Next level mobile broadband, page-75

As I've said multiple times: I'm not arguing that wi-fi is useless. I'm arguing against the people that claim it makes fibre obsolete. The two techs are very much complementary: fibre is absolutely essential for the heavy-duty haul, while wireless is great for the final link to your device. But the key point is, that final link to your device needs to be short. A mobile phone tower serving a cell with a 100m radius could be serving thousands of customers in a dense neighbourhood- there is no way that mobile wireless could give everyone high bandwidth under those conditions. Fixed, directional links maybe (particularly if the vorticity work mentioned up-thread pays off), but I still doubt it. Get a fibre link to within 10 metres of each household and let wireless handle it from there, on the other hand... now you've drastically reduced the congestion (roughly 100-fold) in the limited RF space.

Here's a compromise that I'm somewhat surprised hasn't been discussed (at least not anywhere I've seen it): rather than run fibre to everyone's door (the biggest part of the cost), run it down the street and install a router with a directional antenna in a weatherproof enclosure at the fenceline. Pair it to a receiver mounted in the house, and you're set. Everyone gets a nice high speed link, and you save a huge amount of time and money by avoiding the need to bury conduit through every front yard.