An upstart young Austin company hopes to solve a trillion-dollar problem for the wireless industry with its new multi-hopping technology.
Vidur Bhargava, one of three founders of Wibole and PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, says Wibole can solve the problems of dropped calls and sluggish data speeds without the need for additional infrastructure or any changes to existing infrastructure.
Wibole’s technology allows devices to receive a stronger signal from a cellphone tower by piggybacking on nearby devices that have more direct access to a tower. Up to four devices can ‘hop’ from one device to another at any particular time, allowing for maximum efficiency in use of available spectrum.
“Instead of trying to force a device to always communicate directly to the tower, you’re allowing the device to hop onto some other device that has a better visual to the tower,” said Bhargava in a presentation to the Texas Venture Labs Expo at Austin’s AT&T Conference Center on Wednesday.
Wibole’s early tests indicate that multi-hopping can improve capacity by about 120% – so, it’s like 10 megahertz of cellular spectrum acting like 22 megahertz. “These gains are huge,” said Bhargava.
Bhargava said Wibole (pronounced “vibely”) is also more power-efficient, because a better signal allows a device to communicate with a tower more effectively without draining a battery’s resources. However, it does drain the battery of the intermediate device, providing a potential headache for the company.
Multi-hopping technology has been around for a number of years and is prevalent in use on the battlefield and, in a consumer context, in situations in which cellphone coverage is scarce. The problem with taking the technology beyond those scenarios, however, is that it does not scale well. Scaling will not be an issue for Wibole, however, because pre-existing cellular network coverage is sufficient to support the limited number of hops needed to ensure improved service.
In an interview after his presentation, Bhargava suggested that the costs of multi-hopping could be rolled into carriers’ service plans. “It’s something that the user would not have direct control over – it’s going to be policy driven.”
Differently priced plans would offer different users different levels of flexibility. On one of the cheapest plans, for instance, other devices would be allowed to hop on to your device as long as your battery life is at least 30%. A more expensive plan might allow a user to block all hopping.
The company at this stage is only three people strong, but it is looking to grow after achieving more funds. In the meantime, Wibole is seeking $1.6 million for the next 18 months to extensively test their product and sign a carrier partner. It has been a beneficiary of the University of Texas’ Office of Technology Commercialization – which helped Wibole copyright its technology – and support from Texas Venture Labs, host of the expo at which Bhargava made his presentation.
Wibole is currently based in Austin, Texas, but is considering a move to Silicon Valley.
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