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May 24, 2004

Cometa's Venues Scrambling

By Glenn Fleishman

Tully’s and others figuring out next steps for Wi-Fi as Cometa slowly turns off the lights: You can tell how confusing the situation is when the Tully’s VP quoted in the story confuses AT&T with AT&T Wireless. AT&T had invested in Cometa; AT&T Wireless is merging with Cingular. (After which point, AT&T will regain the AT&T Wireless name, very likely, and resell Sprint PCS service under that brand!)

A Cometa spokesperson is quoted as saying McDonald’s award of its entire Wi-Fi installation to Wayport did not have anything to do with the decision by investors to end funding of Cometa. From what I have heard from various sources, this is correct. In fact, given their investment picture, had they bagged McDonald’s, they might still have found themselves in the same place.

The report says that AT&T withdrew its backing from the venture, but that’s incorrect. One division of AT&T that was reselling Cometa service stopped its reselling agreement, but the reporters imply this was connected to the investment side, which wasn’t the case. AT&T and IBM made token investments in the venture despite being listed as marquee partners. This may have hurt Cometa’s ability to raise money from other, small venture firms.

Posted by Glennf at May 24, 2004 2:43 PM

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