Brit firm can pump radio waves anywhere

THE CLASSIC solution for providing radio access in tunnels is a special copper cable designed to radiate the signal and therefore known as a 'leaky cable'. UK start-up, Zinwave, has discovered a way of achieving the same result with boring old optical fibre cables.

The good news is that the system can carry a wide range of radio signals including all of the obvious cellular frequencies (including 3G). What's more it can carry these signals simultaneously and the list includes Wi-Fi too.

When the iNQ asked Martin Cassidy, general manager for US operations with Zinwave if it handled Bluetooth, he had to confess he hadn't tested it with Bluetooth. He didn't seem to think there'd be much call for such a capability. Another person who's never heard of BT Fusion, then.

Anyway, Zinwave seems to think it can flog this kind of stuff into business premises and campuses. So that cellular signals will work deep inside concrete buildings. Sounds like a pretty niche market to us.

Zinwave would probably be better off pushing it as a solution to providing cellular coverage in subway (ie Metro) style networks. After all, being fibre based, it won't even cause a spark.

Plus you can hang whatever kind of antenna you like off the system. So if you've got a favourite type of Wi-Fi antenna (disguised as a fire sensor), you can use that.

The boffins that invented the system are from two leading British universities [it says here]. They are Cambridge and UCL, London. They've been looking to commercialise their invention for ages and Zinwave is the result.

The UK wishes them luck but thinks Zinwave has probably got its marketing entirely wrong in the Great British tradition of the Sinclair C5. (Wasn't Sir Clive at Cambridge?). µ