Power dissipates with r squared and interference is always an issue. So if I set one of these on top of a refrigerator in the middle of the lab, I could probably hit most of the resident offices and some of the staff. But most of the residents couldn't get to each other with just their iphones.
you just moved things around. if my phone is then closer to other people while this device is on another floor, they would have better acces on my phone wifi.
unless this evolves to a mesh it is just a hyped AP
So does mine. My thought before this PirateBox thing was to just plug an old router in, yeah, maybe flash it to openwrt. If anything, this gives me a reason to pause and think harder about what some of the issues are that they may have thought of but I haven't.