* Incubator Idealab pulls its support from wireless vendor
Free-space optics vendor Clearmesh Networks is looking for somebody to buy the company.
After the incubator firm that funded Clearmesh, Idealab, decided it was no longer “in its strategic interest” to continue support for Clearmesh, Clearmesh executives are seeking a partner to take over, says Clearmesh’s senior vice president of marketing Fima Vaisman.
To help reduce drain on its capital, the company laid off 15 of its 25 workers last Friday. Vaisman says it is uncertain how long the company can last on its current resources.
The company is still supporting customers, he says.
The ideal buyer would be a firm either specializing in Wi-Fi mesh technology or security surveillance that needs higher bandwidth connections, Vaisman says.
Clearmesh makes optical gear that is arranged in meshed networks. Other free-space optical equipment makers, such as Canon, arrange their devices in pairs for point-to-point connections that rely on line-of-sight between the points.
Clearmesh devices can each support as many as three point-to-point links, making it possible to create meshes that go around obstacles such as buildings in cities. The devices also have radio-frequency backup to deal with free-space-optics’ nemesis, fog. When the fog is too thick for the lasers to pierce, the devices can fall back to radio-frequency connections at lower bandwidth.
