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IBM, AT&T and Intel Plan National Wireless ISP

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the wireless-topic-coming-soon dept.

dailywireless writes "Cometa Networks (formerly The Rainbow Project), a joint venture by IBM, Intel and AT&T, plans to merge Wi-Fi and cellular networks. 'Cometa's vision and plan for this is to offer a single sign-on, single authentication, seamless-roaming nationwide network,' said Michael Mass, vice president of marketing for the Communications Sector at IBM. 802 Plant reports 'AT&T will provide the network infrastructure and management, IBM the wireless installation and back-office system, and Intel the Banias processor. The company plans to have ubiquitous coverage - no further away than 5 minutes walk in an urban area or 5 minutes drive in a rural area - by 2004. which will require the deployment of more than 20,000 hotspot access sites across the U.S.' What fate awaits "free" networks like NYC Wireless, Seattle Wireless or Portland's PersonalTelco? Will AT&T use CoMeta's blanket coverage, with 20,000 "hotspots", to crush the "free" rebellion like a bug?"

4 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. you know... by mschoolbus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You know if everybody makes a single signon technology, nobody will have a single signon...

  2. free by kp833 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    well nothing is going to beat free stuff. 20,000 access points is not going to make any difference just like 20,000 copies of window cant stop free OS.

  3. Free Market, in Public Airwaves by Jasin+Natael · · Score: 5, Insightful

    802.11 a/b band is allocated for *consumer* use. If this is how consumers want the frequency to be used, so be it. I, for one, can see a large demand for nationwide broadband, especially wireless. At the moment, broadband users can't even dial up to their ISP over the phone from the road, much less get broadband access to their account from a moving vehicle or a foreign city.

    It just boils down to the fact that consumers will have to vote with their dollars to say how they want this (their) bandwidth to be used.

    And, for all the /. hopefuls out there, maybe this will serve as a good case-in-point to prove to the FCC that companies don't have to *own* frequencies to be able to do business on them. If we can convince them of this, it could still be possible to fix some of the FCC's biggest mistakes :)

    --
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  4. Oh come on... by johnburton · · Score: 5, Insightful

    An article that someone is going to build what will probably be a really useful wireless network on a scale that will actually make it useful and all that half the posters on here can do is whine that it won't be free. Well of course it won't be. There is no such thing as free wireless internet access. Only access that somebody else is paying for. Either because they feel generous, or because they hope you'll spend your money on something else. Will all the posters whining about this please go and build this free network that they are talking about. I expect it to be a great sucess once it's build and working.

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