DISH leases mobile spectrum to Artemis in San Francisco

Artemis will attempt to deploy the world's first pCell wireless technology in Silicon Valley using mobile spectrum leased from DISH in San Francisco. Pending FCC approval, Artemis is looking to use this an an opportunity to prove that their trademarked pCell wireless technology can actually do what it claims for mobile data delivery speed and capacity.

Artemis also plans to test its Artemis I Hub, for indoor and venue trials, like shopping malls. The Hub will use 32 distributed antennas and frequency agility from 600MHz to 6GHz, so the pCell can operate at any bandwith. For outdoor use, Artemis plans to have devices called Frequency-agile pWave remote radios available later this year.

pCell is Artemis's new mobile data technology that claims to be able to improve the efficiency of the mobile spectrum by 35 times. It uses a counterintuitive approach to wireless technology. Conventionally, wireless signals aim to avoid interference, but Artemis exploits signal interference to create an unshared personal cell, called a pCell. This ability to shine in the face of exceedingly high user density could be exactly what wireless technology needs. Overcrowding the wireless signals is one of the biggest issues with effecting mobile technology today. As wireless devices are becoming more prolific, they are also being used for more than the system originally envisioned.

Today, more people have wireless devices than ever before, and most consumers have multiple devices. Consumers probably have a at least a mobile and a tablet in addition to their laptops used wirelessly away from home. More children are being given "screen-time" to be placated by well-meaning parents. There is a limit to how much data can be sent over wifi, and as video streaming becomes overly abundant, we are bumping into that threshhold.

Until now wireless network capacity is something that has been dealt with economically. Consumers have slower loading times coupled with throttled speed and tiered data plans from their mobile service providers. If mobile spectrum capacity could truly be 35 times more efficient like Artemis claims, we are standing at the front of a new level of technology.

VIA: Gigaom