Laying fiber meant tearing up streets. Western Multiplex sold a shortcut: a pair of radios that beamed data from one rooftop or tower to another. The Sunnyvale company had made radio parts since 1979. By August 2000, when it went public, carriers and wireless companies were racing to build networks, and a radio link could go up in days instead of months. Two years later it took a new name, Proxim.

From Parts to Point-to-Point

Western Multiplex started in Sunnyvale in 1979 as a vendor of radio components and services. In 1992 it changed course and began designing and making broadband wireless systems of its own. Its main products linked two fixed points, such as cell towers or office buildings, with a high-capacity radio beam. Phone companies, cellular carriers and businesses used them where fiber was too slow or too costly to install.

The Proxim Name, Then Terabeam

Western Multiplex priced its IPO at $12 a share on August 1, 2000, raising $90 million. The telecom bust soon cut demand from carriers. In 2002 it merged with Proxim, a maker of wireless office networks, and took the Proxim name. Losses kept piling up. Proxim filed for Chapter 11 in 2005, and Terabeam Wireless bought nearly all of its assets that July for about $28 million.

Cover: Beacon at Zandvoort, from Views in the Surroundings of Haarlem (Plaisante Plaetsen), Claes Jansz. Visscher. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a coastal beacon (signal towers).