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05/07/2004: "Wayport, Musenki, Vivato, ..."

Back when I was at Wayport, Brett Stewart came up with the idea (maybe 1999 or so) to locate APs on phone booths. I instigated a project (called the DSLAP (DSL AP)) with Northshore Circuit Design(also in Austin) to produce a linux-powered 802.11b AP based on the Motorola MPC855T (or 860, but I digress).

We got the board up (the designer eventually worked for me at Wayport) and running, but by then the VCs were all in a twist about things (this was during 2000 when the VC funds were collapsing), and gave Wayport a new CEO (Dave Vucina). At Wayport, we had deployed some (free!) wireless around town in non-traditional venues, such as Katz's deli. Quite honestly, I had plans to go out and place APs that would cost us around $300 each with no external DSL modem in armored boxes wherever I could find a phone (or payphone).

My dream was that there would be wireless at Rudy's and El Arroyo. This was all very much prior to the "community wireless" movement..

I also had plans to use a "mini DSLAM" in hotels with the DSLAPs on the ends of the cat0 wire (all that one can find in most hotels). Note that under my "reign" at Wayport, we had designed a full 100 port managed Ethernet switch that used either full 10/100 Ethernet or HPNA to communicate with a 5 port switch located in the room. The system was called "Everywire".

There are NEXT problems with running a WHOLE BUNCH of HPNA in a wire bundle, and ADSL (or even SDSL) would have fixed that. Note as well that the in-room devices cost around $130 each, so if we could have placed one AP for every 3 rooms, we would still be money ahead (perhaps every 2 rooms, since the labor cost of installing the room was so high.)

So re-engineering the line cards in the switch to be ADSL instead of Ethernet would have been really straight forward. In fact, this effort was underway, when I was forced to shut the project down due to (ahem) "change in business focus" at Wayport. Were it not for some intense pressure from several people, Wayport could have been a 100% wireless company back in 2000.

Note that when I shut it down, the DSLAP was up and running linux and full 802.11b. It was ready. We could even power it over a spare pair from the remote closet. I was still convinced of the viability of an AP that you *could change*, so I quit Wayport in April of 2001 to focus on a new company that some of you may have heard of, Musenki.

When I was out doing Musenki, I spread the idea at several conferences (Eye For Wireless, 802.11 Planet, etc.) that pay phones were one of the logical places from which to light the world. The operator of the pay phone already has a relationship with the venue owner to supply telecommunications services. Hotels and Airports have their hands in the pockets of anyone who attempts to cross the threshold of their venue(s) with a new service or store. Thus, the pay phone operators (COCOTS and ILECS), who had a business that was dying at the hands of cell phones, would have a new (ahem) revenue opportunity.

Kem McClelland wanted to be sure that we (at Musenki) didn't pursue any idea that had been hatched at Wayport, so we didn't do the DSLAP. Instead we focused on powerful, linux-powerd APs, using MPC8245/MPC8241 CPus and miniPCI cards instead of the MPC855T and a PCMCIA card. Once again, we got the hardware and software all up and working before it became obvious that the partnership (which involved Kem and Brad Martin (who owns 1/2 of Northshore) had fractured, and Kem and Brad refused to "allow" the corporation to proceed with any production without outside funding. This is why Musenki failed.

I'm sure they had their reasons, but it was completely disheartening for me, so I decided to look for a job, and found one at Vivato. Vivato went through its own VC hell, and replaced the CEO with someone I decided I couldn't work with, so I resigned and now I work at Netgate with my lovely wife (who was unmentioned above, but was Musenki's first employee, back when it was known as wild*bliw.)