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Ricochet Dead By June? 97

Posted by CmdrTaco from the never-would-get-to-me-anyway dept.
corky6921 writes "ZDNet is reporting that Metricom, the parent company of the Ricochet wireless network, may be out of cash and dead as soon as June! Forget Omnisky (the other company they mention in the article)" Richochet has always been in that group of really cool technologies that I fully accept will never make it out to where I live. But I hope it makes it. National coverage would be cool to tho ;)
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Ricochet Dead By June? More

Ricochet Dead By June?

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  • I wrote an Ask Slashdot story that was regected last month looking for Broadband wireless internet. I looked all over the net and in every magazine I get plus some that I bought just for this hunt. Bottem line, they need to get there name out there. If only I had known, can't wait for them to hook up Olrando.


    ________

  • Ricochet ain't so cool for radio hobbyists. (Score:3)

    by Greg@RageNet ( 39860 ) on Friday February 09, 2001 @07:51AM (#443605) Homepage
    Ricochet might be useful to users of ricochet themselves, but other people trying to use the same radio bands as ricochet are SOL.

    Their original system used to run 900Mhz, with their new system running 2.4Ghz. Both of these are unlicensed public-use bands. They put up their 900Mhz/2.4Ghz repeaters everywhere and pretty much make those frequencies imposible for anyone else to use except for very short ranges (i.e. in their own homes).

    I used to live up in the mountains, where I had a homebrew 2.4Ghz wireless link down into Santa clara valley for my interenet connection. Worked like a charm untill Richochet started rolling out it's test 128K service; then they flooded the 2.4Ghz band and made our equipment useless.

    So, for me this is good news that ricochet will finally 'go away'. Besides, nowadays you can get nearly the same service by the cellular networks.

    -- Greg
  • However I believe that Ricochet had faster speeds available, whereas CDPD is 33Kbit.

    33Kbit/sec? That might be in thery, but I havn't ever seen better then about 9Kbit/sec off of the AeroCard I have. And it displays the stats whenever it is running. It is worthless for looking at the web. It is fine for using ssh to read mail, and the one time I had to code I was sooooo glad I use all the little "3 words forward" type commands in vi because the latency was really bad (three or four seconds).

  • I thought Ricochet was using 9Ghz... But I could be wrong. As for celular service being nearly the same, I take it that you think 1/10th the speed is "nearly the same"? CPDP 19.2k connections are all but usless for anything other then getting e-mail.
  • Richochet has always been in that group of really cool technologies that I fully accept will never make it out to where I live. But I hope it makes it. National coverage would be cool to tho ;)

    Building a National infrastructure in an incredibly expensive proposition. Riccochet had a good plan. Their earliest service was geared toward the business traveller. They installed in major cities and airports. However, they needed to generate enough cashflow to fund expansion and the limited coverage they built didn't provide the cash they needed.

    Look at the history of telephone and electric coverage which has similar requirements. Universal coverage didn't occur until the Federal Government got involved and subsidized rural infrastructure. It is unreasonable to expect that private companies can provide that kind of coverage.

    I use a slow CDPD cell modem which is rated at 14.4 Kbps but actually performs worse than that due to the very bursty nature of CDPD. I inquired about Riccochet, but they only have service in Manhattan and the surrounding airports. I wanted service on my train ride to the suburbs and in my neighborhood which wasn't available. It appears that they weren't able to get the kind of minimum coverage necessary to make the service self-supporting.
  • He doesn't need to move to the country.

    Building a Farraday cage in his apartment would be just as good.

    Just don't ever plan leaving it.

    The waves! The waves! The waves are getting to me. I better buy more tinfoil...
  • Ricochet uses 900MHz, both old and new systems.
  • It appears that a deal between EarthLink and Richochet is imminent. http://www.earthlink.net/home/highspeed/comingsoon .html
  • 15 kiloBITS or 15 kiloBYTES? DSL is rated in kilobits. If @home is throttling you to 15 kilobits per second upstream, you're better off with a modem, which would be twice as fast at 33.6 kilobits/sec. One way cable systems were never that bad.

    I have a 272 up/640 dn DSL connection from US^H^H Qwest. In terms of actual kiloBYTE performance, divide those numbers by a number slightly less than 10.

    --

  • Ricochet might be useful to users of ricochet themselves, but other people trying to use the same radio bands as ricochet are SOL.

    I have a little bit of sympathy for this (I used to be N3HAU), but let's face it, the unlicensed bands are the unlicensed band, whoever gets the most transmitters in there wins. One could even possibly argue that there is a bit of Darwinism involved, if homebrew equipment was really providing a service to humanity, then you'd be blowing out Ricochet...and of course, you can always purchase Ricochet transport to make up for the lost point-to-point link...and one could also argue that micro-cellular networks are more bandwidth efficient than long-haul point-to-point links...but then I'd have to duck!

    I'm actually a bit of a believer in radio anarchy. If there never was any radio regulation, I bet we would have had spread spectrum as standard issue in the 1940's. This feels more fair to me than the other options (government acting as God decides who uses what frequencies, or government acting as God-for-hire auctions frequencies to the highest bidder).

    Instead, we have a situation where goverment can impede the novel uses of radio by setting up arbitrary standards and bands, and impeding who can transmit. (See HDTV). But I doubt the powers that be would ever allow this to occur.

    For an example, why hasn't Ricochet (the first widespread consumer-level wireless mobile Internet system, now the first broadband consumer-level wireless mobile Internet system) been developed using the licensed bands? The answer is that it would be impossible for a small company to get the licenses to make it possible. Sure, the FCC will eventually auction 3G licenses (someday!), but then you're stuck into a particular standard that may or may not be responsive to the market.
  • Actually, Rick O'Shay [the Irishman who always comes back] has gotten out of the corporate VPN business, much to my chagrin.

    They're also abandoning their current customers [me], forcing us to go to pay some third-party, thus cutting down on Ricochet's/MCOM's revenues.

    Dumb all the way around. Love the service, could use better throughput, etc. etc. etc.

  • I love my Ricochet 128k! (Score:5)

    by isaac ( 2852 ) on Friday February 09, 2001 @09:08AM (#443615)
    I've been a happy user of 128k Ricochet in the SF Bay area since the day it became available. It has absolutely lived up to its potential thus far. I regularly see speeds in excess of 160kbps - my record is over 256kbps downloading a mozilla nightly. It works beautifully under any OS that supports PPP. It's flat rate ($68/month when prepaid for a year), and is at least 20 times faster than any pay-per-minute/byte connectivity like GSM Data, CDPD, Mobitex, etc.

    Basically, it rocks. Yes, it's slower than DSL, but try taking that DSL with you to your local coffeeshop or to work (!). As a UNIX consultant, Ricochet is invaluable to me as it allows me to bring my own, independent connectivity to my client's site. It's worth every penny to me.

    Let the naysayers not forget that Metricom is backed by Paul Allen and MCI Worldcom, and already has a functioning, high-speed data network in most of the major metro areas in the US. (No, there's not national coverage in every two-horse town, but such areas lack the density to make rollout worthwhile right now.)

    Anyhow, even if Metricom goes belly up, their existing wireless network is a tremendous asset, and I can't see service ceasing in currently served locales. Someone else will pick this asset up in the (rather unlikely) event of a liquidation.

    I think this article is more a propaganda piece for Omnisky (*cough*majorzdnetadvertiser*cough*), more than anything particularly revelatory about Metricom. I certainly don't have any problem with Omnisky, mind - it's just that their slow, PDA-only service doesn't meet my needs. Bully for them if they're on track for profitability; they're simply reselling existing CDPD service with PDA-specifc radio modems, and their competitor is palm.net, not Metricom.

