Gates says future is about mesh: David Hornik, an attendee at the Wall Street Journal's D conference (at which professional journalists were not allowed to quote speakers) blogs: Microsoft is also betting on mesh networks -- Gates believes that by spreading WiFi backhall among large numbers of clients, WiFi will facilitate broadband for everyone that may serve to replace cellular networks under many circumstances. Gates predicts mesh networks will be mainstream in the next 5 years and he's presumably already looking to build software to address the problems associated with the multiplicity of base stations. [via Steve Gillmor]
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,59116,00.html reports about this as well.