"WiFi as mobile network" was sort of the concept behind WiMax, which was fairly aggressively trialed under a Clearwire/Comcast partnership in the US and didn't

"WiFi as mobile network" was sort of the concept behind WiMax, which was fairly aggressively trialed under a Clearwire/Comcast partnership in the US and didn't really go anywhere. Part of the disappearance of WiMax as as technology is simply that LTE won out as the 4G cellular standard rather than WiMax‚ but that came about in good part because WiMax was more suitable for fixed-point access than LTE and there was, and continues to be, little market interest in fixed-point wireless. Fundamentally it is extremely difficult for a wireless technology to compete with physical cable for fixed-point access, DOCSIS is pretty consistently keeping an order of magnitude ahead of the best wireless options.