A Big Threat to 802.11b Networking, Yet Nobody Seems to Care -- Here's Why.
There is a very good writer named Steve Stroh who specializes in wireless technology, and almost a year ago, he wrote an article that really disturbed me. Steve predicted the extinction of 802.11 WiFi wireless networking because of RF interference from a new kind of light bulb. This new lighting source uses RF energy to excite a gas that then glows brightly, which sounds a heck of a lot like a neon lamp, except this light, which comes from a company called Fusion Lighting, is supposed to be vastly more energy efficient than neon. This apparently catches us between a rock and a bright place: Do we want wireless LANs and satellite radio, or would we prefer to build fewer power plants and import less oil? Forgetting for a moment that this sounds like just the kind of story I might write, what's really interesting about it is that nobody but Steve Stroh and a couple satellite radio outfits seems to care. Then I figured it out.
