Air2Lan launches wireless Internet mobility service

Air2Lan (www.air2lan.com), a wireless broadband ISP, is augmenting its service in Jackson, MS, through the launch of an Internet mobility service. The new service wirelessly delivers mobile broadband Internet access to laptops and PDAs.

Jai Bhagat, chairman & CEO, said his company wants to provide the same end-user functionality and platform away from the office as it does behind the desk so that workers don’t have to rely on a device such as the BlackBerry (www.blackberry.net) that can’t offer the same user interface and content.

“Our focus has been on providing fixed wireless in the corporate environment,” Bhagat said. For this service, Air2Lan has been using Wi-Lan (www.wi-lan.com) equipment operating in the unlicensed bands. Now the ISP will provide corporate wireless LANs (WLANs) as well as some public-access points.

Additionally, its customers will be able to have seamless roaming with public-access points from other providers.

WLAN (802.11b) is like the early cellular model, Bhagat said, where initially you only had limited local coverage and no roaming. Roaming was developed first by working through clearinghouses. WLAN is at the point in roaming where cellular was in 1983-84, he said.

“It all took off when the end user had seamless roaming and the same functionality as he had in the local market,” Bhagat said.

Air2Lan has been in the Jackson market for about 18 months where it serves 400 businesses and 6,000 end users, primarily using the fixed-wireless service. It will go back to these same corporate customers to interest them in its new WLAN service in order to enable mobility. Other Air2Lan markets are New Orleans, Houston, and Montgomery, AL.

The company’s goal is to be in 10 markets in 2002 if funding is available. In October, Air2Lan announced $2 million in funding, and it's in the process of raising more, Bhagat said. The company took just 14 months to be cash-flow positive in the Jackson market, and it expects to be the same in the remaining three markets with the latest infusion of capital.

Although the Internet mobility service is the second phase of Air-2Lan’s planned services, it’s not the last. Air2Lan has partnered with MeshNetworks (www.meshnetworks.com), a wireless hardware-technology company, to develop technologies enabling “roaming” high-speed Internet access across an entire service area from all locations including cars.

The MeshNetworks solution uses what is known as a peer-to-peer routing technology where every subscriber device in the network can act as a router and repeater for all of the other devices.

Subscriber signals hop through these devices or through wireless routers — small enough to be mounted on streetlights — in order to reach network-access points, eliminating the need for cell towers.

The IP-based network delivers up to 6Mb/s of broadband data to each subscriber on devices that include laptops, PDAs and smart phones. Because geo-location is built into the network, the solution exceeds all E-911 location requirements, according to the company.

The company is about a year away from this third phase, described by Bhagat as “true mobility.”