Interview with Gary Weis, CEO of Cometa: I spoke yesterday with the CEO of Cometa about their announcement to deploy 100 hot spots in Seattle by Sept. 25 and 250 by the end of the year in an arrangement that spans several different kinds of locations and many businesses.
I asked Weis to clear up some of the public perceptions about Cometa, which hasn't been entirely clear in the past about their schedule and goals. He said that the company is "right on the schedule where we thought we would have been." Cometa was waiting for AT&T, one of its major investors, to build out a backbone which they will use to deploy on. The McDonald's deployment in New York earlier this summer wasn't what he considers their first city; Seattle will be.
"Seattle is our strategic model of multiple service providers, density and diversity of venue operators and owners, and really giving people in a city a full dense, and complete Wi-Fi experience," he said.
The company's press release confusingly listed four service providers without fully explaining the relationships. Weis said that Cometa remains committed to being a wholesale operator reselling to many service provider partners. AT&T Wireless, listed as a premier provider in the release, was willing to make certain commitments that gave them that ranking. Weis said, "It's just a reflection of the depth of the working relationship."
However, Sprint PCS, AT&T (parent company), and iPass are all initial partners in the Seattle roll-out as well, reselling access to their current and future networks. The company is "in serious conversations with a number of other service providers" that will bear fruit shortly.
I asked Weis to explain how Cometa splits costs, or if they split costs, in developing hot spots. He said that each deal was unique, and that they were planning in every case to work with national brands (like McDonald's and Barnes and Noble), regional brands (Tully's and World Wrapps), and single-location or city-specific players, like the University Village mall near my home.
Weis said, "From a customer perspective, we see the service providers as our primary revenue paying customers," and the fee structure is a cost per unit per month or cost per unit per venue visit, "but it's characterized as a fee structure that's presented to service providers."
He declined to discuss any other financial details.
In choosing their rollout strategy, Weis said that they were oriented around the notion that "we're where people want to use the network when they want to use the network at different times of the day in different social situations." That brings them into coffeeshops, but also office buildings and entire malls.
T-Mobile, to cite one instance, already operates hot spot service at the U Village mall in what I have heard several times referred to as the busiest Starbucks location in the U.S., and the 2nd store ever built by the company. Weis said that their arrangements are with the retail mall operator, and that they are unaware of and not involved in any spectrum or usage issues with individual tenants or T-Mobile.
Weis reiterated earlier projections that Cometa would install 20,000 hot spots in 50 cities. It "still feels right to us." But he's conservative about talking about deals or making disadvantageous deals for the sake of moving forward. "I lived through the dotcom bubble bust, and I saw what happened to companies that built stuff and hoped they'd match revenue against what they built." Instead, Cometa is working closely with service providers to build out the kinds of networks they're ready to pay access fees for.
In the next steps, "At some point in time, in the near future, we'll make decisions to go into the next grouping of cities, it will certainly be more than one." Seattle, however, is "not a let's see what happens and then decide what we do next." Instead, he said, "We're very comfortable with the model, we're very comfortable with the technology."
But they learned quite a lot in installing service in New York City. "It's a lot easier to install in buildings in Seattle than in buildings in Manhattan."