    -Isaac
  • I know someone who works for Metricom here in Houston. She is currently looking for new employment.

    Additionally, I just asked her about this article, and altho she didnt know about the situation until the CEO emailed everyone at Metricom and told them not to panic, she did have the following to say, and I quote:

    Well, I alway speculated it wasn't feasible to roll out our network and we'd run out of money. It's too expensive. Each node is a pretty penny and they have to have one every .25 miles in a coverage area. Each WAP is more than a pretty penny and there has to be one every 5miles in a coverage area.

    So, I wouldn't say there is no FUD involved, but it would appear there is at least something to all this concern about Metricom.

  • Speed: closer to DSL (I have seen over 300k, regularly get >200k)

    Price: $75/month (from WWC).

    Yes, somewhat slower than DSL and somewhat more expensive, but the portability is worth it (and where I live there's no DSL available anyway).

    If they manage to get back on track, they had planned an upgrade later this year that would bring average throughput to 400kb, with burst speed over 700kb.

  • and it's actually quite reliable. I use it as my home ISP becaues cable and DSL aren't available in my area... mostly because Verizon had it's head up it's ass. It installes easily and proxies even easier. If they cut off service in june it's back to dialup for me :-(

  • Re:Why Ricochet isn't nationwide (Score:3)

    by joey ( 315 ) <joey@kitenet.net> on Friday February 09, 2001 @12:43PM (#443619) Homepage
    Your bandwidth numbers don't match my experience. I'm the new proud owner of a Merlin ricochet pcmcia card -- no bulky modem to lug around (a kernel patch is required to get it working at these speeds). I regularly get 25k/s off of it. This may be because their network is rather er, underused. My radio can typically "see" 5 to 8 pole-top stations, and 0 to 2 other customers.

    It's worth it for me.
    I use dsl when I'm at home, but this card has added 1.5 hours of useful computer time to my day (I commute by train). It also lets me spend the odd work-day in the park. Worth every penny.

    You're quite right about me being in a minority though. What percentage of people have laptops, and what percentage of those either commute by public transit or need to be/can be online in the field when working? Not too many.
    --
  • Personally, I think this article is FUD. Propoganda for Omnisky. I have ricochet, and love it. It gives me an extra two hours of net time a day (one hour commute to work sucks hard). I also do some freelance consulting on the side, and you would not believe how invaluable it can be to have a laptop guaranteed to be able to download and burn an ISO when you need it (especially when it's gobs faster than a modem).

    Honestly, I don't know about their cash flow, but since Metricom is a publicly traded company (MCOM), you should probably check their public reports. Slashdot is good for biased sensational geek-news, but I wouldn't base even an ISP decision on Slashdot alone.

  • 802.11b everywhere.

    -or-

    Pirate broadband.

  • Anyone else notice that /. is starting to look like fuckedcompany.com? [fuckedcompany.com]
  • Here's the traceroute to rs.internic.net with the first two hops obliterated for my privacy. :)

    traceroute to rs.internic.net (198.41.0.6), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
    1 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) 108.557 ms 129.644 ms 149.795 ms
    2 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) 139.893 ms 269.754 ms 169.839 ms
    3 63.66.208.25 (63.66.208.25) 99.686 ms 109.726 ms 169.577 ms
    4 63.66.208.2 (63.66.208.2) 99.746 ms 159.767 ms 129.806 ms
    5 oc12-2.SJC2.ALTER.NET (157.130.203.17) 109.765 ms 109.636 ms 89.850 ms
    6 171.ATM2-0.XR1.SFO4.ALTER.NET (152.63.52.106) 129.774 ms 129.654 ms 149.822 ms
    7 191.at-1-1-0.TR1.SAC1.ALTER.NET (152.63.50.254) 109.771 ms 179.825 ms 129.694 ms
    8 127.at-6-3-0.TR1.DCA8.ALTER.NET (146.188.141.113) 249.786 ms 179.875 ms 159.633 ms
    9 297.at-6-0-0.XR1.TCO1.ALTER.NET (152.63.32.201) 159.805 ms 249.695 ms 199.837 ms
    10 193.ATM7-0.GW6.TCO1.ALTER.NET (152.63.37.53) 179.758 ms 219.625 ms 199.832 ms
    11 Internic1-gw.customer.ALTER.NET (157.130.32.242) 189.753 ms 189.616 ms 269.824 ms
    12 rs.internic.net (198.41.0.6) 149.751 ms 219.701 ms 169.831 ms

    My girlfriend has the pcmcia modem, while I have the external. The PC card is nice and small and sexy compared to the external modem, but it drains your laptop's battery more (the GS modem has its own battery good for 6 hours), and doesn't have a status light or make noises to indicate connection status. I'd call it a wash for the average user, where I personally prefer the external modem as a techie. I haven't tried the pcmcia modem under Linux yet, but the external works great (even using the USB connector) with it.

    Hope this helps,
    -Isaac
  • Okay, so it is at 19.2k, but it does work. In Ask Slashdot the other day, codepawn asked about the Cybiko [slashdot.org]. I went out and finally found some. I got one and played with it on Wednesday, then Thursday night I stoped by Best Buy and bought another. At $100 a pop, you can make a quite sophisticated little network of your own.

    Granted, the range is not all that great (300 feet in the clear), but for a small neighborhood wireless network, this is good. The things will use each other as relay points, and there can be 3000 users total (30 channels x 100 users/chan).

    Cybiko even gives you some software (Win only - but no reason that has to stay that way) to act as an internet mail gateway. As soon as you get into the network with one of the gates then your unit will connect and grab your email.

    There is a lot of work to be done to make this a truely kickass device, but nothing says that you can't use these as 19.2k wireless internet modems on laptops, nor write your own email apps, or anything else. And there is a Linux SDK for the thing as well.

    I myself am building my own little network around work and at home using these. They really are quite cool.

  • While this is all true. I think that these wireless modems are the least of the problems with high frequency transitions. They are very low power (around 1 watt) and are running at about the same frequency as a wireless phone.

  • Re:I hope this isn't (Score:3)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Friday February 09, 2001 @07:28AM (#443626) Journal
    I've been watching their coverage creep closer and closer to where I live. I can't believe this isn't a viable business model - wireless 128k service for $75 a month or something? Shit, my 384k DSL line costs me around $90/month. I've been strapped with a piece of junk cellular "modem" at 14.4 for so long it's ridiculous.

    This is actually sort of relevant: Check out the comment I made earlier today about Rolling Your Own Internet Connection [slashdot.org].

    In short:

    The Register [theregister.co.uk] has this story [theregister.co.uk] about Laramie, Wyoming, where they run their own non-profit community wireless Internet service. It includes high-speed Net access service for a fraction of the price of most services in the US. Normal dial-up service is $5 a month, $20-$30 a month for high speed (10MB/second). Businesses can now get T1 wireless or SDSL for fee $125 monthly. Information on how to set up a similar enterprise can be found on their site [lariat.org].

    Bottom line is that a bunch of geeks can get together, form their own user groups, and ust the group to set up their own ISP, with their own rules for fairly cheap.

    On a separate note, I have seen some of the new Omnisky products, and I got to say that they seem to be pretty solid. They must be putting in some pretty intense QA on them, all things considered.

  • A high speed wireless connection could revolutionise the way we (watch pron) work. To be able to take (Debbie Does Dallas) productivity software and run (warez) corporate databases wherever you can bring an antenna is a service we all need, and we need it now.

