Home routers and coffee shops may soon offer nearby phones a 4G data connection

Wi-Fi has become ubiquitous in homes and businesses thanks to the way anyone can set up their own network and start connecting up gadgets. Before long, you may be similarly free to set up your own network to serve nearby smartphones using the high-speed LTE protocol currently exclusive to cellular networks.

That would allow your home router or a business like Starbucks to offer fast LTE connections to mobile devices. It could create new competition for conventional cellular networks, giving consumers more ways to get high-speed data and pushing down prices. Internet service providers or other companies could build this new version of LTE into cable boxes or other home devices to create their own high-speed mobile data networks. Read more...