Startup Claims Big Performance Boost For Citywide Wireless Nets

A company launched Monday, claims to have a better technology for citywide Wi-Fi deployments.

The startup, Wavion, claimed that its so-called spatially adaptive access points (APs) use Multiple Input, Multiple Output (MIMO) technology to increase performance of citywide Wi-Fi networks. In particular, the company said that its APs will increase speed and range citywide systems and can reduce costs by as much as 50 percent.

The company claimed that the increased speed and range enables one Wavion AP to replace three or four conventional devices while providing better performance. That's because the signal in mesh networks "hops" from AP to AP until it gets to the backhaul location that connects the network to the Internet backbone, the company claimed. Each hop decreases performance.

In addition, Wavion claimed its wares make it possible for users to better receive the signals indoors, which is often cited as a shortcoming of wide-area mesh networks.

"Metro Wi-Fi is an enormous opportunity for service providers, but deployments require new technology to deliver the capacity that supports multiple applications and a growing subscriber base," Ran Eisenberg, Wavion's CEO, said in a statement. "We created a completely new category of wireless AP, designed from the ground up for outdoor Wi-Fi deployments."The new company is based in San Jose, California and claims it has $22 million in funding from a variety of investors including Sequoia Capital. The company did not say when it would start selling the access points but said it would be previewing them at a trade show in early June.