Wireless Experiment Dishes Out the
Data Without a Wait
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 12 1996; Page C01
The Washington Post
The lawyers at Rini Coran & Lancellotta PC on Connecticut Avenue don't have a high-speed
data line from the telephone company or a cable television modem, but lately they've been
getting information off the Internet at lightning-quick speeds.
How do they do it? Through thin air.
The firm is among a dozen area businesses and schools that have been trying out a system
that beams data from the Internet to their computers using high- frequency radio waves. The
wireless technology allows users to travel in cyberspace at about 10 million bits per second,
nearly seven times faster than today's high-speed data lines and almost 350 to 700 times
faster than the average modem.
"The speed is just blinding," said Stephen Coran, a partner at the firm who uses the Internet
to search legal databases.
The radio wave pilot project, which has been operating since early summer, is run by CAI
Wireless Systems Inc. in Albany, N.Y., and Hybrid Networks Inc. in Cupertino, Calif.
Hybrid plans to offer commercial service in the area by the middle of next year, said Chuck
Zumbaugh, a Hybrid consultant working on the project.
Improving Internet access speeds has become a hot venture these days. Telephone
companies have been aggressively hawking digital data lines. Some cable television
companies, including Jones Communications in Alexandria, have started using their wires to
offer high-speed connections. And recently, Germantown-based Hughes Network Systems
Inc. began selling in California a service that uses a 24-inch antenna to receive Internet
information via satellite.
The radio wave technology, its backers say, has several advantages. When commercially
released, it likely will be cheaper than data lines, and it will be available in areas that have
largely been bypassed by cable companies -- namely, downtown business districts and
suburban office parks.
For the pilot project, the radio waves, which are at a higher frequency than those for
television and cellular phones, are beamed from a television tower owned by American
University. A computer with specialized hardware converts data from the Internet, supplied
by Digex Inc. in Beltsville, into the radio waves that are sent from the tower.
At the test sites, which include Gonzaga College High School in the District, Churchill Road
Elementary School in McLean and office buildings across the region, receivers the size of
small pizza boxes pick up the signals and convert them into electrical impulses that personal
computers can understand.
One major disadvantage, though, is that the receivers must be placed in direct view of the
tower. But CAI and Hybrid officials say that when a commercial wireless network is built in
the Washington area, additional transmitters will reach people in obscured locations.
Since the radio transmitters only send data "downstream," people must use a standard phone
line connection to ask for the information on the Internet or to send electronic mail. Project
backers say that's not a big deal because most users receive vastly more information than
they send.
A single microwave frequency can handle several thousand Internet users because data can
be compressed into tiny "packets" and zapped in a fraction of a second. Although the
packets are broadcast to the region, unique coding tells the receiving computer which
packets it must care about. The company said the coding is a way to prevent people from
eavesdropping on others' Internet traffic.
CAI, which also operates wireless cable television systems, plans to start selling wireless
Internet service in Rochester, N.Y., and New York City in a few months, said John J.
Prisco, the company's president. The service will be aimed at small businesses and likely will
be priced at $350 to $500 a month, Prisco said.
Hybrid, which makes the system hardware and has leased the radio frequencies here from
George Washington University, is expected to have similar rates when it begins servicing the
area, Zumbaugh said.
The Washington-area experiment, Prisco said, "has taught us there is a real market for this.
People are tired of the world wide wait."
SPEAKING OF RADIO WAVES and the Internet, Metricom Inc. plans to introduce a
two-way wireless Internet service in the region tomorrow.
Although the system will only allow users to send and receive data at speeds close to
conventional 28.8 kilobits- per-second modems, it will work with laptops, allowing people to
use the Internet on the bus, in a park or almost anywhere else without a cellular telephone
modem.
Called Ricochet, the system is a partnership between Metricom in Los Gatos, Calif., and
District-based Potomac Electric Power Co. Shoe-box-sized devices that hang from street
lights will transmit to and receive signals from special radio modem units attached to users'
computers.
The company would not publicly say yesterday which parts of the region would be covered
by the two-way system or discuss how much the service will cost.
EROL'S, the Springfield-based Internet service provider that recently has been criticized by
some of its subscribers for busy telephone lines and slow e-mail delivery, is considering going
public.
Dennis Spina, Erol's president, said the company "is exploring the possibility" of an initial
public offering. He said the company has not yet hired an investment bank and said such an
offering likely would be at least six months away.
Erol's, one of the nation's fastest-growing Internet service providers, has 112,000 customers,
Spina said. The company plans to expand into the populous New York and New Jersey
markets next month, he said.
Right now, Erol's technicians are testing their network in that region to ensure they will be
able to handle a sudden deluge of customers, something the service has struggled with in the
Washington region.
"We want to make sure we have all our plans in place so that we stay ahead of the curve,"
Spina said.
"We did have some problems in the past," but he pledged, "that'll never happen again."
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