good to see there are still some people with integrity left in the tech industry.
It is far more likely (as Vint writes in the paper) a large commercial company would use these rules to hide flaky software and use of marginal hardware in the RF section (which ultimately can cause harmful interference on much a large scale as the end users would often be non technical people who are completely unaware of this happening) than hackers or hobbyists accidentally or deliberately doing this.
unlike transmitters operating at lower frequencies; faulty WLAN transmitters do not always cause obvious problems like making noise upon audio equipment or interfering with broadcast radio or TV reception.
Also the sort of people who understand how to customise WLAN kit often take a close interest in radio communications on a larger scale; and have all sorts of receivers and test equipment available to check for any interference – a great number of them are amateur radio operators and to get that license you need to pass an exam demonstrating you know how to avoid causing interference.
a friend in Austria has all this lot on her rooftop. The “2,4 GHz Test-Zugang” is a modified WLAN access point on a different frequency that radioamateurs are allowed to use (provided it does not upset the normal use of this band). She can send and receive data 60km using those antennas; as well as using another nearby to listen to DAB radio in München (200km away from where she is!) The rest also operate at a variety of different frequencies and have to connected up in exactly the right way to work properly and not receive or transmit interfering signals.
