A company that equips coffee shops and bookstores for wireless Internet offerings is shutting down, casting doubt on a business niche many analysts had considered a sure bet.
Despite initial investments from AT&T Corp, Intel Corp, IBM Corp and venture capital firms, Cometa Networks Inc could not get additional financing to expand beyond the Seattle area, said Kent Hellebust, Cometa vice president of marketing.
The Schaumburg, Illinois-based company will help customers such as Tully's Coffee Corp and Barnes & Noble Inc find new providers in the Seattle area before shutting its doors in the coming weeks, Hellebust said on Wednesday.
Cometa attracted marquee investors and media attention in late 2002, when it began selling "Wi-Fi" access to cafes, bookstores and Internet service providers.
Short for wireless fidelity, Wi-Fi radiates an Internet connection that multiple computers can share, at very fast speeds, for about 100m with the installation of a single "hot spot."
Because it uses unlicensed radio frequencies, Wi-Fi is easy and inexpensive to operate.
The US has at least 3,700 public hot spots, according to research firm IDC. Many laptops come with equipment that automatically enable Wi-Fi access.
Telecommunications executives thought Cometa's business strategy was savvy: Cometa would equip buildings with wireless access, while corporate customers would shoulder costs for marketing, support, billing and other complexities.
But as Cometa looked to expand, Hellebust said, potential investors told it the return on the capital would be insufficient.
"We are obviously very disappointed," Hellebust said.
Some analysts say Cometa's closure could signal a tough row in the increasingly crowded niche, populated by Deutsche Telekom AG's T-Mobile USA, Verizon Communications, Wayport, Boingo Wireless and others.
Those companies are also battling a more nebulous foe -- legions of renegade computer enthusiasts and network administrators who provide free Wi-Fi access at their homes and offices.
Because hot spots provide access to anyone nearby, swaths of New York, San Francisco, Seattle, San Jose, California, and even smaller communities such as Aspen, Colorado, have free service for anyone with a Wi-Fi-enabled laptop.
John Yunker of Byte Level Research said Cometa may have overestimated the number of people willing to pay for Wi-Fi. And, he said, the optimistic startup miscalculated how fast it could grow.
In late 2002, Cometa hoped to build 20,000 hot spots by the end of this year. The privately held company would not say how many customers or how much money it has, but Yunker said it fell far short.
"It takes a week to deploy it in a single hotel," Yunker said. "Then add in time to write contracts and set up deals -- you do the math."
Seattle-based Seanet Corp inked a deal with Cometa late last month to provide some of Seanet's 15,000 customers with Wi-Fi.
Seanet has been scrambling to find a new wireless provider since they learned of the closure on Monday.
"It's still a shock that they're going down," said Andrew Shirey, director of sales and marketing for Seanet.
Executives at rivals were quick to blame Cometa mismanagement rather than an overall lack of enthusiasm for Wi-Fi or problems for other Wi-Fi business strategies.
"They spent too much money before they needed to and demanded carriers pay high minimums for access to a network that wasn't yet built," Sky Dayton, chief executive of Boingo Wireless, said in an e-mail.
"No carrier wanted to go along with that," Dayton said.
GAINING STEAM: The scheme initially failed to gather much attention, with only 188 cards issued in its first year, but gained popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic Applications for the Employment Gold Card have increased in the past few years, with the card having been issued to a total of 13,191 people from 101 countries since its introduction in 2018, the National Development Council (NDC) said yesterday. Those who have received the card have included celebrities, such as former NBA star Dwight Howard and Australian-South Korean cheerleader Dahye Lee, the NDC said. The four-in-one Employment Gold Card combines a work permit, resident visa, Alien Resident Certificate (ARC) and re-entry permit. It was first introduced in February 2018 through the Act Governing Recruitment and Employment of Foreign Professionals (外國專業人才延攬及雇用法),
RESILIENCE: Deepening bilateral cooperation would extend the peace sustained over the 45 years since the Taiwan Relations Act, Greene said Taiwan-US relations are built on deep economic ties and shared values, American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Director Raymond Greene said yesterday, adding that strengthening supply chain security in critical industries, enhancing societal resilience through cooperation and deepening partnerships are key to ensuring peace and stability for Taiwan in the years ahead. Greene made the remarks at the National Security Youth Forum, organized by National Taiwan University’s National Security and Strategy Studies Institution in Taipei. In his address in Mandarin Chinese, Greene said the Taiwan-US relationship is built on deep economic ties and shared interests, and grows stronger through the enduring friendship between
CAUTION URGED: Xiaohongshu and Douyin — the Chinese version of TikTok — are tools the Chinese government uses for its ‘united front’ propaganda, the MAC said Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) yesterday urged people who use Chinese social media platforms to be cautious of being influenced by Beijing’s “united front” propaganda and undermining Taiwan’s sovereignty. Chiu made the remarks in response to queries about Chinese academic Zhang Weiwei (張維為) saying that as young Taiwanese are fond of interacting on Chinese app Xiaohongshu (小紅書, known as RedNote in English), “after unification with China, it would be easier to govern Taiwan than Hong Kong.” Zhang is professor of international relations at Shanghai’s Fudan University and director of its China Institute. When giving a speech at China’s Wuhan
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
RSS