Earlier quoted context omitted.
Large scale public wifi generally doesn't have passwords, that clearly doesn't scale, they have fancy enterprise auth things or captive portals. Shared password only works for small places like coffee shops. Anecdotes: 1: on London Underground, my phone authenticates using the SIM somehow (it still shows a captive portal screen, just with an ad, yay). 2: in the Turkish lounge in Istanbul airport, the shared password…
> But to take your idea just one step further, once you've opened up all wifi for the general publics consumption (what a renaissance for wired networking!) I think this requires clarification - I don't mean no business should ever use wifi. I mean businesses like telephone companies shouldn't be using to augment their networks. Obviously offices and the like need secure wireless networking that normal hardware can c…
Also, it's hard to discuss the issue when there are no details about the specific issue available.
But two points: First, where I am, 2.4Ghz is perfectly swamped with normal residential access points. It seems unlikely that this telco in your city did much more than move up the point where the spectrum is swamped, rather than causing it directly (also, if their use is affecting everyone else, they themselves are affected, too, rendering their investment pretty pointless, which leads me to wonder just how bad the situation actually is). Second, if you do want to regulate, in a rule-of-law-compatible way, well, it's going to be hard to distinguish a Starbucks access point operated for the benefit of customers of Starbucks from a telco access point operated for the benefit of customers of that telco. (If you want to use spectrum ownership as the metric, consider that many telcos cover both spectrum-owning mobile and commercial and residential broadband (ie wifi-providing) subsidiaries). To further muddy the waters, the telco is very likely to be selling access to their wifi network to non-subscribers.