IP: Fantasma obit draft

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> From: "Janos G." <janos451 () earthlink net>
> To: "jg" <janos451 () earthlink net>
> Subject: RFC: Fantasma obit draft
> Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2001 00:37:48 -0700
>
> Fantasma is no longer a reality as firm closes
>
> Janos Gereben - the451
>
> Quietly and unexpectedly, Fantasma Network closed up shop Friday evening,
> the451 has learned. The January, 2000, spin-off from Paul Allen's Interval
> Research, Fantasma took aim at making ultra-wideband (UWB) radio signals
> commercially viable as the tool to integrate home entertainment systems and
> Internet access.
>
> The Palo Alto company, with close ties to Stanford University, promised
> making UWB technology available to consumer electronics, Internet appliance,
> PC and game manufacturers in the second half of 2001. Fantasma pledged
> first-generation products supporting data rate transmission up to 60 Mbps at
> a distance of 100 feet (30 meters). The company had a brilliant cast of
> characters, including G. Roberto Aiello (founding president, later CTO,
> formerly with the Stanford Linear Accelerator), Carlton Sparrell (director
> of hardware engineering, from the MIT Media Lab), Minnie Ho (director of
> system communication engineering, from Interval and, before that,
> fiber-optic and wireless-packet researcher), and Jim Lovette (director of
> strategic policies, formerly principal communications technologies scientist
> for Apple Computer).
>
> Through its short life, Fantasma struggled with a regulatory environment,
> which has taken some 60 years - since the patent by Heddy Lamar and George
> Antheil giving rise to UWB technology - to come to terms with the safety and
> non-interference of ultra-wideband. a process still incomplete. The FCC,
> while recognizing the potentially wide applicability UWB for use in wireless
> communications aimed at creating short-range, high speed data transmission
> networks, is still at work modifying regulations to enable widespread
> commercial use of the technology.
>
> Company sources cited both the tenuous FCC process and lack of new investors
> for closing Fantasma, but several industry observers said the major problem
> was the company not meeting its development milestones.
>
> Lovette, who represented Fantasma before the FCC, told the451 last year that
> there is too much hype surrounding UWB: "Some say that it provides unlimited
> bandwidth for every user; direct communications range worldwide; uses a
> single AA cell that lasts a year; makes cellular obsolete; uses same
> frequencies as all other wireless but overlays them invisibly and causes no
> interference, eliminates the need for FCC, costs about same as a Big Mac and
> fries but is less fattening. and so on."
>
> The truth, Lovette said, is that ultra-wideband radio "is in fact a powerful
> new technological tool. Where it fits (and that has some well-defined
> limits), it's better than existing alternatives and some of the claims are
> at least based on some half-truth, but many have been grossly overstated."
>
> Integration of communication devices has been predicted and advocated by
> many scientists, most notably the late Mark Weiser of Xerox PARC. Weiser's
> "ubiquitous computing" articles and lectures forecast a world which, Lovette
> said, "there will be a (wireless) data communications device on or as part
> of almost everything living and dead: each document, piece of clothing (no
> more fleeing socks), pet, person, zinnia in the garden, tomato. We already
> have one enabler of this, the bar code. A UWB transmitter or receiver could
> be an ideal way to implement some of these, costing negligibly and no more
> intrusive (or less) than the library's theft-preventer that's stuck in the
> spine."
>
> There are scores of young companies working on UWB development and on
> technology incorporating it, including Atheros, BeamReach, Pervasive, Aelita
> (in Russia), TimeDomain, and hundreds of major firms - such as AOL,
> Motorola, Compaq - who participate in the Ultra Wideband Working Group
> industry association.
>
>
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Janos Gereben/SF, CA
> janos451 () earthlink net



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