st Cell Caller Backs Wireless Web
By MICHAEL WHITE
.c The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES (AP) - In 1973 Martin Cooper made one of the most significant telephone calls since Alexander Graham Bell spilled acid on his clothes and cried into a transmitter, ``Mr. Watson, come here!'
Ninety-seven years after Bell became the first person to speak over a telephone line, Cooper hefted a clumsy, 2 1/2-pound box of wires, circuits and batteries to his ear and made the first private call from a handheld cellular phone.
Generally acknowledged as the father of the now-ubiquitous cellular handset, the 71-year-old Cooper wants to do for the Internet what he helped do for telephones.
As chairman of the San Jose-based ArrayComm Inc., Cooper is promoting cellular technology that promises to deliver wireless Internet access to small devices as simple and portable as cell phones, and at speeds equal to DSL or cable connections.
``The real issue is whether the Internet is going to be wired or wireless,' Cooper said during an interview at the Internet World 2000 conference here last week. ``People don't want to communicate with machines. They want to communicate with other people and they want to do that with devices they can carry.'
Cooper isn't alone in his vision of a wireless world. In flashy presentations at the Internet World conference, executives from America Online Inc., Intel Corp. and other companies predicted a bright future for wireless devices such as notebook-sized Internet pads, palm-sized computers and cell phones that will offer fast, simple access to music, games, video and other content from the Web.
Cooper was a vice president at Motorola Corp. during the early 1970s, when the company was competing with AT&T's Bell Labs to develop bulky, 30-pound cellular telephones that would be mounted in automobiles. Cooper convinced Motorola to shrink the phone to a size that people could carry.
Motorola debuted its hand-held cellular phone in 1973. Motorola had tested the telephone in the laboratory, but no one ever had made a private, personal call with it. On his way to the first public demonstration, Cooper decided to test the device one more time. Standing on a New York City street corner, he called an acquaintance at Bell Labs.
``I don't remember my precise words. I do remember a kind of embarrassed silence at the other end,' Cooper said.
Under Cooper's guidance, Motorola developed five generations of cellular handsets before putting one on the market in 1983. The project took 15 years and cost $90 million.
``If you can imagine what it takes, just fighting off the bean counters and doom sayers. Fortunately there was a strong cadre of management that were supporters,' Cooper said.
For his effort, Cooper is generally acknowledged as the inventor of the hand-held cellular telephone. Last February, the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association and the Industrial Telecommunications Association inducted him into the Wireless Hall of Fame.
The privately held ArrayComm, which has about $25 million in annual revenue, is trying to solve such problems by using ``smart' antennas and proprietary technology that allows cellular providers to beam signals more directly to the user.
Traditional cell phone signals are broadcast in all directions, an inefficient system that jams broadcast spectrums with too many signals, Cooper said. By zeroing in on the user's location, ArrayComm's system eliminates much of the crowding, in effect creating more capacity, he said.
The company's newest technology, dubbed i-Burst, will allow ArrayComm to provide Internet access to wireless devices at a rate of one megabit per second, roughly equal to speeds provided by cable and DSL modems. The cost would be about the same as the price of regular Internet subscription, Cooper said.
ArrayComm's primary competition comes from Swedish phone maker LM Ericsson AB, which is testing similar technology in Japan, said Dylan Brooks, an analyst with Jupiter Communications.
``ArrayComm's technology appears to help address how we get from our current cellular systems with their bandwidth limitations to the next generation of higher speed,' he said. ``They have their work cut out to catch up with (Ericsson).'
One of Cooper's most frustrating obstacles is age. At 71, the white-haired Cooper is competing in an Internet culture where millionaire, 20-something executives are commonplace. At ArrayComm, the average age on the management team is 33.
``It's hard for them to imagine that a guy twice as old as them can still be creative and energetic,' he said.
Cooper stays active, boogie boarding in the surf near his beachfront home in Del Mar, and running six miles every other day.
``Somehow you know that when you stop doing something physically, you're going to lose the ability to do it. The same thing is true mentally. The way you stay young is by matching wits with people and solving problems.
On the Net: arraycomm.com |
