There are a lot of problems with wired networks. The telcos can't seem to solve the "last mile" problem effectively. Areas like Oregon have an overabundance of fiber laid during the dotcom boom that is unused, and it too expensive to use now that the dotcom bubble burst. Many less populated places (suburbs and rural areas) often don't have access to broadband service because of longer distances to the CO. And let's not forget how the occasional backhoe really futzes with connectivity and network topology. :-)
WiFi LANs solve many of these problems on the local network. Every so often, Wired talks about using lasers to connect two nearby buildings with a high speed line-of-sight WAN. (No one talks about how a flock of pidgeons can slow down your video streams though...)
Enter 802.16a, Wireless MAN, ratified by the IEEE earlier this week. A backgrounder on the topic discusses the role of WMAN and how it hopes to solve the last mile problem. And it uses a variety of frequencies to support line-of-sight, obstructed line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight connections.
I don't know much about telco networks or the domain of metropolitan area networks. But this specification looks like it has a lot of potential to improve service and reduce costs over the next 10 years or so. Will this make intracity fiber redundant? Will it allow multiple networks (cable, land phone, CDMA/TDMA wireless phones, GPRS, always-on WiFi for laptops/PDAs) to finally converge on a single network? Will it allow new telcos to pop up and offer better service than the crappy cable/telco/mobile vendors we've learned to accept? Will it make entire classes of unsightly overhead and buried cabling just go away?
