"So far, no one has cracked the nut of getting extremely high-capacity wireless signals reliably through walls and doors"
Yes, they have. Maybe not fiber speeds.
The problem here is that people value freedom at zero but value entertainment (or even just big numbers on an advertisement) at non-zero.
That's the thing that bothers me about monopoly talk. It's no longer that some company owns all the critical infrastrucutre or all the production of critical goods. We are talking about a monopoly on exyraordinarily high speed internet which is really only used for entertainment.
Where? The theory is there. Experimental equipment exists. But something that can be deployed at scale to provide 100+Mb/s to each and every household in an area simultaneously?
The only people claiming this exists are the marketing departments of wireless carriers, who not coincidentally have an interest in discouraging wired infrastructure investment.
Theory is one thing. Scaling it and getting it into production is often the truly hard part--because technology, because business, because politics. And it's possible that the state of the art in wireless will trail the state of the art in fiber optics for quite some time.
I agree with your other points, though. People lack imagination about the potential of high-speed access. Although, that potential will be hard to realize unless and until those speeds become pervasive. Those speeds can't spur innovation and change until a large, viable market of potential consumers exists. So it's not only a collective action dilemma at the local level, but at the national level as well.
Yes, they have. Maybe not fiber speeds.
The problem here is that people value freedom at zero but value entertainment (or even just big numbers on an advertisement) at non-zero.
That's the thing that bothers me about monopoly talk. It's no longer that some company owns all the critical infrastrucutre or all the production of critical goods. We are talking about a monopoly on exyraordinarily high speed internet which is really only used for entertainment.