Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Oklahoma City Businessmen Have Plans to Make Metro Area

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2003 01:05:59 -0400

Oklahoma City Businessmen Have Plans to Make Metro Area
Wireless
Source: The Daily Oklahoman
Publication date: 2003-07-28

Jul. 28--The year is 2005 and a businesswoman steps off of a jet at Will Rogers
World Airport and walks toward the luggage carousel. Along the way she stops at a
kiosk where she rents a special device that plugs into her laptop computer.
As she settles into a cab for the ride to her hotel, she inserts the device into
the laptop, flips it open and seconds later is checking her e-mail via the
wireless access.

She will have access to the Internet, e-mail and instant messaging anywhere in the
metro Oklahoma City area for the duration of her business trip. Welcome to a
vision that a pair of enterprising Oklahoma City businessmen are working to turn
into reality.
Dewain Morrison, 34, and Jeff Burnham, 32, are partners in 4th Dimension Networks,
a venture they hope to use to bring wireless Internet access and other services to
Oklahomans and far beyond. 4D Networks, as they call it, has an ambitious,
multifaceted business plan.

Its vision includes providing individual wireless hotspots such as the one they
have installed at Java Dave's downtown Oklahoma City location at 10 NE 10 .4D
Networks plans to install portable wireless systems that will create a digital
"footprint" measured in square miles, eventually including the entire metro area.

"We could have a kiosk in the airport or in the hotels and a traveler comes in and
rents a desktop device or PC card, and he would have access in that 9- or
15-square-mile area, whether the hotel had a hot spot or not," Morrison said.
And 4D Networks wants to deploy a mobile wireless system for municipalities that
will enable police, fire and utilities all to communicate with each other during
emergencies, even when all other communications are lost.

4D Networks partnered with a company called MeshNetworks to deploy the mobile
system. It uses technology developed by the military for battlefield use, but
adapted for fire, police and utilities. "It has the ability to self form and self
heal and it can create the truest interoperability between agencies like police
and fire than has ever been possible," Morrison said. Morrison and Burnham began
shaping their vision when they incorporated it 4D Networks in 1998, but didn't
pursue it full-time until each left technology-based jobs in 2001.

"It was a little too far ahead of the curve in 1998, as far as people
understanding wireless technology back then," Morrison said. They turned to the
Oklahoma Technology Commercialization Center as they sought financing, business
advice and strategic partners.

That relationship eventually helped them move from expensive space in a downtown
office tower to their current location at 9 NE 9 behind the downtown Java Dave's.
The space is owned by Earl Neighbors, whose family owns Java Dave's and Neighbors
Executive Coffee. "The OTCC sent a company called the Business Consortium our way
to help us understand the Oklahoma City business market," Morrison said.  "They
hooked up a meeting with us and Earl Neighbors and Java Dave's manager Wade Miller
to see if we might be able to bring wireless Internet to their business."

Java Dave's became a wireless customer and 4D Networks found cheaper office space
behind Java Dave's.
4D Networks worked with Mel James, director of commercial development at the
Oklahoma Technology Commercialization Center. James said the company has a
legitimate chance for success.

"Dewain and his management team have bootstrapped a technology into a business
that now has excellent potential to be at least a ... survivor where large
companies and well-funded marketing startups have failed miserably," James said.
4D Networks has about 20 fixed wireless customers and has established partnerships
to build the portable wireless systems elsewhere, such as North Carolina where one
system is already in the works.

The mobile piece of the business may have the most potential, they said. "We're
expecting next year to be pretty eye-opening," Morrison said. Burnham added:
"Taking into account our three different services, our projected sales range could
be from $5 million to $15 million a 12-month period." If successful, the scenario
of the businesswoman stepping off the plane in 2005 and renting a 4D
Networks-supplied card to create a portable wireless network might be a reality.
Bring it on, said an enthusiastic Jeff Kagan, an Atlanta-based independent
telecommunications analyst who travels frequently around the country.

"That would be awesome," Kagan said. "It would be nice to not have to choose where
you are going to stop for a cup of coffee or where you choose to stay in a hotel
and wonder if they have high speed Internet there. It would be nice to know you
have high speed Internet wherever you are."

To see more of The Daily Oklahoman, or to subscribe to the newspaper,

go to http://www.newsok.com

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