Etherlinx, plans to offer high-speed wireless access to the Internet at inexpensive prices. (NYT)

June 10, 2002 7:52 AM

Etherlinx, plans to offer high-speed wireless access to the Internet at inexpensive prices. (NYT) Without venture capital backing, in a garage just six blocks from the garage where Steven P. Jobs and Stephen Wozniak launched Apple Computer 26 years ago, Mr. Holt is making his clever and inexpensive radio repeater by modifying inexpensive Wi-Fi cards, the circuitry that sends and receives the signals. Their ambitious target: the cable and phone companies that currently hold a near-monopoly on high-speed access for the "last mile" between the Internet and the home.
posted by semmi (2 comments total)

First response: mesh would be good for reliability, using existing hardware modified with new software is a neat concept.

Second response: we've been delivering wireless for almost 4 years off of grain elevators in rural Illinois, nothing about it is cheap or easy, and bandwidth itself is still not an incidental expense(see recent noises about monthly bandwidth usage caps on cable or DSL).

Also, how many $200K garage operations end up with meetings with Intel CEO Craig Barrett and NYT articles? Seems someone might have a little charisma and their own reality distortion field working it's mojo. That's OK, as long as they have some engineering to go with it.
posted by dglynn at 8:27 AM on June 10, 2002

Every wireless method so far has fallen victim to trees, hills and tall buildings.
You can get around buildings OK, hils are a bit more problematic.
but trees ... trees suck. Big blobs of standing water that absolutley kill 802.11b reception. I almost can't get a wireless connection because of one stinking pine tree (that's not on my land)
I've got friends that live further out that can't get anything but 33.6 because of the crappy old phone lines put in 50 years ago.
If they can get licensed to put repeaters on telephone poles then it will be a good last mile solution.
posted by Dillenger69 at 10:13 AM on June 10, 2002