  • Ricochet has been doomed for a long time because it's been too slow; You were hard-pressed to get anything better than 28.8Kbps out of it before this latest upgrade that supposedly gives you 128Kbps. Then, it was $40; Now, it's $80. The fact that you can take it with you is nice, but at best it's no faster than ISDN. When modems were king, ricochet was a great solution because it was just as fast, still priced within the realm of reason, and portable.

    Now, ricochet is more than twice as much as land-line-based modem service, and only about three times as fast; It's also over $50, which is a magical price point for many (if not most) people. It's literally twice as much as basic ADSL from pacific bell (I don't know what DSL prices are like when you're not on the left coast) and about twice as much as cable modem service, on average. However, 128Kbps is a lot less than 1544Kbps, which is what I get downstream on the basic rate ADSL at home.

    They'd have been better off providing 64Kbps for $40 a month. (Both would be even better.) $40 seems to be the magical price at which people sign up in droves. 64k is pretty decent; Definitely enough to websurf meaningfully. I know that 128Kbps is about the right point for downloading mp3s, which is probably what they were thinking, but $80 is too much.

    I'm not saying that no one will sign up for ricochet at this higher price; Doubtless a number of you are using your 128Kbps ricochet to read this comment right now, and every other word out of your mouth is gonna be "bullshit", but let me tell you, you are insignificant. The far vaster majority is going to decide it costs too much, and live without wireless. They're going to get a DOCSIS CM or get *DSL and forget all about this ricochet thing. They priced themselves out of a market. This may be a great solution for some of you, just like the Motorola Mobydem was a great solution for some people, or Iridium.

    In any case, unless the price-point drops somehow, and they get more subscribers, they won't be able to expand into new markets and get more subscribers, QED.


    --
    ALL YOUR KARMA ARE BELONG TO US

  • wow!! (Score:3)

    by Red Storm ( 4772 ) on Friday February 09, 2001 @07:30AM (#443629)
    I can see why their network would have problems. They used to be a niche market that allowed mobile IP services. Now the cell companies have steped into the fray with CDPD (Cellular Digital Packet Data) which was an adaptation of the pre-existing AMPS (American Mobile Phone System aka Analag) networks. Now most or the wireless mobile IP devices use CDPD because analog phone networks are almost everywhere in the nation. However I believe that Ricochet had faster speeds available, whereas CDPD is 33Kbit. Things are only going to get tougher for Ricochet when AT&T introduces their wireless boadband to the home and stuff.

    It's a good network, good design, but might be outmarketed... However there are some market segments they could get into if they wanted to like automated meter readers which PG&E is doing with CellNet who uses a system similar to Ricochet's. If ya think computing is krazy, try cellular... it's even stranger...
  • most or the wireless mobile IP devices use CDPD because analog phone networks are almost everywhere

    CDPD runs alongside AMPS, but that doesn't mean you can use it anywhere you have AMPS coverage. It requires additional hardware at the towers.

    CDPD is 33Kbit

    Actually, I think it's 19.2 not 33, though there may have been changes in the past couple of years that I'm not aware of. CDPD isn't something to plan on using long-term - I expect it to largely disappear by 2002 or 2003, because there are other options with higher capacity and lower costs. Once 3G is rolled out CDPD will sink like a rock except as a legacy system.

    -- fencepost

  • What?

    Perhaps we should stop people from driving, because they might crash. Or perhaps we should make skydiving illegal cause sometimes there are accidents. We could ban expensive cars and credit cards because sometimes people don't have the sense to live within their means.

    This country (U.S.) was founded on the principle that individuals have the freedom to make whatever choices they want, even if they are obviously stupid choices. You would punish all the responsible individual investors who do their due diligence when investing because of a few other individuals who 'day trade' or buy stocks on whims?

    Go look at any given .com and see what percentage of stockholders are 'institutional investors' (i.e. mutual funds and banks); they are more responsible for the dot-com bubble than individuals. Perhaps you'd like to revoke their ability to invest too?

    I'd like to avoid taking leaves from the european book, I'd like my country to avoid turning any more quasi-socialistic as the EU states have become.

    -- Greg

  • The CDMA2000 standards body recently ratified the IS-856 standard. This is a standard for high-speed, mobile, data delivery. The technology was developed by Qualcomm corporation. Once again, this is an industry standard, not a technology controlled by one company (unlike Richochet). The download speeds vary from 38.4kb/sec to 2.4mb/sec over a 1.25 MHz bandwidth. This is also a full-scale cellular system, designed to fit in seamlessly with existing CDMA2000 1xRTT networks. Many companies are building base stations and handhelds for this standard. Expect large-scale rollouts beginning early 2001.

    IS-856 is very, very, cool technology, utilizing extremely advanced, ground-breaking physical-layer and MAC layer design. Of course, the ratification of this standard was the death-knell of any proprietary technology for doing the same thing. Both Richochet and i-Mode (a similar technology developed by a bay-area company called Arraycomm) are dead for all practical purposes.

    Magnus.

  • Up up and away! (Score:3)

    by Graymalkin ( 13732 ) on Friday February 09, 2001 @09:21AM (#443633)
    Fuck national coverage, I merely want coverage. My area has limited to no coverage for Ricochet which I've been excited about since I first heard about it. I'd pay 80$ for a 128k connection that traveled with my Powerbook. Metricom's major problem is and was availability. Of course a new service like this takes time to percolate to new areas but they spent a wad of cash on advertising and getting product recognition before they could feasibly deliver their product to anyone who might want to use it. I really doubt they would be in such troubles now if they would have spent more money on deployment rather than advertising; if they had wider deployment and penetration right now they could offer up licenses for other companies to use their networks/patents. Their advertising dollar would have been better spent if they really pushed the corporate buttons rather than a dumb campaign geared towards crow-like home consumers. IBM advertises to businesses correctly. PHBs see IBM commercials and get a sense of awe and the next day ask their IT manager if they can handle a bajillion hits every second and some other mumbo jumbo. Metricom ought to have learned from them. Point out to PHB types that connectiveity is a good thing and wireless connectivity for traveling types is even better. Once they grabbed a bunch of corporate accounts they should have gone after the college student and oddly enough college faculty. Get schools to host relay stations and the student body will cream themselves because they can for a nominal fee (tacked onto their housing bill) use napster from the park by the school or from non-connected buildings. Both of these customer bases are going to be purchasing year or multiple year contracts for a fair number of people and in the case of college campuses support their network and increase availbility. Poor Metricom.

  • Oops, I meant expect rollouts beginning early 2002.

    Magnus.
  • I have had a Ricochet for a couple of months, and I'm liking it more and more, for these reasons:

    1. Real customer service.

    I've had two major problems dealt with by People Who Know in the past three weeks. Metricom might be on the skids, as always (I thought they had died years ago) but the channel operators who front the service for them are balls-out serious about tuning this thing until it hums. Reminds me of SpeedChoice before Spr*nt bought it and paid for it by eliminating customer service.

    2. It's faster than dialup, *and* it's mobile.

    I got mine because I'm on an assignment where the client's network is firewalled to prohibit all TCP other than HTTP. No POP, no FTP, no telnet, no IRC, nothing. And the hotel's wires are '70s-era corrosion-modulated links. I found out Ricochet did 128-kbit wireless mobile (up to 70 mph, though I haven't tested that), and fell. $75/mo made me pause, but:

    3. It's worth the $75/month.

    Currently, I'm paying $20/mo for one national dialup with crappy connection metrics, $20 for one Arizona-only dialup that only hosts my personal webpage, $5 for a legacy dialup that only works in New England but forwards a few things, $45 for a SpeedChoice ("Spr*ntBBD" be damned) 10-mbit LOS link to my house, and $75 for the wwc.com Ricochet interface. Yeah, that's more than most people would spend, but they all compensate, whether by redundancy, sentimentality, raw speed, or mobility. Geek points never un-sold me either. The only thing better would be if they'd had the PCMCIA modems available when I bought mine.

