[markomalley]

All unlicensed radio emitters are covered by FCC Part 15 as far as compatibility is concerned. There are sadly too many devices out there that do not go through the appropriate compatibility testing to make sure that they are technically sound before being allowed to operate in this country. As a result, you end up having a huge increase in radio frequency interference that previously did not exist years ago.

Even such things as the power supplies associated with some lights (in my experience, particularly some fluorescent lights) can cause a large amount of interference...across a broad portion of the RF spectrum.

I can see that the ambient RF noise level is just going to rise more and more because of this.

[backwoods-engineer]

5 GHz tends to be highly directional. I doubt interference will increase. Besides, interference with what? Fixed satellite operators are the only people on that band, I think.

But I do know my microwave stuff. Over 25 years as a design engineer, dealing with frequencies as high as 160 GHz.

[bigbob]

As long as the increased noise floor is concentrated in ISM bands, then it’s less of a problem than when crap like switch-mode power supplies, PWM lamps, cable TV carriers and the rest of the garbage we’ve had to put up with interfere with licensed services. If you’re wi-fi screws up your phone, you’ll just have to decide which is most vital to maintaining life functions...

[Paladin2]

Develop a robust tin-foil Helmet and make Billion$ !

[minnesota_bound]

1 gigabit per second!
Alas Verizon will still only give you 5gb per month.....

I see a day hopefully soon where we do not have the cable companies charging $134 a month as TimeWarner does with me (it went up over $11 this month!)

As I am quitting cable tv this month and using internet only I hope these speeds arrive soon. I suspect however that the current monopolies will fight to block the upgrade.