Startup Proposes Internet Access Via Electromagnetic Waves
forbes.com
March 27, 2000
By Michael Katz
NEW YORK. 3:35 PM EST-On a swampy swath of the Mississippi Gulf Coast within the compound of the Stennis Space Center, Dallas-based startup Media Fusion is building a lab where it hopes to perfect a technology that will render traditional telephony obsolete.
In December, Media Fusion was awarded a patent on proprietary technology that uses the naturally occurring magnetic field surrounding electric power lines to deliver Internet, voice and video data at more than 2.5 Gigabytes per second, says Edwin Blair, president and chief executive officer of Media Fusion.
If all goes well--and that?s a big if, considering the technology is still on the drawing board--the company hopes to have a demo working by fall, with commercial deployment starting next summer.
The brainchild of William "Luke" Stewart, Media Fusion's chief scientist, the company's technology--dubbed advanced sub-carrier modulation--uses a maser (microwave laser) to inject data into the electrical magnetic field surrounding power lines, enabling the electrical power grid to carry telephone, radio, video, Internet and satellite data. Stewart attributes the high-speed delivery to the lack of switches, routers and gateways that impede the signal.
Blair estimates it would cost $65 million to build out all of North America for the service, which could go for as little as $5 a month. The average monthly cable bill in the U.S. is approximately $38. Blair says phone calls via the electromagnetic field, no matter where the origination and destination, will be charged as local calls.
But Blair is particularly excited about using the technology to link the people in developing countries to the Net. According to the company?s statistics, 85% of the world?s population has electricity, while only 12.7% have access to telephone lines.
"This is a major paradigm shift that is going to affect primarily the developing countries," says Blair. "Our mission is to develop, install and manage low-cost infrastructure to bring high-speed Internet access to anyone in the world with an electrical outlet." Blair says Media Fusion has had a lot of interest from such countries as, among others, South Korea, Spain, Greece, South Africa, Japan and China.
But even if this is the miracle Media Fusion claims it is, it is unlikely the small Texas outfit will convince the $1 trillion Internet industry that it bet its money on the wrong horse.
Nevertheless, the company could reap huge benefits if it can tap into the billions of homes that do not have a cable or telephone jack, but do have electrical outlets. Rural areas of the world could link to the Internet at a fraction of the cost of the current Internet infrastructure.
Privately held Media Fusion, which Blair and Stewart founded in 1998, currently has received $10 million in funding, half of which is in equity, half in debt from some 200 total investors. Not bad, considering the relatively low infrastructure expenditure, but hardly anything to make Silicon Valley quake in its boots.
Still, Blair believes that just as today's technology has revamped communications worldwide, Stewart has come up with something capable of starting a new revolution. "The guy who made the buggy whip didn't like the idea of the horseless carriage," says Blair. "But nothing changes overnight." |
