[LINK] Indonesia Overtaking Australia with Wireless Internet

[Richard Chirgwin]

Not Wifi that's in trouble ... the ability of radio to replace last mile 
connections. People will still use WiFi in-home and good luck to them. 
While allowing that streaming can cause even 802.11n to bump its head 
(I've been told), it will be fine in the home. After all, where people 
can't get the WiFi to do what they want, they will run a boring old 
Ethernet cable.

But depressingly, it proves damn difficult to "get the physics" through 
heads. Political interests are against the science - which is IMO a 
spooky recapitulation of the debasement of the pollution debate - so 
they work hard in propagating the myth of the magic wireless fairy. 
Carriers' interests are against the science, because cellular services 
are so much more profitable; I just can't think why someone says "don't 
build the NBN, we can all pay 20x the price per GB instead!" 
Futurologists' don't like the boring science bits because it spoils the 
imagined future. Etc.

So there are many spoilers who really want the science of signals to be 
ignored; who want to drive a stake through Claude Shannon's heart, 
abandon the maths, and extend the radio spectrum forever upwards. We 
could, I suppose, solve the NBN question, the lack of spectrum AND our 
pollution issues at a stroke: learn to modulate gamma rays, use these 
for our transmissions, and it's a pity that so many people will die 
trying to use their gigabit-over-wireless iPads.

RC

On 5/06/11 5:54 PM, Jan Whitaker wrote:
> At 05:41 PM 4/06/2011, Richard Chirgwin wrote:
>
>> The limit of radio waves cannot approach the limit of fibre.
> Yes, I figured the physics of the thing would come into play here.
> And that's the message that someone needs to get to the NBN deniers
> in the Liberal party so they just SHUT UP. Demand is going to
> continue to grow. I heard an interview with the Acting CEO NBNCo on
> Alan Kohler's show this morning. Alan asked if NBNCO had figured in
> the Netflix/Hulu phenomenon, and the guy said they had and are
> counting on that to affect revenue to the positive. If those two
> applications take off here as they have in the US, wifi is cactus,
> and the R&R users are going to be asking some hard questions of their
> conservative members of Parliament.
>
> Jan
>
>
>
> Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
> jwhit at janwhitaker.com
> blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
> business: http://www.janwhitaker.com
>
> Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or
> sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
> ~Madeline L'Engle, writer
>
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