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Everybody wants a piece of Wi-Fi. Which accounts for the arrival of Cometa Networks, the wireless broadband company backed by big guns AT&T, Intel, and IBM. Later this year, Cometa will begin offering wholesale 802.11 Internet access nationwide to carriers, ISPs, and cable operators, who will resell to consumers and businesses. Wi-Fi's great, but is there money to be made? We cornered Cometa CEO Larry Brilliant to ask him about his plans for a Wi-Fi windfall and Cometa's role in untethering the Net.
James Coleman. Tall order: Cometa CEO Larry Brilliant wants to install 20,000 access points nationwide.
WIRED: Your last company, Airzone, blew $100 million trying to deploy a wireless network. How much are you ready to spend this time?
BRILLIANT: Four years ago, there weren't enough users. If we don't build ahead of demand, we should be able to pull this off. And money isn't a problem. We have a lot of investors, and I anticipate that most carriers will want to join in before they sign up to be resellers. Doing it quickly is another matter: We have to install 20,000 access points. But IBM and AT&T do that kind of stuff all the time.
Why now?
People are putting 802.11 in their homes, corporations are putting it in their offices. All we have to do now is fill in the gaps.
Sounds like what Metricom wanted to do.
Metricom tried to take a new idea, create a company, and open up regional offices. We don't have to build a nationwide network because AT&T will bear that cost and charge us incrementally. We'll have only two offices. Billing and back office are provided by IBM.
Why will people pay you for something they can get for free?
I love the free networks. But eventually cable and DSL providers will say, "Stop redistributing the bandwidth we sold you under a single-user license." There will be an abundance of free networks in public places but not inside airports, or Grand Central Terminal, or a Wendy's. And the free Wi-Fi community doesn't provide customer service. We do.
What about security?
We'll have a hermetically sealed network that's accessible only with a user ID, password, and security algorithm. Most enterprise users will connect to virtual private networks over 802.11.
Any plans to bring access to rural Americans?
Our initial rollout includes some rural communities. We expect the nodes in these areas to be very well used even though the population density is low. In rural areas, the node we install in a retail setting might be the only broadband access in town.
How big can Cometa be?
We have modest expectations. We're a carrier's carrier, a wholesale network. We'll never have a brand. We're forbidden from selling direct and expect to have as many as 5 million subscribers. 802.11 is a revolutionary, disruptive technology that will change the way people compute, but we're also not overestimating its importance.
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