days in London, is the issue of being able to trace data back to the originator. With an open public system, how would this be achieved? If this was then circumvented by the use of login data, the bureacratic overheads of maintaining this would then outweight the benefits of providing access. Finally, with the PBA network infrastructure being based on the ArrayComm technology from California, and implimented nationwide it then creates a roaming network. In the modern context of a travelling public who work remotely much of the time requiring VPN access to private networks I have already chosen my system.