Perth Wi-Fi carrier eyes Sydney, Melbourne
The company's managing director Glenn Farrow said he had discussed potential rollouts with several interested parties. "We've had two people -- one in Sydney, one in Melbourne -- who've said they're prepared to partner with us on a 50/50, or 51/49 percent basis," he told ZDNet Australia.
Farrow is confident his company's solution, operated by wholly-owned subsidiary 'metromesh,' could compete with established wireless players like Unwired and Personal Broadband Australia (PBA) because it does not use proprietary hardware and can be accessed from any device with a 802.11-based network card. This feature comes standard with all new laptops.
The metromesh solution -- which presently covers around 35 percent of Perth's central business district -- was also cheaper to roll out, he said. While Unwired and PBA use a "blast approach, where they just put as many aerials out as possible and blanket cover an entire area," he said, aCure instead puts its wireless access hubs on the outside of buildings and targets specific locations like offices, parks and the street.
In contrast with the wireless hotspots commonly found in locations like cafes, metromesh charges users by the amount they download, instead of on a per hour basis. Farrow claimed "a lot of people" had switched to metromesh from a hotspot solution.
Additionally, metromesh allows users to signup instantly online and buy pre-paid blocks of data online without interacting with customer service staff.
Farrow said aCure's hubs are connected to each other wirelessly using a technique known as 'mesh' networking. Although the hubs can technically only provide speeds up to 11Mbps, they are able to be upgraded with software when the forthcoming WiMAX standard is finalised, increasing the speed dramatically.
The managing director said the 802.11A and B radio-based standards used by metromesh were particularly suitable for city environments.
"Because it works at a lower frequency on the radio, you actually get deeper penetration through buildings," said Farrow. "We can go forty-fifty meters into a building and people still get a very good signal strength." He noted the 802.11G standard was also supported, although had not proved as effective in practice.
In comparison, Farrow thinks Unwired's spectrum ownership would be "better suited to a residential-type environment," with a flatter landscape allowing better coverage.
Not just a carrier
Although the hardware for aCure's network originally came from vendor RoamAD, Farrow says it has now started manufacturing its own devices to the vendor's standards. In conjunction with RoamAD, which still provides software needed to operate the devices, aCure wants to sell the product overseas.
"We are going to be starting to export this technology," said Farrow. "We assemble it here in Perth, and we've probably got about 6 quotes out worldwide through RoamAD as our primary partner, to various areas."
Those areas include Thailand, Venezuela, Jamaica, Barbados and the United States. "Jointly we hope to win some of that business, and we'll start exporting," said Farrow.