Compelling Economics for Wi-Fi Broadband Access

802.11n-based Wireless Broadband Access (WBA) is the new Metro Wi-Fi. Only this time, the business drives the network build out, not the other way around. Early metro Wi-Fi networks suffered from a top-down deployment model. Wireless ISPs attempted to build Wi-Fi WANs across entire cities or counties to offer fixed wireless service, often with just a promise of funding from public-works projects. Meanwhile, the relatively low throughput and range of earlier 802.11a/g technology meant that the networks required a lot of equipment to achieve the coverage and capacity necessary for citywide scale, yet the delivered performance was but a fraction of what most subscribers could get from DSL and cable.