New startup Artemis plans to improve wireless service in large crowds

Steve Perlman, the creator of the defunct game-streaming service OnLive, claims he has the answer to slow wireless service. pWave is a new type of wireless antenna that creates a miniature “bubble” of wireless connectivity around every device, solving congestion even in busy areas like sports stadiums and city centers. Perlman calls these bubbles pCells, and today his company Artemis is launching its ambitious attempt to reinvent the wireless network.

Normally, phones and tablets suffocate in large crowds, as their close proximity causes their data streams to become lost. A new startup, called Artemis, promises to eliminate that problem by actually using wireless interference to its advantage. The founder, Steve Perlman, is relatively infamous in Silicon Valley circles: he launched WebTV and later OnLive, the cloud-gaming startup that turned inside-out when Perlman sold the company in a stock restructuring that wiped out all equity in the company, including his own. In 2011, however, Perlman began exploring the concept of Distributed Input, Distributed Output (DIDO), which he explained in a white paper published to his incubator, Rearden Labs.