    Would I have got this if there was an alternative for my specific need? No. Will I give this up just because that situation goes away? No, I'll probably look for another niche in which this helps me compete. Right now, I could consult effectively while living and working in a van down by the river.

    If Metricom goes under it won't be because of the product. It will be because they got out-maneuvered in the high-speed mobile market (not likely at this stage of the spectrum wars) or because they suck at financial management (but you'd think they'd learned something from their lower-speed debacles).

    --Blair
  • Checkout Speakeasy [speakeasy.net]. I was considering them for a while (I too have @Home, but my upstream restriction was magically increased to 32k) when I wanted to run a low-traffic webserver. As far as I can tell, Speakeasy doesn't care, and you can get decent upstream for less that double what you're currently paying.
  • I was just about to order the service. 128K service just reached my area.

    Novatel [novatelwireless.com] even has a PC card version.

    Another good reason to read /.

  • Here's another good Ricochet review - I have one and I love it. I live and spend most of my time in the Baltimore/Washington area where there's pretty good coverage.

    $70/month is totally worthwhile for ISDN speed without a physical connection. I can now work online from my yard, my boat, my limo, wherever.

    And Ricochet is a total no-brainer to get working in Linux. I configured KPPP to do it in about 15 seconds. (Gnome dial or console PPP might take 20 seconds. :-)

    If it was just me using the net at home instead of me and my wife both working online all the time, with her doing massive email work (managing big email newsletter subscription stuff) I'd dump @home and use nothing but Ricochet - with dialup backup "just in case" as always, of course.

    -Robin 'roblimo' Miller
    "Proud owner of the only Linux-running, Rolls-bodied, wireless Internet-capable stretch limousine in the State of Maryland -- possibly the world."

  • Customers paying 7500 pretty pennies a month can sustain a business if you get enough of them. I agree with a previous poster, their problem is marketing. I started using the riochet 28.8 service years ago and plan on going 128 soon. People are always excited when they see me using it out and about ...that's the problem, they didn't know it existed until they see it in use.

    Perhaps your friend should look for a new job, maybe Houston isn't ready yet. However I don't expect to see the whole company go under. They just need to concentrate on a larger customer base in core communities first in order to achieve sustainability.

    Just my opinion.
  • Does this mean we won't be seeing anymore "Rico" secret-agent ads? Now those were "HOT". And the technology is cool -- more than just a sock puppet here, thank you.

    --
  • Since when inviduals are banned from investing in the stock market in Europe? I live in Europe and can indeed invest as much as I want to.
    --
  • Microwaves, X-rays, UV-rays, and cellular phones have already been linked to cancer.

    Oh, quit hitting that dead horse. Microwaves have never been proven to cause cancer and probably never will. The point at which radiation seems to start becoming harmful to living things is in wavelengths smaller than a few hundred nanometers (UV light), X-Rays are even smaller than UV and can cause cancer. There is a world of difference between nanometer sized waves and the centimeter sized waves that come from microwave ovens, cell phones and 900 or 2400 MHz data devices like wireless internet and cordless phones.

    The only effect that waves in this size can actually have on living things is to warm them slightly. If you're concerned about the warming effect that your .6W cellphone is going to have on your head you should be much more concerned about the heat given off by the battery and poweramp than about the radiation from the antenna.
    _____________

  • I've been using Ricochet for about six or seven years now. When I lived in Berkeley, until 1998, a Ricochet modem was the main connection to the net for my home network of (then) some 12 machines. It ran at about the speed of a 56K dialup (officially they promised "28.8K modem speed," but by 1998, after numerous network improvements, I regularly got 6KB/sec downloads). In fact there was a period before 56K modems became generally available in which the Ricochet was often faster than a dialup link would have been. I didn't have a laptop at the time, so my Ricochet never left my apartment. At $30 a month, it was a great deal -- DSL and cable modems, remember, weren't available yet, and ISDN was expensive. Even the cost of a second phone line, plus a traditional dialup ISP, would have been more than $30 a month, and I would have had to deal with the hassle of trying to maintain a 24-hour connection and a static IP (since I often made incoming connections to my machines). People who are commenting that Ricochet's problems stem from its being "slow" should remember that, back when it was "28.8K" (meaning up to 50K-60K), the fastest wired connections generally available for a reasonable price were the same speed. ("For a reasonable price" would have excluded ISDN back then). I have both cable modem and DSL connections where I live in Los Angeles now and am very happy with multi-megabit/sec access rates. But I still think Ricochet is an awesome product. I'm writing this now in New York City, on a laptop using a Ricochet GS modem on the new, nominally "128Kb/s" high-speed network, in New York City. In another window I am VNC'd into an X session on one of my Los Angeles home boxes and have been successfully doing some fairly graphics-intensive Mathematica hacking for the past few hours, with a very acceptable responsiveness: far better than dialup. In fact, I guess I'm being a little blas\'e about it -- it's pretty mindblowing that I can sit in a cafe with a laptop and a little grey box and do serious, graphics-intensive work on a machine sitting in my apartment 2500 miles away. Not to mention websurfing, etc. etc. etc. For now, Ricochet is the only product offering anything close to this capability. It's a bit pricy at $70/month, but I expect that will drop eventually. They're available in a number of major markets: Bay Area, New York, Los Angeles, DC, Seattle, etc. Maybe it's not a bad idea for them to hold off on expanding to other markets while they concentrate on increasing their subscribership in those key areas where they are already available. In any case, I think they have an awesome product. They have spent many, many years getting it to the point that it is at now, but the product has been awesome (by comparison with the prevailing connection standards) for the whole time. I *really* don't want to see them die (especially not as I own a certain amount of stock in the company :-), but furthermore, I really don't think they deserve to die. And I don't think they will, either, though I can see the financial difficulties and uncertainly lasting a little longer. Kiscica
  • Maybe if the price wasn't so high, more people would participate. I am hard-up for a larger pipe, but $70/month is too much. It's hard using 33.6bps after having a cable connection where I used to live. They are the only service in my area, but the price is way too steep.
  • But are wireless services THAT big of a deal? Of course I understand their usefulness for mobile users, that goes without saying. But what is the deal with people getting wireless service in the middle of a big city where they easily have several options for high bandwidth service. Why are people using wireless networks inside their house to just save a couple hours running wires.

    Why are wireless services being billed as the wave of the future, when hopefully within 10 years there will be a fibre connection dropped into every house. Maybe my foresight is a bit foggy, but some things just don't seem to make a whole lot of sense to me.

    If they're going bankrupt, then it means the market isn't there. Go look at this coverage map [ricochet.com]. Notice all the green area? Thats the area of the US that is most in need of wireless services, and with the unique nature of wireless services being able to cover a wide area with no more than a single antenna, it actually makes sense in those areas. But instead they've blown their capital on infrastructure in all the places where wireless services are needed the LEAST. Go figure.

    Sure, wireless services have SOME demand in metropolitan areas. However, its not adaquate to keep the business solvant at this point, or perhaps they operate like all the other dotcoms and are doomed to bankruptcy because they don't understand the basic fundamentals of economics. My guess its something in between.

