I think a more reasonable approach is to start putting wire in house-wrap, and perhaps putting a repeater antenna outside the Faraday cage for cell signals.
60ghz (Added by 802.11ad) can't penetrate sheetrock effectively, let alone bother your neighbors, a much smaller distance than 5ghz (which has half-solved the dense urban environment issue on it's own, but not completely; the article overplays issues significantly).
I support abandoning 2.4ghz for Wifi and anything else that is high bandwidth. The good news is, the 802.11 Working Group and the major Wifi impl manufs agree with me, which is why 802.11ac is 5ghz only, and 802.11ad is 60ghz first, both of them removing 2.4ghz for anything but 802.11 b/g/n legacy connectivity.
Also, as a side note, I want the FCC to ban the LTE-over-5ghz plan. 5ghz is ours; they can have 2.4ghz, we're done with it.
For you, I'd suggest looking into Unifi AC APs (the lowest end ones are $99 each, the Pros are extremely nice), and then put them everywhere you want signal.
Lots of people did this with CB back in the day, sending out 100W which started an escalation of noise floor and in part contributed to it's decline.
Unfortunately, it can't penetrate human bodies or furniture effectively either. It's effectively requires a line of sight to have a good connection. If the line of sight is blocked, the best you can hope for is a one-bounce reflection at a significantly lower signal-to-noise ratio.
Where will you place the 60 GHz access point and where will you place the 60 GHz antenna on the device such that you'll consistently have LOS coverage?
I think the real objectionable part is the requirement that the 5 GHz band be restricted to "licensed-assisted operation", only as a secondary downlink for a system based on a licensed band. A rule that any system using unlicensed spectrum shall not depend on licensed spectrum would block the existing LTE-on-5GHz plan and either get the whole idea scrapped or get mobiles that can work entirely on unlicensed spectrum into the market, opening up the possibility of private LTE networks on unlicensed spectrum.
Given how important centralized choke points seem to be to the 3GPP architecture, I tend to suspect it would just chase licensed users completely off the unlicensed spectrum.
agreed, but i think simply banning LTE-over-5Ghz is not going far enough. We need a segment of spectrum reserved for end-user network communication - wifi is so important, shoving it into unlicensed spectrum seems like a bad idea. regulation should codify it as "ours". The cost and ease of use of ubiquiti bridges that operate on unlicensed wifi spectrum is quickly becoming a problem as well, as all our devices have to start competing with the private bridge networks.
Municipal broadband (wifi) is inevitable. I'd much rather pay the landlord or utility or someone to just handle it. Much as I hate Comcast, I'm loving that XfinityWifi is ever more common.
We need to stop considering Wi-Fi the default mode of connectivity, and go back to it being a stopgap for devices where it's unpractical to have a wire.
Perhaps it's time to start building powerline connectivity into phone and laptop chargers?
As long as cell networks implement data caps, maybe. But I don't see why municipal wifi is inherently inevitable (or even desirable).
New York is starting to roll out combination charging/wifi stations across the city, and I think they're horrible for a whole number of reasons. But the biggest thing is that public wifi isn't really any better in terms of bandwidth or latency than mobile networks to begin with - the only real advantage they have is that they bypass data caps[0].
[0] Oh, and they make it trivial for the city to track your whereabouts at all times.