The father of the modern cell phone thinks he has found a better way to connect his prolific invention to the Web. Everyone knows that if you have got a hot commodity, bidders will line up at your door. But Marty Cooper doesn't believe in that precept. Cooper is a spry septuagenarian who spends his days running a private technology outfit called ArrayComm. Cooper's company has developed a new type of wireless antenna that he claims can transmit information more efficiently and hundreds of times faster than the current antennas that have sprouted up around the globe.
Cooper knows a thing or two about wireless networks.
Way back in 1973, he led the team that created the first mobile handset at Motorola. The upshot, says Cooper, is that ArrayComm s technology can multiply the available bandwidth to 400 times today s wireless rates. A network built with his smart antennas will be able to deliver 1 million bits of data per second to mobile users. The technology works on the same principle that allows the brain to calculate the direction from which a sound is coming, based on the time it takes for the sound to reach each ear. The antennas are like ears, but instead of two, there are a half dozen to a dozen.