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Technology Stocks : Broadband Wireless Access [WCII, NXLK, WCOM, satellite..] -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MangoBoy who wrote (1178)	4/12/2000 8:51:00 PM
From: Bruce Byall	Respond to of 1860

Sony gives boost to ArrayComm for its high-capacity wireless link. Posted at 9:26 p.m. PDT Tuesday, April 11, 2000 BY JON HEALEY Mercury News Staff Writer A San Jose start-up hoping to bring wireless, ultra-high-speed Internet access to portable devices has received a significant financial boost from Sony, a leading consumer-electronics and entertainment company. ArrayComm developed a way to multiply the capacity of cellular phone networks, enabling them to deliver data 20 or more times faster than the speediest dial-up modem. That's more bandwidth than many high-speed phone lines and cable modems can be counted on to supply. While a growing number of companies are offering high-capacity wireless links to office buildings and corporate users, ArrayComm also wants to reach consumers and laptop-armed ``road warriors.' Its technology can enable such high-speed connections for $30 or less per month, undercutting the wire-based alternatives, Chief Executive Martin Cooper said. ArrayComm is several significant steps away from delivering on that promise, though. For starters, none of the companies that own wireless frequencies in the United States have embraced its technology. Still, the company announced its latest round of funding Tuesday, producing $15 million and the first endorsement from a major multinational corporation for its new ``i-Burst' technology. Sony Corp. of America is investing $8 million, while venture-capital firms and other investors are putting up the rest. A Sony executive said the company sees a growing need for communications capabilities in its devices, particularly the ability to receive applications through the Internet. The investment aims to ``propel the development of a technology that will enable the delivery of new, media-rich wireless services built around our own core content and technologies,' said Yang Hun Lee, executive vice president for corporate strategy at Sony Corp. of America. Sony isn't disclosing what products it might build to take advantage of i-Burst's technology, but it has already made clear its interest in moving the Internet beyond the computer. For example, the company's forthcoming PlayStation2 game console will connect to the Internet, and the company has announced plans to deliver streaming video to wireless devices. ArrayComm's signal-transmitting technique is designed for data instead of voices, in contrast to today's cell-phone networks. Its antennas direct signals at specific users, rather than broadcasting them throughout the area, enabling far more capacity to be supplied to individuals on the network. The result is a total capacity for i-Burst of 40 million bits of data per second, company officials say, which is 400 times the amount of data delivered by today's cell phone networks. Even the high-capacity ``third generation' mobile phone networks will deliver at least 40 times less bandwidth, ArrayComm claims. The tradeoff is that i-Burst doesn't work well with rapidly moving devices. So it's better suited for the home or office than the highway. The company's smart-antenna techniques have been used on mobile-phone networks in Asia, but i-Burst hasn't made it out of ArrayComm's labs. Cooper said the company plans to try out i-Burst in the field in October, then run a large-scale demonstration in an undisclosed U.S. city next year. Ultimately, Cooper said, ArrayComm plans just to supply the technology, not to operate the network. He also said that the technology is more likely to be deployed on a network built from scratch, rather than replacing an existing mobile phone company's equipment. ArrayComm hopes to have its technology in about 100 cities within three to 3 1/2 years, reaching about two-thirds of the country's population, Cooper said. Doing so will cost about $2 billion -- a high price tag, but a relatively small amount for a new national network. The main stumbling block is getting the frequencies needed to operate the network. But the technology can work across a wide range of frequencies, Cooper said, and the federal government is putting a lot of new bands into play. Cooper, 71, is already credited with inventing the portable cell phone, based on work he did as a Motorola vice president in the early 1970s. In fact, in 1973 he made what may be the first-ever call on a hand-held wireless phone, using a brick-like prototype to call an acquaintance at Bell Labs -- a company that was racing with Motorola to develop car-mounted mobile phones. Cooper's current venture is racing with a new generation of companies, including Ericsson, Qualcomm and Cisco, to develop low-cost ways to deliver high-capacity wireless connections. And ArrayComm expects to spend far less time perfecting its technology than the 15 years Motorola spent bringing a hand-held cell phone to the market. mercurycenter.com