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Ricochet Dead By June?
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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Does anyone actually have a Java program designed to control air traffic, or for the operation of a nuclear facility?
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
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
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).
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.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
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 am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
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.
--
see shy jo
Okay, so it is at 19.2k, but it does work. In Ask Slashdot the other day, codepawn asked about the Cybiko. 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.
This is actually sort of relevant: Check out the comment I made earlier today about Rolling Your Own Internet Connection.
In short:
The Register has this story 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.
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.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
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.
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ALL YOUR KARMA ARE BELONG TO US
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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...
---- Fight to protect your right to keep and arm bears! ummmm... ya I think that's right....
What?
.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?
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
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
Slashdot, would a spell-checker for posting be too much to ask? It's not rocket science!
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.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Checkout Speakeasy. 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.
$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."
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.
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I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
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. 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
Play with my webcams and lights here
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. =)
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 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.
Stupid people will be persecuted to the fullest extent allowed by law.
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.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
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
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Other than that, great comment!
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Gort! Klatu Barata Nikto!
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, my fiance who has a Webcam powered by Verizon CDPD. We take it along in the car sometimes.
See my previous comment 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.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
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 and CNN Finanical news and NASDAQ 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 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
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
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Ricochet modems also have a packet-based peer-to-peer "STAR" mode which Linux supports through the strip.o 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.
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.
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.
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.
/. story, and refuse to buy the service on the basis of it, without reading any further. The headline, while untrue, becomes a fait accompli.
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
Me? I'm taking delivery of my 128kbps PCMCIA Ricochet modem this afternoon.
.@.