03.04.02
Network World
'Net Buzz
by Paul McNamara
'Wacky' Wireless Net Just Might Fly
Journalistic objectivity aside, you can't come away from an interview with Space Data CEO Gerald Knoblach without a rooting interest in his fledgling wireless network, which the entrepreneur himself describes as "a little wacky."
Another editor at Network World calls it plain "nuts."
Maybe it's a bit of both, but Space Data's design to serve rural and suburban America with a wireless network that piggybacks on 70 semidisposable weather balloons already launched twice daily by the National Weather Service is also inspired. And maybe - just maybe - this "constellation" of 6-pound repeaters floating in four layers at about 100,000 feet will turn a buck for its developers and the carriers Knoblach still needs to sign on.
The plan is to start with two-way text messaging as soon as next year, and eventually graduate to voice. Angel investors have staked the company with $13.5 million since its launch in 1999 and Space Data in November landed 1.4MHz of spectrum for the recession-battered bargain price of $4.2 million.
"It's only because [co-founder] Eric Frische and I had a couple of [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] degrees between us that anyone let us through the door for the first half-hour," Knoblach acknowledges. "Then they say, 'Yeah, this might actually work.'"
Knoblach will help a skeptic do the math. A traditional provider would need at least 5,000 towers to cover the 10% of the continental U.S. on which 80% of the population lives, he says. "If it's $1,000 per month per tower just to lease the towers, that's $5 million per month or $60 million per year just for 5,000 towers."
Knoblach's after the balance of the country.
"We will fly 50,000 balloons per year at $300 apiece [for the repeater]; that's $15 million to cover the other 20% of the people and 90% of the land mass. Basically, the costs for us are about the same as providing tower-based coverage."
What he means is the cost is the same per potential customer, meaning Space Data can let carriers reach a market they otherwise could never afford to serve.
The National Weather Service has been launching balloons for 60 years, so getting them airborne is a snap, and plenty is known about the 30- to 40-mph winds at 100,000 feet. The balloons remain aloft for a day and a half. The repeaters carry 16 hours worth of battery power, 12 of which are used once the balloon is at full altitude, with the remainder a reserve for when reactivating the gear is needed to fill a gap in the constellation.
What happens when "must come down" follows "what goes up"? The weather service recovers 18% of its balloons, which carry a mailing address and the promise to pay postage. Space Data says it hopes to do better, because its gear will be GPS-enabled, but the company's business model is based on a recovery rate of zero, Knoblach says.
Although it sounds like a lot of balloons, your chances of finding one are remote.
"We launch 50,000 per year," he says. "If they're randomly scattered and you live on a one-acre piece of land, one will hit your one-acre lot once every 38,000 years." He says he did that math himself.
Knoblach revels in the offbeat nature of this undertaking, so he didn't miss a beat when it was suggested that the falling weather balloons might conjure up images of Roswell, N.M.
"We have this truck that has all of these antennas," he says. "In the research phase we go and recover every single payload because we're trying new things with each one. The balloons from Phoenix actually drift over toward Roswell,so we're often out in this ranch land to the west of Roswell looking for these balloons."
And just try convincing the UFO loonies that you're out there making the hinterlands safe for wireless text messaging.
If E.T. wants to send e-mail, the address is buzz@nww.com