Mesh technology is much in the news of late. I see stories such as this one on Motorola and its new MOTOMESH solution. Similarly, BelAir Networks is helping bring Wi-Fi Mesh to the island of St. Thomas. Also, Earthlink is doing another wireless network in Milpitas, CA, presumably with Mesh (It has used Tropos in the past). Speaking of Tropos, it and Allot are teaming to offer management technology optimized for its radios. This just indicates to me that metro Wi-Fi, which mesh is well suited for is becoming an avalanche. Anyway, I have several thoughts on this from multiple sides. First, I think Metro Wi-Fi or Metro wireless in some form is going to grow strongly. And it will do so despite challenges from utilities. The reason I think is basic human motivations about wants and needs. Metro wireless will grow because cities believe they need this to recruit industry. It is all about economic development as well as simplifying and improving city services and response. With the hurricane damage of last year much in mind, public safety aspects are big too. But essentially what will drive further adoption is fear. Fear specifically of being left behind, fear of not keeping up with the city nearby. That makes Metro Wireless a need not a want anymore. But what is driving the Wi-Fi aspect? To me it is the standard and the unlicensed aspect of Wi-Fi. Within the rules no one can tell cities they cannot do it. Sure the Telcos will try, but I don't think they will win. Eventually they will co-opt I suspect. They will try to win on the legislative side by trying to control the overlayer of content delivery fees (which is a whole 'nother topic that is huge, huge). Interestingly, this is an argument for WiMax. Or at least the promise of a proper metropolitan area network (MAN) interoperable standard that encompasses both licensed and unlicensed bands. WiMax has a ways to go to reach that promise. Still, the point is clear to me at least. Free people and empower them to create and good things happen for society if not for entrenched interests. Now what about problems with Mesh? The traditional knock on them is that the overhead of crosstalk quickly chokes mesh networks beyond a certain size. Also, they have typically been more expensive units requiring both access point and and receiver capability in each housing, plus perhaps a separate backhaul. Well, the technology has improved, routing techniques are a lot more sophisticated and some vendors are writing proprietary MACs for the backhaul portion and even splitting up spectrum by adding additional radios to housings. This has become much more cost effective. But I am most concerned with interference issues in larger cities more so than smaller ones. The very popularity of Wi-Fi has driven a lot of private Wi-Fi networks into existence. Even for providers who site survey aggressively, the RF environment is subject to change tomorrow. There are lots of artful ways to address this via channelization and others of course. But I suspect that as these networks load, every weakness (and trust me there will be some) will become exposed. What the backlash will be I am uncertain. I do think these problems can get largely solved by good network management and field tweaking. But it will require a real hands on skillset for carriers to manage this process. Perhaps more importantly, it behooves carriers to manage the cities expectations early that this will occur. It could save much stress later, and if it does NOT, then the carriers have successfully underpromised and overdelivered—no bad thing. Tim Sanders tim@thefinalmile.net  www.thefinalmile.net  www.wimaxglobalnews.com