Google buys wireless communications startup Alpental Tech

Google’s latest acquisition is wireless-communications startup Alpental Technologies, according to a report on Wall Street Journal. The report says that while Google confirmed the acquisition it has not confirmed the price.   The deal was clinched a couple of weeks back, but Google has remained silent on the deal. According to GeekWire, Alpental had managed to raised close to $850,000 in startup financing and “was led by former Clearwire technologists — Pete Gelbman and Mike Hart.” Clearwire is major Internet Service Provider in the United States.   If you try to going to the Aplental Tech’s website it’s giving a 404 error, although when we see the page in search results the description for the page reads, “We are developing unique technology to exploit the full potential of 60 GHz to create solutions that combine the performance of fiber - ultra-high speeds and low…”   The report on GeekWire also notes that “the Alpental team was developing technologies related to 5G, the next generation wireless network, and that former Atheros Communications CEO Craig Barratt, now a senior vice president at Google, led the acquisition.”   According to the report on WSJ, “the 60GHz band has been used for high-capacity networking indoors and to extend fiber-optic Internet service from one commercial building to others nearby.”   On his LinkedIn page, Gelbman’s profile now read TBD (To be decided) at Google and the date reads since May 2014. Where Alpental technologies is concerned, he has described it as “Startup developing a new self-organizing, ultra low power Gigabit wireless technology to extend fiber optics. Hyper scalable mmWave networking solution for dense urban nextGen 5G & WiFi - at the form factor & cost of an iPod.” He adds that they also delivered a working prototype and demo at Mobile World Congress.   From the looks of it Alpental will probably add to Google’s firepower for its high-speed Google Fiber Internet.