- I can control WiFi coverage by adding inexpensive WiFi equipment
- Calls through the WiFi network would not eat into my peak minutes

I didn’t read about this, but it is also my hope that calls over WiFi will simply sound better. My cell phone quality is better than no cell phone at all, but nothing like the quality of a land line or typical VOIP call.

30 mile coverage with WiMax (http://www.wimax.com/education) sounds great, but Sprint has had a ton of problems with their wireless Internet service. Some form of Sprint wireless Internet access has been available in some cities for years now, but it’s never been good enough to get significant market penetration (or even for Sprint to offer the service in all their metro markets). My guess is that any type of radio that can transmit for miles will be expensive and relatively hard to buy.

WiFi is inexpensive and readily available. It also has a short range. This sounds like a problem, but, remember, everybody in a wireless coverage area sharing the same frequencies has to share the same bandwidth. That’s a big reason why modern cell phones are a lot less powerful than the old “bag phones”. The cell carriers needed to squeeze more phone calls on the same frequencies in to the same geographic area, so they made the phone transmitters weaker and put the cell towers closer together. With WiFi, each house in my neighborhood can have its own 100Mbps LAN.