Project Rainbow Unveiled…
As was rumored yesterday, the major participants behind the secretive “something to do with Wi-Fi” Project Rainbow have finally announced their plans. What is Project Rainbow? It’s a me-too Wi-Fi hotspot company named Cometa. It sounds just like all the previous attempts at building Wi-Fi hotspot networks. They want to outfit retail chains, hotels, universities and real estate firms with Wi-Fi and give people a single sign-on. Since it’s backed by AT&T, Intel and IBM, you can figure out who’s supplying what technology and where the internet access is coming from. Of course, with backers like that, you can see that the company has a bit of wiggle room where others have troubled (that is, they mostly ran out of money). However, it’s not clear that they’re (in any way) addressing the business model issues associated with dumping a bunch of Wi-Fi hotspots around the world. There’s no question that people want the hotspots. There’s a huge question about how much people are willing to spend to access those hotspots.