    -Restil
    restil@alignment.net
  • Like many people, I heard about Ricochet years ago, and fell in love. Unlimited, fast (28.8kbps was fast in 1995!), wireless network access. And hardware that used standard RS232 interfaces! And open documentation, even for their packet-like "Starmode"!

    So, when I moved to Seattle in 1997, almost the first thing I did was sign up for their service. At only $30 a month, plus $15 a month to rent the then-$300 modem, it was a great deal. Since their new, second-generation 128kbps service was due out any day now (at the time, in December of 97, I believe they were claiming 2q98), I opted to rent the modem so I could upgrade.

    Well, over two years and a thousand dollars later, they still don't have 128kbps service in Seattle. Now, many would find this kind of schedule slip, without any communication to those of us who were early adopters and put them in the black in the first place, reason enough to avoid the company. But not me. I went out of my way to extoll the virtues of their network and service. I brought them over a dozen customers in two years. I wore a Ricochet T-shirt. I created and gave out "What is Ricochet?" business cards before they'd even invented their "Ambassador program". And it's true - their first-generation, 28.8kbps network is a technological marvel. And up until mid-1999, they were a great company.

    Then, they elected to stop selling services to customers. Period, full stop. To, in the words of Brad Saunders (you'll hear a lot more about him in a moment) "maximize shareholder value." How refusing to sell your only product maximizes shareholder value I'm not quite sure, but goodness knows the shareholders seem to be snowed. They claimed at the time they would continue to support their current customers. They still do, albeit not very well. But they've just announced that they are terminating all services by 3q01. And their solution for us selfsame loyal customers? They assure us that WWC will take over support and service for existing 28.8kbps subscribers. Will they migrate us over seamlessly without interruption of service? Of course not. They won't even migrate us at all; they'll simply *permit* us to contact WWC on our dime and establish an account with them before they terminate us. Changing our email addresses in the process, of course. But not to worry, they'll offer us (only on request!) a 90-day extension of our email service. Some help that is. Good thing I never used my Ricochet address, knowing better than to trust my mail to *any* ISP that's not myself.

    This, you say, is surely enough reason to bid high on Ricochet on fuckedcompany.com. But wait, there's more. Back in November of 2000, I called Ricochet tech support. And, wonder of wonders, got someone with a clue. And so I asked him, will the new 128kbps modems work in peer-to-peer mode with the current modems? And lo and behold, he not only could spell 'peer-to-peer', but did it himself, and assured me that they would. "Can I buy a new 128kbps modem and use it on my 28.8kbps service? I'm in Seattle, and they don't have 128kbps service here." His response: "Absolutely! I'm doing exactly that myself, they don't have high speed service here either." Great! So off I trundle to purchase a new GS modem from a third party. I can hear you ask: "What's wrong with that? Not only do they have decent techs but they gave all the right answers!".

    So today I received my shiny new GS modem. I plug it in, and try to install its software on my laptop. The installer loops. After some troubleshooting, I find a helpful text file on their CD:

    Known Bug This software contains a bug. This bug occurs when you try to install the Ricochet software on Windows 98, First Edition. The installation software is not able to install the USB modem. Solution 1. Install Windows 98, Second Edition. 2. Install the Ricochet software. Additional Info To determine which version of Windows 98 you have, right click on My Computer. Select Properties, and the System Properties window displays the Windows Edition.

    Some "solution", eh? I don't know about you, but when I buy a piece of hardware that's advertised as, and I quote from wwc.com: "Compatible with [...] Win98/2000/ME/CE & PocketPC (USB and serial)," and I get a "solution" of "give lots of money to Microsoft for an even less stable OS than you currently have" I'm less than thrilled.

    But wait, it gets even better. I call up Ricochet's formerly-ever-so-helpful technical support. I explain that I have bought a new modem and wish to change my account over to the new modem. After waiting on hold for over ten minutes, of course. The tech rep has no clue what I'm talking about and after waiting on hold another five minutes, I get someone in customer service, a gentleman named "Junior", who informs me that they don't offer 128kbps service.

    "Yes, I know. I don't want 128kbps service, and you don't OFFER 128kbps service here. I simply want to change my current service to a new modem." "We can't do that." "I was told that you could by your technical support department." "We can't do that." "Your advertising says the modem is backwards-compatible to your current network." "It is." "Then change my account." "We can't do that."

    After a few iterations of this, I give up and ask for his manager. That would be:

    Brad Saunders Direct line: +1 408 282 3309 Email: brads@metricom.com

    After going through the same iteration with Brad as I have with Junior, it develops that Ricochet has programmed the new modems to refuse to connect to the original WAP (Wired Access Point) and IP bridge ("dialstring 777"). Further he says that their billing system can't handle it. Funny, it seems to be billing me just fine right now. Only the dial strings for their new resellers are recognized. The hardware is perfectly compatible, and I'm welcome to contact one of the new resellers, who will in turn be happy to sell me 28.8kbps service, at the 128kbps price (about twice as much as I'm paying now). Other than that he can't help. When I explained to him what the tech had told me previously, he told me that the techs would be using the Metricom internal dial string, which works fine with any modem on any network. But, of course, he can't give me that.

    Oh, and when asked when the 128kbps network would be available in Seattle, he said, and I quote: "It's right around the corner." When I pointed out that it had been right around the corner for three years now, he said, and I quote: "I'm aware of that."

    So, the end result is that Ricochet has $1k+ of my money and I have a worthless lump of plastic, purely and singly because they have decided they don't give a damn about their early adopters or current customers. I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound like a way to maximize shareholder value to me.

    My recommendation:

    1. Don't, under any circumstances, buy Ricochet service. Find a new vendor. Or wait for the 3G cell networks in six months to a year; at least with the Bell name on it you can plan on being screwed ahead of time.

    2. Call Ricochet and tell them why you aren't buying Ricochet service. While you're at it, tell them why you're recommending your company not buy Ricochet service.

    3. If you're a current Ricochet subscriber, don't upgrade. Find a new vendor. Or wait for 3G.

  • pre-existing AMPS (American Mobile Phone System aka Analag) networks

    Ironically, AMPS stands for Advanced Mobile Phone Service, which as you correctly point out is analog narrow-band FM. Maybe Antiquated Mobile Phone System would be better!

  • There is nothing I hate more.. then purchasing a piece of computer hardware.. and then having my computer crash... only to find out the company has gone out of business.. taken their website with them.. and I can't find drivers.. So i have to search the internet extensively to find the drivers. =)

  • and of course, you can always purchase Ricochet transport to make up for the lost point-to-point link...and one could also argue that micro-cellular networks are more bandwidth efficient than long-haul point-to-point links...but then I'd have to duck!

    Now you can only get Internet service through Ricochet -- all devices, subscribed after December 23 2000, are not allowed to talk anything but ISPs' access point. I had to go through a lot of bullshit before Ricochet finally confirmed that -- their network supports "peer to peer" links, but they decided to disable it "because they don't want to support it".

    Great -- I have "upgraded" Ricochet GS to Merlin for Ricochet, and now it can't talk to my home backup link (another Ricochet GS "modem"), so when WWC has an outage on its (single?) router, new shiny Merlin for Ricochet is for all practical purposes indistinguishable from pokemon card stuck into PCMCIA slot.

  • I can only hope that this is a flase rumor or that the groups involved manage to pull through. I love my wireless link and would hate to see it go away. However it makes my fillings hurt when I'm too close to the relay point, ah well, thats a small price to pay for 200k+ transfers from the bus stop.

