In Brief

Privately held SkyPilot Networks Inc. provides broadband wireless solutions for a range of services. It was founded in 2000, during the days when free municipal Wi-Fi was expected to take over the world. When that market failed to materialize, it retrenched and looked for an opportunity to repackage the technology. Its communications platform can be used for voice over IP, public Wi-Fi, video surveillance, mobile communications, public safety and other municipal a applications. However, it has identified Smart Grid communications as its biggest growth opportunity.

After partnering with Trilliant on several utility projects, SkyPilot was acquired by Trilliant in May 2009.

Strengths

SkyPilot has a “best of both worlds” technology strategy. It uses mesh networking for dense urban environments for its redundancy and high availability. It uses patented, “WiMAX-like” extenders for rural situations and to provide backhaul to the control center. This dual-mode operation lets it cost-effectively reach throughout large geographies.  Ample bandwidth is available to support multiple applications, allowing utility companies to simultaneously support voice and data communications for field workers, video monitoring of infrastructure, and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA). SCADA can be used for real-time monitoring and control of the utility’s entire infrastructure including remote plants and equipment.

Thanks to its multi-antenna gateways, SkyPilot can operate over several different spectrums, including 2.4GHz for Wi-Fi and 4.9Ghz or 5.1-5.8GHz for backhaul, giving further flexibility to utilities.

Challenges

Competitors like BelAir, Strix, and Tropos are established mesh technology “startups.”  Others, like Cisco, Nortel, and Motorola, have entered the space by acquiring and building metro-scale mesh technology.  Telecommunications companies such as Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T want to be on board, and their cellular solutions are becoming transports for smart meter data.

Our View

Journalist A.J. Liebling once bragged “I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better.” In a similar fashion, SkyPilot claims to know mesh better than anyone who knows point-to-multipoint; and point-to-multipoint better than anyone who knows mesh. And to be one of the very few who understands how to combine the two into what it calls “SyncMesh.” The company claims that it gets the cost and redundancy advantages of Wi-Fi with the range and capacity benefits of WiMAX. In fact, it says it is WiMAX-ready: As soon as WiMAX chipsets come down in price, it will incorporate that spec into its products.

Although we were unsure of this small company’s ability to break through in the increasing crowded communications space, we believe its acquisition by Trilliant could produce one of the sector’s clear leaders.