Cometa falls from the sky

Cometa Networks Inc. plans to announce Wednesday that it will shut down, after its investors and board of directors decided to pull the plug on the fledgling Wi-Fi hotspot service provider, a spokeswoman for the company said Tuesday.

"The board of directors and the investors decided that the financial return for investors wasn't perceived to be sufficient to attract the required capital for a national network deployment," said Jennifer Gehrt, from Communiqué Public Relations, which handles public relations for Cometa.

Cometa, founded in December 2002 by, among others, AT&T Corp., Intel Corp. and IBM Corp., will shut down in the coming weeks and its 40 employees will be laid off, Gehrt said.

Gehrt couldn't say what will happen to Cometa's hotspots and its partner hotspot providers. A Cometa executive didn't immediately return calls seeking comment.

Cometa's charter was to provide "broadband, wholesale, wireless Internet access nationwide," it said in its December 2002 press release announcing its formation.

The plan was for Cometa to provide this service to telecommunications companies, Internet service providers, cable operators and wireless carriers, which in turn would offer their own customers wireless Internet access using IEEE 802.11x Wi-Fi technology.

"The company will work with major national and regional retail chains, hotels, universities and real estate firms to deploy the broadband wireless access service in 'hot spots' throughout the top 50 U.S. metropolitan areas," the Schaumburg, Illinois-based company said in that press release.