  • I hope this isn't (Score:3)

    by prisoner ( 133137 ) on Friday February 09, 2001 @07:05AM (#443651)
    true. I've been watching their coverage creep closer and closer to where I live. I can't believe this isn't a viable business model - wireless 128k service for $75 a month or something? Shit, my 384k DSL line costs me around $90/month. I've been strapped with a piece of junk cellular "modem" at 14.4 for so long it's ridiculous. My guess is that most people just don't know about it. They need a big partner I think to help get the word out.

  • To see why it's very handy, check out this article [sinasohn.com] about why someday there will be a headstone with my name on it and a little black antenna sticking up out of the ground in front of it.

  • Metricom started disabling modem to modem communication in their network for devices registered after December 23 2000, so while devices bought/registered earlier can use starmode over the network of retransmitters (I had no problems talking from NY to San Francisco without touching WWC's router that was down at the moment), others can do that only in close proximity when they "hear" each other (usually few hundreds of feet in a city). This makes just as limited range as anything 802.11 with the same type of antenna, but 10 times more latency and 20-80 times slower, so there isn't much point of using starmode if retransmitters refuse to work with it.

    And yes, I am the same Alex Belits mentioned on that page -- I have just finished STRIP support for PCMCIA card (it has even longer numbers), however thanks to Metricom's infinite wisdom, all those devices only work with STRIP in proximity because they were sold after the registration configuration switch.

  • Yeah, Ricochet has had my curiousity for a while now. Agreed that their biggest issue is probably promotion....I've seen a few of their commercials on some cable channels, but they were quirky ones that didn't tell you a whole lot about the service, other than that it was a portable connection that could be used on a laptop. Compare that to the bombardment of advertising for DSL services and cable access.

    I thought one line in the article was pretty funny (regarding Omnisky):
    "Much of the good news stems from the company cutting corners..."

    Hmm...cutting corners usually doesn't have a positive connotation...
  • Yahoo Finance reports the UK exchange rate is 1.449 US Dollars to the pound. So 40UK == 57.96US
  • Richochet is something I would REALLY like to have, problem is, I live in NW Ohio. We can barely get good cable reception ;-)

    They need to move this sort of service to a larger area. There is a LARGE demand for this sort of *inexepnsive* wireless service.

    Give me a Ricochet modem for my Cassiopeia and I will love you forever!
  • This is probably why wireless is so prevalent in England, too.

    Is it? That's news to me, and I've lived here all my life...

    Sure, mobile phones are everywhere (almost everyone I know owns one, but then, I guess you could say the same). Beyond that, and TV and radio, I know of no large-scale commercial wireless operations. (Certainly not wireless IP)

    Do you have any facts to support that statement?

    Cheers,

    Tim
  • Their real fees are now $75-80 a month for the 128k service. That's why I won't use it anymore. I used to have Ricochet service when it was about $20 or $30 a month. That's reasonable. But I let it lapse, and they're not allowing any new subscribers with the old modems and rates (current subscribers are grandfathered in). So my modem is useless and I'd have to pay almost quadruple what I was paying before per month. I don't think it's worth it.
  • You need to check your dictionary, smarty. Tho is an accepted if informal alternative spelling of though. But you're right about too.
  • I sure hope not, I just placed an order last Tuesday for one. It's gotten a good review from PC Magazine in this article [zdnet.com]. I've been using a Novatel Wireless CDPD modem since November last year, and at 19,200 bps, it is decent for e-mail and SSH sessions. But web browsing, unless you are really patient... :-) This will make things a LOT better.
  • If my company sends someone out with a laptop it's usually not to one of the covered cities

    In talking to the sales rep, it seemed that Ricochet was intended mostly as a toy for laptop users. #1 evidence of this: no corporate accounts were available, only individual accounts.

    (besides, according to this same rep, linux is not supported)
  • Actual fees for Omnisky are $39.99/month. They give you a break to the equivalent of $29.95/month if you pay for a whole year at a time.

    I almost forked out $599 for the Onmisky iPAQ beta program this week ($300 for a year of discounted service, and $299 for the hardware), but I just couldn't justify it at 19.2Kbps. I have been anxiously waiting for Ricochet to become availble in the Portland, OR area - 128Kbps wireless on my iPAQ. Now, it looks like it might never happen... :-(

  • Let's not forget the fact that Ricochet spent what must have been a small fortune on a national add campaign that quite simply stank. What is it about a pair of retro-outfitted, vaguely British Avenger-wannabes that's supposed to make me think "Wow, wireless internet." To make a product like this work you have to engage the business market and you're not going to do it with a bunch of ads that spend too much time on a dubious version of style to even adequately explain what the product is all about.
  • $70 a month is way to much. For my laptop I use bellatlantic mobile wireless for a quarter of the price and it works just fine for SSH sessions and getting e-mail.
  • Ricochet has always been a bit conservative about its bandwidth figures. I regularly see speeds of 200kb and higher--they're actually close to 10x CDPD speeds. The technology can easily reach DSL speeds, and Ricochet had planned to expand their network to double throughput with existing modems. And, no per-minute charge, so you can actually get significant work done. They definitely need *much* better marketing...
  • The Ricochet is a great idea....once it starts working. A friend of mine works for a large corporation and Ricochet offered to come out and demo the device. Unfortunately, when they gave the demo, it was in the company's boardroom, where the wireless modem had lackluster performance, when they could get it to work, due to the interference of the building structure. It's a good idea in theory but right now I think it sits in the "toy for ubergeek" category, not the "need for commercial use" where it needs to be to stay afloat as a company.
  • Damnit..I am tired of CDPD. (Omnisky)..its ok for my Palm V. But I wanna play some starcraft while sitting on a park bench during lunch hour. I was really excited about them expanding their service in my town..now this? I guess back to my 19.2k CDPD bullshit. hey Omnisky Corp..Buy ricochet!!!
  • The system that Metricom sold to power companies is called Utilinet (now licensed to Schlumberger), and is a completely different network from Ricochet. Utilinet radios talk at 9600 baud (RF) in the 900MHz frequency range only, and Ricochet and Utilinet radios are completely unaware of eachother.

    Other than that, great comment!

    ---

  • OmniSky vs. Ricochet not a good comparison (Score:4)

    by TheSync ( 5291 ) on Friday February 09, 2001 @08:45AM (#443669) Journal
    OmniSky and Ricochet are not in the same category - OmniSky uses the existing CDPD network of AT&T, cranking along at a good 10kbps Internet throughput on a good day. Yes, I have OmniSky for my Palm Vx, but I really could use another 20-30 kbps!!!

    Ricochet, on the other hand, has built out its own network. They sneaked into the consumer market by first selling remote monitoring services to power companies, who in turn let them mount the units on the light poles (where the repeaters can get power from as well). I used Ricochet's first service, that delivered ~20 kbps Internet throughput. I abandoned it for the slower Verizon CDPD because it was available in a NIC version as a PC card instead of a separate modem that seemed to disconnect every micro cell hop as I drove. (Actually, the separate modem part is cool in that you have an extra battery, and can mount it farther from your PC without cable loss. OmniSky's Minstrel modem has its own battery, but form-fits around the Palm.)

    I've been waiting to try out Ricochet's "128kbps" service, that does seem to provide 50-100kbps of Internet throughput from what I've heard. However, it hasn't made it to the Washington, DC metro area yet. There are PCMCIA cards for the new Ricochet now, and I believe there is a NIC version as well.

