Cometa Networks is building out wholesale hotspots for the enterprise market - and selling them to customers who then retail them to the enterprise market. In this exclusive WBT interview, Cometa's cofounder and interim CEO, Larry Brilliant, talks to Wi-Fi editor Ron Dennis about "Project Rainbow" and about what suddenly becomes possible within the wireless space when your founding partners include some of the largest businesses in the world.

When you've eradicated a scourge like smallpox from the world, what do you do for an encore? If you're Larry Brilliant, interim CEO of Cometa, you'd attempt to fill the world with Wi-Fi, starting with the U.S.

Cometa Networks, Inc., was launched in December 2002 by AT&T, Intel, IBM, Apax Partners, and 3i. Cometa's ambitious goal is to create 20,000 wireless hotspots within the next two years. After talking with Dr. Brilliant I'm planning on using my Wi-Fi handheld a lot more often.

Our freewheeling interview began with his name. "How much grief did you get with a name like Larry Brilliant?" I asked. Having two first names myself, I knew the joy of being kidded about my moniker.

"Hey, it's a great name," said Larry. "Especially when I'm doing well. Of course when I screw up it's a different story." I immediately knew we'd get along just fine, so I tried a couple more name-type questions.

"How do you pronounce Cometa and what does it mean? And what about Project Rainbow - where did that name come from?"

"Well, Cometa is Italian for comet. We like the image of a comet," he answered. "So if you pronounced it in Italian you'd be most correct, but we say, Co-met-ah.

"Lots of people think that name 'Rainbow' came from me," he continued. "Probably because we're in San Francisco or something. I'd like to say that's true, but it isn't. There's a guy at IBM that names projects after fish. It was originally called "Project Rainbow Trout." My contribution was to get rid of the trout."

"So will we see a project Small Mouth Bass?" I asked.

"Not from me!" he quipped.

Eradicating smallpox was casually mentioned during our chat, but I did a little fact checking. His contribution was not small. He and his wife (Girija, whose doctorate is in public health) were at the front lines of the 1970s smallpox epidemic in India. The worldwide team wasn't satisfied with controlling smallpox. By treating thousands of smallpox "hotspots" they eliminated smallpox from the Earth. What a great way to obsolete yourself!

Later, after founding the Seva Foundation and several clinics to fight needless blindness in India, Dr. Brilliant began linking their Apple computers together to share information. This became his business, and his next crusade. He went on to found Genie, helped invent "The WELL" Online Community, and several startups.

He's been characterized as the Boomer's Boomer - hippie background, personal physician to the Grateful Dead, Whole Earth Catalog contributor, and so on. I choose to regard him as a savvy businessman because that's what this article is about - his savvy business.

Cometa certainly has a brilliant (ahem) strategy. As Larry says, "Our business model is phenomenal and elegant. It fits the time and technology. You can't build in advance of the demand curve. You can't base a business on a land grab in this climate."

Cometa has learned from earlier mistakes in building out Wi-Fi. They sell 802.11 networks wholesale to carriers and other customers. Their customers create the demand and the users of the networks. So when Brilliant says, "20,000 hotspots in two years," what he really means is, "We will build as many hotspots as we can sell to our customers." This is a fundamentally better approach when compared to the earlier, "We will build as many hotspots as the analysts predict." Also, by building to demand (rather than some blue-sky guess), Cometa is building in a revenue stream from the start.

Cometa's strategy depends on partnerships to do the heavy lifting. IBM installs and maintains the right equipment for the job. What sort of equipment? I asked Larry about Vivato, since they offer new technology that extends the range of 802.11. "Absolutely love to work with them," he said. "We are going to use all sorts of different solutions for different wireless situations."

AT&T provides the Internet access and manages the network. Larry said, "Please tell your readers that our deal is with AT&T, not AT&T Wireless. While we'd love to do a deal with AT&T Wireless, AT&T is our partner that provides the landline infrastructure for our hotspots."

Finally, Cometa's wholesale customers (like iPass) complete the value chain by marketing to users, managing customer accounts, and paying fees back to Cometa for using the hotspots. Cometa should have no problem attracting customers who are supplying the enterprise market. After all, their founding partners (IBM, AT&T) are among the largest businesses in the world. And Cometa, according to Brilliant, is not only going after the enterprise market, but also public aggregators like Boingo.

So, what does Cometa do here? "We put checks in the bank, hopefully!" joked Brilliant. "Actually Cometa acquires customers and manages the cross-billing to our partners."

That's no small job if Cometa is supplying multiple wireless user aggregators who are sharing time on the hotspots. This infrastructure can be used with several partners, all branded separately over the same network - built, managed, and supplied by IBM and AT&T. Brilliant is confident there will be something left over for Cometa. I certainly hope so.

When I was at AOL ('94-'96) the dialup infrastructure for connecting AOL to their users was built mostly by Sprint. AOL generated demand by flooding the world with diskettes, and created the popular services with an army of coder/designers. Sprint built out the back end based on demand estimates from AOL. This put Sprint in the enviable position of building to demand.

I predict AOL will want this relationship with Cometa, where AOL focuses on the users, and brands Cometa's hotspots as their own. You heard it here first. There are good reasons for Virgin, for instance - already a virtual phone network and owner of no infrastructure - to be very interested in what Cometa is doing. And if Cometa can get their cross-billing act together, there might be enough money to share revenues with Joe Schmo's hotspot at the coffee shop.

But that's all in the future. Right now Cometa is building out wholesale hotspots for the enterprise market - and selling them to customers who supply the enterprise market. A huge job all on its own, and one that Larry Brilliant is not seeking. He wanted to be sure that I understood that he is the cofounder and interim CEO of Cometa. (They have recently found a CEO to take the company to the next level - Gary Weis, formerly of AT&T and IBM.) Larry is content to be a cofounder and spiritual leader. Indeed.

If Larry Brilliant wanted to take a rest at this point in his life, he would rest on a huge pile of laurels. But I have a feeling we'll be hearing from Dr. Brilliant again, and soon.
www.cometa.com