Cometa seems unlikely to meet 20,000 hot spot target at current pace: While they may surprise us all, the amount of observation of Cometa's moves is so intense that it's unlikely to remain on a submarine basis if they sign a big chain with which they can deploy hot spot infrastructure. (For instance, I had a list of the 10 NYC McDonald's outlets the night before the launch from a friendly colleague unassociated with Cometa.)

Hot spot operators have told me again and again that the venues just don't exist to roll out 20,000 locations of a nature that cell operators and others would want as part of a partner/aggregator relationship for business travelers. Further, Cometa doesn't seem to have anything up its sleeve for the short-term.

I talked to wireless analysts Sarah Kim of the Yankee Group for a news item in tomorrow's New York Times about Sprint PCS's Wi-Fi announcement, and she said in passing about the optimistic hot spot build-out schedules, "Everyone seems very aggressive with these numbers, but as we’ve seen so far with Cometa, nothing much has happened."

Likewise, Sprint PCS throwing its hat in the ring means another 1,300 locations that they expect to own the infrastructure of -- and they've been unwiring hotels, businesses, and colleges for two years. Cometa can point to their McDonald's outlets. Who wins the venue in that comparison?