Qualcomm Ventures is part of a $5 million funding round for a startup headed by T-Mobile US Wi-Fi veteran Cole Brodman.
Brodman, whose team at T-Mobile US launched the Starbucks Wi-Fi hot spot network (now operated by Google), will leave his current position at Trilogy Equity Partners to become CEO of M87, an Austin, Texas, startup set to move to Seattle. M87 refers to Messier 87, a galaxy of densely packed stars with highly active stellar radio sources. It’s a good name for a company that wants to create a mesh network comprised of billions of smartphones.
M87’s technology, created by Vidur Bhargava and Dr. Sriram Vishwanath at the University of Texas at Austin, is designed to enable smartphones to use unlicensed spectrum for point-to-point communication. With the M87 software installed on a device, phones can find one another and communicate without involving a cell tower or base station. The company sees it as a way for carriers to leverage devices that have a strong cell signal to help connect devices that may have a weaker signal.
“We provide a software-only solution that enables wireless carriers or app developers to create what we like to call a proximate internet of directly connected mobile devices,” said Brodman. “Or they could be ‘internet of things’ devices as well, or mixes. … Our software platform, on a smartphone for example, enables routing and bridging at the edge of the network. … It’s a mesh network that is multi-operating system, multi-RF and multihop in nature.”
Brodman expects the M87 solution to hit the market within the next few months. The solution is deployed in carrier networks through software installed on mobile devices and in the carrier core network. Brodman said the core network software is compatible with standard hardware present in the networks of all the carriers testing M87’s solution.
M87 also sells a product for application developers that want to add location services and device discovery to their apps. The company sees its technology as a good fit for emergency services apps and mobile advertising.
IoT developers are also interested in M87, Brodman said, noting the company is talking to a number of potential customers, but sees the carrier community as the most promising market in the near term, especially as carriers explore deployments in higher frequency bands.
“When you move up the frequency domain, it gets harder and harder for cells to be deployed and to create large zones of coverage,” said Brodman. “In next-generation networks, you could say the edge problems may be magnified. So we think there’s going to be a powerful role for edge devices and edge networks.”
Qualcomm Ventures is investing in M87 along with Madrona Venture Group and Trilogy Equity Partners. M87 joins more than 125 other companies that are part of the Qualcomm Ventures portfolio.
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