The Future of Wireless Broadband?

Adroit Ape asks: "The FCC is scheduled to begin auctioning the radio spectrum salvaged from analog television by February 28, 2008. Public interest groups are calling for auction rules that give new entrants a fair shot at the spectrum, which includes 60Mhz in the 700Mhz band. Are we likely to see groundbreaking innovation in wireless broadband? Who do you foresee to be the major players in the auction and subsequent technologies?"

It depends!

[VincenzoRomano]

Wireless broadband in the sense of wifi is very likely to be stopped or at least slowed down. Because there's no money there for companies and lots of problems for governements as it's possible to everyone to build (and grow) a public free abd uncensored network.
If the sense is that of Wireless Local Loop [wikipedia.org], then it's very likely that it will succeed as the natural evolution of the . That is, lower cost for deployment, no digging and no cables.
There can also be the possibility of the so called 4G [wikipedia.org] networks as the evolution of the 2.5G [wikipedia.org] and 3G [wikipedia.org] wireless networks. I think companies have to first get their money back from investments, huge investments.

Groundbreaking or not...

[Genocaust]

I'm not a fan of wireless broadband. Maybe I'm old fashioned (though I don't see how at only 22...) but aside from casual web surfing, I'd never trust anything to a wireless signal. Too much of my life depends on conducting online transactions: banking (all of it, I've never been to a branch office with this bank), investments, paying bills (all of them), etc etc. While certainly no encryption is unbreakable, I still believe I fare better odds placing my data on hard wires, where individuals would have to be specifically targetting it, rather than letting it flow free and open into the air for all to capture and (attempt to) abuse. Just my $0.02.

Re:Groundbreaking or not...

[Anonymous Coward]

....and if you're a non-techie user, you're far more susceptible to phishing and spyware attacks running wireless compared to wired setups. It's not the encryption or the transmission protocol that's the question here, it's the inherent visibility of wireless networks (and easy/low risk identification of misconfigured access points). If I had my wish, routers would ship from the factory 3/4 bricked (no open ports, no wireless, no NAT, etc.) and you'd have to put in a random password (included in the packaging like a CD-Key) to get in and set it up for what apps you intend to run (again, a standard list of programs and their needs could be included). If you then wanted to make the password "superman" or turn on every auto-network opener protocol in the firmware or whatever, that would be your business. If it slowed botnets even an iota it would be worth it in the long run...

And, yeah, I dare to dream. Making computer peripherals turn on like toasters is too damn lucrative, regardless of whether that means shipping them with a fork pre-inserted...