[wtallis]

It's also due to the fact that there's only a few GHz of spectrum in which cheap equipment can broadcast a powerful enough signal to go any useful distance. WiFi operating in 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz are tricky but not impossible to use for anything longer-range than a single building. Much higher frequency, and you have to use pretty powerful transmitters and well-aimed highly directional antennas. Current tech allows for a few bits/s/Hz, so there's only a few gbit/s of bandwidth to be allocated between all long-range communication uses. If you want to offer gigabit speeds to households over wireless, you have to deploy a mesh network that's so dense it would be cheaper to just lay fiber.