    Probably the best use for Ricochet is not with a laptop, but with a WinCE/Linux PDA running a reasonable Web browser, email client, etc. At the Ricochet 128kbps level, you can imagine sourcing/receiving streaming video, webcams, streamed MP3s, etc., going well beyond the world of Palms. Also, there is the concept of "Social ASPs", instant messaging and other mechanism to help organize groups of people for both recreational and business reasons in the mobile (club-going, bar-hopping, sales show) environment.

    I don't buy that any homebuilt 802.11b networks will be able to compete with a network that is built out as large as Ricochet. There are a bunch of issues - for one, it isn't enough just to have repeaters, you need connection to the Internet. The question of who gets billed for this is the major problem.

    However, there is something to be said for local Ricochet gateways. I know in the olden days, Ricochet would work with a University to set up a micro-cell campus network. I think that those deals have to be put aside for now until the major Metro area buildouts are done, but in the future companies and Universities should be sold local Ricochet gateways.

    BTW, check out the CarlaZone [carlazone.com], my fiance who has a Webcam powered by Verizon CDPD. We take it along in the car sometimes.
  • Good point. And it shows how good ideas can go bad. The 900 MHz and 2.4GHz bands were originally allocated for "Industrial, Scientific, and Medical" (ISM) use -- for things like diathermy machines, plastic bag welders, etc. The unlicensed Part 15 devices were allowed into this "useless" spectrum with the express understanding that there was no protection from interference for anybody.

    When they allowed spread-spectrum devices to use these bands, no one at the FCC ever envisioned people would be building metro-area-networks, or miles-long links, with them. (Whether they should have is another debate).

    But then companies like Richochet started making major investments in Part 15 infrastructre, and in addition to ruining operation for other users of this shared spectrum, started trying to get FCC rule changes to protect them from interference from other devices! (I may be mistaken, but I believe that Metricom/Ricochet was a loud voice in that lobbying effort.)

    The Part 15 metro-area-LAN stuff is cool, but this is an interesting example of trying to change the rules of the game at half-time. What new and potentially useful service will be thwarted because of rules designed to protect existing unlicensed users (not to mention the interference a city full of Richochet stations would create)? On the other hand, what will the reaction be if a new service comes along and its interference knocks a city's worth of Richochet users off the 'net?

    It's an interesting conundrum, but the bottom line is that anyone using Part 15 devices for anything more than LAN purposes is building on a foundation of sand.

  • Yes, but Ricochet isn't just a dot-com. It was never a pyramid scheme or a useless pet portal: it developed a genuinely new technology, and provides a genuinely useful service to people. Like Iridium...
  • See my previous comment [slashdot.org] about what they did to peer to peer communications and starmode. I actually have two Ricochet GS modems that still have it enabled, however I have no idea how to convince Metricom to enable it on anything sold later, including my new Novatel Merlin for Ricochet that I hoped that I could switch to from one of older GS.
  • Quick hitlist of why Metricom was destined to fail: 1. Metricom is not using a true broadband wireless, it's a lower range product that doesn't fall under the FCC's regulation of spectrum. Hence, they have no valuable spectrum assets and their technology approach is very proprietary (read: high cost to deploy and maintain). 2. 2.5 G Wireless is being rolled out at the end of Q2 and will offer 56k + in a TRUE high speed broadband wireless format. This means that their window of opportunity is really very narrow and that major competition (voicestream and sprint PCS) will soon be here. 3. Failure to recognize the rise of PDAs. Metricom always targetted laptop users when PDAs were the way to go. How do you make $$ w/ wireless devices w/o supporting Palm in north america? 4. Shitty contract w/ their partners (Worldcom). Worldcom gave them a take-or-pay contract for $390 M. That deal (which is available online in MCOM's SEC filings) always worldcom to walk away from Metricom for almost any reason they want. Metricom will have a last hurrah in Atlanta, where Worldcom has guaranteed $3 M in advertising. If they don't get big traction there, there will be a lack of proof for any supporter to step in and give them cash. And even if they did get cash... all the existing shareholders would definitely get a bad deal. I bet they would get diluted down horribly. Bonds have been trading for 20 cents on the dollar. cc --- short MCOM
  • I love my Riccochet!!!!!!!!!!
    I've had mine for 2 months now in Baltimore, coverage is a little sketchy, but it works everywhere i've tried to use it so far. I even did a little webcast back to work of the super bowl parade.

    It's gonna be years before anything else works as well as this does.
  • It's not a state monopoly, it's a privatised monopoly. More like the new gangster-maffia Russia than the old Soviet Union.
  • I live in NYC and signed up for ricochet last month. I live on the 21st floor of my building and get faster connections with my 56K modem. I've yet to get a faster connection in Manhattan, at Newark airport, at SF airport, or in downtown SF. I'm canceling my service and returning the modem (the service I use offered a 30 day money back guarantee).

    The service would be great if it lived up to expectations -- I can't get DSL in my building (it is all fiber), and the cable company only offers one-way modems. So 128 K wireless would be the equivilent of ISDN (my best option), plus I can use it while traveling to SF (5/6 times a year) and at the airport. Plus, being able to sit in Central Park and surf the net would be fabulous.
  • FCC certification means that the product complies with the rules wrt power output, etc., but compliant equipment can -- and does -- interfere badly with other compliant equipment. In particular, frequency hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) transmitters can dramatically reduce the performance of nearby direct sequence SS devices, even if both systems are certified. I have personal experience with a rooftop 900 MHz DSSS system being wiped out by an FHSS system on the same roof. As another example, a 2.4GHz Part 15 wireless telephone will seriously degrade a nearby Wavelan-style unit.
  • Wow, 384k... I wish I had a descent upstream...

    Damn @Home, limits me to a 15k upstream, you how hard that makes it to, say, send files over ICQ... I want a real upstream! unfortunately, nothing else is available in my area! I'd gladly pay double to have a real upstream, even 50k would be cool! Ok, I'm done now... Damn @Home... At least they don't bitch that I use Linux! ;-)

  • I think that for all the people from Chile who sufferred the terrible regime of this dictator, the death of general Ricochet is a good thing.
  • Gone are the days where you could make $$$s out of internet and dotcom stocks. The boom is over. PE ratios are out of whack with the ability of corporations to grow fast enough to generate the earnings already priced into their stock.

    I hate to say it, but a wave of 'creative destruction' will soon sweep across our country as Adam Smith predicted. As usual it will be the little guy who loses out.

    Its about time we took a leaf out of the European's book, and banned individuals from investing in the stock market, since on the whole, they lack the savvy and intelligence to get out when the going is good.

    Sure sites like the Motley Fool [motleyfool.com] and CNN Finanical news [myvag.net] and NASDAQ [olsentwins.com] can provide valuable information, but does the general pulblic really have a clue ?

    Do any of them know what a PE/G ration means ? I very much doubt it.

    These people need to be protected from themselves, by the force of the law.

    What do others think ?

  • Richochet and others may become unnecesary if 802.11b takes off - look at SFLan [sflan.com] for an example of how community-based free wireless networking is being implemented in the bay area.

    One example is Apple's Airport, but PC cards are available too. It will be cool when you can beam MP3s down to the empeg in your car before work :-)
  • Looks like the stupid daytraders are finally starting to ruin some legitimate and promising bussiness and not just the bullshit dotcoms (May theglobe.com burn in hell).

    "The wireless revolution" is taking a couple steps back.

  • and allows a country with a substandard communication infrastructure, like sub Saharan Afrca, leapfrog their 100 year old technology and jump right into the 21st century.

    This is probably why wireless is so prevalent in England, too.
  • you would think companies throwing around millions of dollars would have more "subscribers" than the 34,000 that omnisky reports.. 34,000 nationwide is not very many.

