How would mobile hotspots fall afoul of the same thing? If you get enough of them active in the same area you might get degraded or even nonexistent service, but that's not at all the same thing as sending fake deauthentication packets in a deliberate act to prevent other devices from working.
No, it's not the same as sending de-auth packets, but it's still interference with their signal on their property and that's an issue quite worthy of concern. That's why we have laws about jamming devices or radiated-power limits. I think their reaction was inappropriate, but the basic principle of not interfering with others' communications still cuts both ways. We need a better way to deal with such conflicts, which are only going to become more and more frequent and severe.
We have a system to address the public airwaves, which include all the airwaves on all property since the electromagnetic spectrum conveniently ignores our artificial property boundaries.
That system is called "licensing" and SmartCity is completely free to apply for a license to own their own slice of spectrum. When you are talking about single-building uses or point-to-point links they aren't even that expensive (unlike regional or national cellular frequencies for example). Good luck getting hardware makers to adopt your special snowflake system!
WiFi operates on unlicensed bands. By using such bands you are bound by various rules (like power transmit limits) designed to ensure everyone has shared access. WiFi itself is designed to scale down power and share transmit time to keep the noise low. In fact using a personal hotspot isn't likely to cause much interference since the devices are likely right next to each other and transmitting at very low power levels.
What you can't do is take the spectrum, protocols, and devices designed to allow everyone to share and hijack it to stop other people from using it.
You might make the case that officially certified WiFi devices should include some frequency bands that are license-only so that large venues could apply for exclusive use of certain frequencies* but unless and until that happens you are legally required to abide by the same rules as everyone else, even on your property.
* As radio chips get better it becomes more and more feasible to include the hardware for a multitude of frequencies (chips, amps, filters, etc); eventually SDR will make it possible to support a huge range.
>That system is called "licensing" and SmartCity is completely free to apply for a license to own their own slice of spectrum.
In this context, (hotel internet) it doesn't seem reasonable to ask them to start manufacturing their own wireless cards that support a wider spectrum, since everybody staying at the hotel would need one.
We're not asking them to do this, just saying that this is what they'd have to do if they want to have a frequency that's protected from other users.
Right now, hotels have two choices. They can support cheap commodity equipment that uses unlicensed spectrum, but they have to accept that everyone is allowed to use that spectrum as they wish (within the rules) and this might impact the hotel's use. Or they can use expensive specialized equipment that nobody owns, and have guaranteed exclusivity to their bit of spectrum in that area.
I think a third choice would be great, to have commodity hardware that can access licensed spectrum so that venues who want to guarantee exclusivity can obtain a license while allowing their users to use standard hardware.
But that third choice isn't available, so the reality of the situation is the two choices above. Naturally, venues pick the option with commodity equipment and no exclusivity. And that's totally fine. But they can't then try to force exclusivity into the situation afterwards.
The whole idea of these unlicensed bands is that there are limits on power and such, and otherwise you can more or less do what you want as long as you're not deliberately interfering with other people. If your legitimate use happens to step on other people's legitimate use, well, so it goes. If you want to make sure nobody else can interfere with you, use a licensed frequency and obtain a license for your use.
I think this raises an interesting point. There ought to be some frequency bands accessible by common WiFi hardware which require a license to use. Then big venues like this could set up their networks on licensed bands, after obtaining a license, and be free from interference by people's mobile hotspots and such.
Although I have a feeling that approximately nobody would actually go through the process of getting a license, because the whole "interference" thing is just a cover, and their actual motivation is a cash grab by attempting to force people to use their spectacularly overpriced service.
> There ought to be some frequency bands accessible by common WiFi hardware which require a license to use.
Thank you for keeping this constructive. That's exactly the kind of discussion we need to have. Certainly there are likely to be all of the problems we've seen in every other aspect of spectrum allocation and licensing, but at least exploring the possibilities might lead to a better solution. Certain others' insistence on denial and bluster won't get us anywhere.
