Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) Deadpool

Hybrid Networks, Inc. / IoWave, Inc.

Continued from Good Day, BWIA Wednesday, December 5, 2007.

To be accepting new customers again, Sprint Broadband Direct must have quite a stock of equipment; I tried to track down the history of Hybrid Networks, Inc. which was the equipment supplier for Sprint Broadband Direct. The assets of Hybrid Networks, Inc. were apparently bought out of bankruptcy by IoWave, Inc. in 2002'ish, but IoWave doesn't seem to have succeeded Hybrid Networks by much; there's no surer sign of a corporate death than to go to a company URL and be greeted by one of those triple-damned squatting search sites.

Small BWIA historical vignette - I followed Hybrid Networks closely as they were the equipment vendor most closely linked with the conversion of the 2.5 GHz band from "wireless cable television" to one-way Broadband Wireless Internet Access, and finally to two-way. When set up properly (reportedly, Sprint ignored loading recommendations from Hybrid Networks and systems began experiencing reliability and usablity issues) the Hybrid Networks system worked well, providing very reasonable performance and overall reliability, and excellent range. It did what it was supposed to do.

When Hybrid Networks went "on the ropes" in the wake of the dot-bomb crash of 2000 or so, I was very impressed with the way the operations of Hybrid Networks were wound down by then CEO Michael Greenbaum. From what I observed, Greenbaum made every effort for vendors to be paid as much as possible, employee terminations to be as graceful as possible under the circumstances, and provisions made for customers to continue to be able to get Hybrid Networks hardware to continue their networks.

By Steve Stroh

This article is Copyright © 2007 by Steve Stroh except for specifically-marked excerpts. Excerpts and links are expressly permitted (and encouraged).

 

Harris Corp. / Stratex Networks Merged Into Harris Stratex

Merged January, 2007.

(Story in development.)

Comments on this company are welcome!

 

 

 

Advanced Radio Cells, Inc. / CoWave Networks Merged Into Arcwave

(Story in development.)

Comments on this company are welcome!

(Story in development.)

Comments on this company are welcome!

Arcwave - Equipment Vendor

(Story in development. No demand for DOCSIS-based Broadband Wireless Internet Access systems?)

Comments on this company are welcome!

(Story in development. No demand for DOCSIS-based Broadband Wireless Internet Access systems?)

Comments on this company are welcome!

Monet Mobile Networks - Service Provider

(Story in development.)

Comments on this company are welcome!

Patrick Leary Kicks It Off

Patrick Leary couldn't have known that this site, www.bwiadeadpool.com, was on my list of Broadband Wireless Internet Access sites to set up. It was originally "in the back of my mind" but the more I thought about it, the more it nagged at me that so many interesting companies with good ideas, are now gone, struck down by the ruthlessly Darwinian process of capitalism.

So when Patrick posted this message to the WISPA Public list, I accelerated plans to get this site going. It will be a low-priority site for now while I launch others, but feel free to send your favorite nominations for BWIA Deadpool to me.

Here's Patrick's contribution to this opening posting of BWIA Deadpool:

    Subject:     old WLAN history
    Date:     February 16, 2007 9:25:11 AM PST

Well, for sure this industry never stands still does it Steve? As one fond of change, that one of the things I most enjoy. I knew from people there that V-com has become Vecima (much better 'new millienium' type name), but I did not know they absorbed Wave/Waverider. Did Charles (Brown) join Vecima too?  Years ago when the Cirronet folks were creating their company out of their successful industrial wireless space, I sat down with of the principals. They really thought they had the secret sauce. I was very cautionary, trying to impart how challenging the market was/(is!). They had a hard and not especially gratifying few years.

I forgot about Arraycom sold off iBurst. Sigh. It made me "remember how much I have forgotten" about lost companies in this business. Remember ioSpan? How about Beamreach? Remember they even had a successful Verizon trial fours years ago.

And then how about all the companies bought, collapsed into and morphed over the years? Someday we should build a full "BWIA family tree" of sorts. Fun examples (I might be a little off [is that Fruedian?]) just from perhaps the 4 original wireless LAN pioneers:

Glenair spun off Western Multiplex>WMUX buys the original WLAN pioneer Proxim and keeps Proxim name> Proxim buys Farallon and Proxim buys Agere>Proxim sold in bankruptcy to YDI who had recently "bought" Terabeam>YDI/Terabeam dba Proxim

And within that story is Agere: Lannet spins off>LANair pieces become part of Lucent's original pioneering WLAN group>Lucent spins out Agere which comes out with Orinoco which ends up at Proxim...

And fewer would know the others with ties from LANair formed original WLAN pioneer BreezeCOM, which later merged with Floware to became Alvarion in 2001...

How many remember that Telxon created original WLAN pioneer Aironet which was bought by Cisco.

And all that is one tiny fraction of all that has taken place and does not even cover the rise of the UL BWA application itself where we were also a principal pioneer on the product side (but we were only smartly following the lead of the original WISPs, most who were using our gear that pre-dated DSSS) as the others stayed in WLAN.

I wonder what the next 12 years will bring?