Another mobile-land feature 802.11 could do with - dynamic TX power management.  All the cellular systems have the ability to dial down the transmitter power the nearer to the BTS/Node B you get. This is not just good for batteries, but also good for radio, as s/n has diminishing returns to transmitter power. WLAN, though, shouts as loud next to the AP as on the other side of the street, which is Not Good for a system that operates in unlicensed spectrum.

UMTS, for example, has a peak tx wattage an order of magnitude greater than WLAN, but due to the power management, in a picocell environment comparable to a WLAN the mean tx wattage is less by a factor of 10.