Wireless Mesh Network Trial in the UK

Huw writes "With cable only in selected areas and ADSL only available within three miles of selected telephone exchanges, residents of the South Wales valleys are pretty much stuck with dial up connections to access the internet. BT may have the answer with a wireless solution according to this article from the BBC. Quite how wireless networking will cope with a hilly area like this remains to be seen, but hopefully we'll soon see broadband available for anyone who wants it." The company home page has some more information about their system.

Comments

This might be a very bad idea.

[Krapangor]

All forms of wireless connections are much more prone to manipulation and hax0ring than the good old fashioned fiber connections.
While wireless might be much easier to set up the total cost of ownership might be much higher due to hacking attacks and financial damages caused by the theft of personal information like credit card numbers etc. There are, of course, ways to secure wireless channels but usually administrators which non-academic background and managers without technical skills ignore the problems of open channels and therefore no decent security measures are applied.
It's also questionable if the existing encryption possibilities are strong enough. For some critical data doesn't become uncritical after a long time, therefore introducing new possibilities for a hacker with some decent equipment and enough time (3-4 months) on his hands.
I also wonder if the bad weather conditions in Scottland might render the service useless too. After all, in a decent thounderstorm both optical and radiobased wireless links become pretty useless.