The city of altoona, in association with BIG Wireless, have put up a massive city wide WiFi network.
Has anyone else who sees these access points (Motomesh-0) listed in their wifi network lists looked at the signal strength and/or had trouble with staying connected to your personal access point (or reduced range)?
I'm finding that I can't get a reliable connection to my home access point from the far rooms (away from the AP) and from outside of my house anymore because there are so many Motomesh-0 access points (7 total individual stations viewable from inside my home, 8 from outside) hogging up the good channels (1,6,11) and interfering with my access point on channel 1 (only 1 Motomesh-0 on that channel). I used to be able to access my network from my entire property.
Eventually all the public service data traffic will be on this network, so if you're not effected, you might soon be. Since there is no one directly gaining a profit from the use of the network, if the system does start reducing your access point's effective range to near 0, there is almost nothing anyone can do about it legally. (without a huge survey to check part 15 compliance, or the city's system causing out of band interference.)
This may also effect your cordless phones that run on the 2.4Ghz band as well as Bluetooth devices. Basically anything operating in the 2.4Ghz ISM band.
If you want to physically tell if these network AP's are in your area, look above street lights for red/green LEDs on a small box either right above the street light or on the pole. (they tapped into street lights for the power). They can have anywhere from 1 to 3 antenna.