    Still, 34,000 people paying $30/month would be right at 1mil/month.. I wonder what their real fees are. Anyone know?

    wishus
    ---
  • Your comment suggests that everyone and his dog in England has wireless. That's a surprise to me, and I have lived in England all my 26 years. The only open wireless access point I have ever heard of is run by a research company in the city I live in (Cambridge), and only works on line of site or something (but it is on top of a tall building so that doesn't exclude too many people).

    If you know of lots of publicly available wireless Internet companies, spill the beans! I haven't even heard of a company that makes extensive use of that technology.
  • You may have fallen for a troll. I suspect that those statements were simply meant to be inflammatory.
  • I suppose they are spending their marketing dollars where they already have service.....makes sense if you're short on cash.
  • no one should be "protected from themselves", especially by force of law. if a person invests his money (or any other asset), the profit or failure should fall on his shoulders.

    --------------------------

  • I want to rip off your head and shit down your neck.

    If I *never* hear from "Rico" again, it'll be too soon.

    Those "Rico" ads made me want to hurl every time I heard one. That affected, effete, public school accent just grabbed me by the scrotum and *squeezed*.

    If Ricohet does go out of business, I've no doubt "Rico" had a lot to do with it.

    Yuck.
  • Im sorry to see all of the Amatuer Bands being taken away by business, but truthfully the only way to stop it is to get hams interested in using those bands. There is extrememly little activity going on up there as far as amatuer goes in my area.

  • Ricochet modems also have a packet-based peer-to-peer "STAR" mode which Linux supports through the strip.o [stanford.edu] kernel module, basically acting like a low bandwidth but longer range wireless ethernet, at, I believe, the same legally limited 1 watt of power used by the Metricom pole top repeaters. Stanford University has a network of these things called MosquitoNet [stanford.edu].

    At ~10X the range, and therefore ~100X the coverage area of 802.11b wireless ethernet, the 128kbps $99 metricom units could easily be used by nerds or local ISP's to blanket most metropolitan areas with their own wireless internet service.

    By the way, since metricom modem cards are made by separate companies like Novatel and Sierra Wireless (don't know about the external modems) and the ISP's are also independent companies, I think Metricom-based networks would find a way to continue if, heaven forbid, Metricom were to go under. I certainly hope the Metricom people make a fortune. They have made a great product, which I use every day.

  • Ricochet service costs, what, $80/month for a connection that's around a 56k modem, close to ISDN speed if you are lucky. $960/year is a lot of money for that kind of connectivity. I suspect at those prices it will mostly appeal to people who really, really need it, or to people who have a lot of money to spare.

    I'd be willing to pay, say, $30/month for such a service. That would be a little more expensive than dial-up, but it would be a convenience around the house and to take to a cafe or park.

  • Somehow I doubt that they'll *die*. Metricom is a technology company and their technology is very good. What they suck at is marketing, and they have very smartly gotten out of the direct sales & support game and are now just an OEM. They also have two very big partners in the form of MCI/WorldCom and Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures. I doubt they'd let their infrastructure investment just whither within a few years of seeing some ROI.

    I've been a *very* happy Ricochet user since 1995. I have used my Ricochet modem on devices ranging from a Newton PDA (remeber those?) to PowerBooks to desktop workstations. It has always performed flawlessy at least until I hit 60 MPH at which point it starts dropping packets. =) It connects to the 'Net instantly and delivers connection rates of about 38.4. I have yet to try the 128K service though.

    I did not know how good I had it until I was transferred overseas and had to endure truly crappy GSM Cell modems in the Uk & Germany. Like good beer and cheesburgers it was good to come home to excellent wireless Internet when I came back to Seattle.

    I made a killing on MCOM stock too. I bought at $7 back in 97 or so, knowing that it could hit $30 when they roll out in any new markets in 98/99/2000. I woke up one day and saw it at $108 and sold immediately, since I knew that was a crazy valuation! I was proven right the next day when it started a slide back down to more reasonable levels.

  • The new system uses 2.4Ghz for intra-cell traffic (i.e. repeater to repeater).
  • I've really wanted to get a Ricochet modem, but the price is too steep for me. $70/month. I don't travel much for work so it doesn't help me. If there was some travel involved, then I would be signing up immediately. If they bring the price down, I'm there.
  • You should see how bad it is in the UK. A DSL connection from the state monopoly costs 40UK pounds (about $150) per MONTH !!!

    Its amazing any English people ever get online. The net over there is the preserve of the rich upper classes. And they are supposed to be a capitalist democracy, it sometimes seems to me they are more like the old Soviet Union than a modern country.

    Their president, Mr Blaer is also out of touch with modern times, and wants to set up a 'european army' outside of NATO. Hell we saved their asses in WWII and this is the thanks we get ? Never mind, they will end up fighting each other, history has demonstrated that the UK and the rest of the Europeans need a bloody slaughter every 50 years, its in their genetic make-up.

    What do others think ?

  • I'm sorry, but I just don't like the idea of radio waves coming at me from every direction. Sure, wireless access is convenient, but I think we should hold off on deploying this technology on a wide scale until we understand more about the harm that can be done to humans who are under a constant barrage of harmful electronic signals.

    Microwaves, X-rays, UV-rays, and cellular phones have already been linked to cancer. What other risks loom ahead of us in our effort to become "connected". It's a minor sacrifice to leave our laptops and PDA's at home for the sake of the safety of ourselves and our children. I can only hope and pray that this technology does not become even more popular only to have us find out that we have been poisoning ourselves in our greedy desire for convenience.

  • Re:I hope this isn't (Score:3)

    by Fatal0E ( 230910 ) on Friday February 09, 2001 @07:21AM (#443698)
    My guess is that most people just don't know about it. They need a big partner I think to help get the word out.

    I live in NYC and have been hearing their commercials on the radio and have seen their ads on busses and on the trains. First time I saw one I remember thinking, "Cool, now all I need is a laptop!"

    Reading this article makes me wonder about the "Whys" so I think I came up with something. If my company sends someone out with a laptop it's usually not to one of the covered cities. When it is (to a major city we already have offices in almost each one so the user just plugs into the lan and gets what they need. Hotels offer reasonable rates on local calls in addition to the fact that 3 accounts w/ nat'l isps is still under the cost of one ricochet. My company is relatively small. That and the fact that we have worldwide access (with the isp) makes ricochet a bad investment (for my co.).

    As far as casual use, I dunno, too expensive for just a laptop. But thats just me.

    "Me Ted"

  • Just FUD (Score:5)

    by .@. ( 21735 ) on Friday February 09, 2001 @07:21AM (#443699) Homepage
    Ricochet announced earnings the other day. In that announcement, they mentioned that they don't have the operating capital to continue indefinitely, and that they're seeking another round of funding.

    Just like umpteen other companies out there. Why not a story about the SEC investigation of Lucent? The Congressional hearings on ICANN? The similar situation of any number of other companies (e.g., Tivo, which recently offered preferred stock to prevent a potential hostile takeover?) Why take what these days amounts to boilerplate in an earnings statement for a high-tech company and blow it out of proportion?

    Stories like this do more damage to struggling companies than the current market situation...people see the /. story, and refuse to buy the service on the basis of it, without reading any further. The headline, while untrue, becomes a fait accompli.

    Me? I'm taking delivery of my 128kbps PCMCIA Ricochet modem this afternoon.
  • I got one only after trying for 7 months (I kid you not) of trying to get DSL installed. For me 70$ a month is a small price to pay for 200k/s speeds. That its portable is a very nice extra feature.

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