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Metricom's Ricochet Network Will Go Dark
cloudscout writes "According to this blurb at Go2Mac, the end is finally here for Metricom's Ricochet Network. Employees are being given one week severance. Now who is going to fill this vacuum? CDPD just doesn't cut it."
(with apologies to Paul Simon)
When I think back on all the crap I read on Slashdot
... photographs
... photographs
It's a wonder I can think at all
And though my frequent links to goatse.cx
Haven't hurt me none
I can read the writing on the wall
Ricochet
You give us those nice fast downloads
You give us the warez and Napster
Makes you think all the world's a fast freeway, oh yeah!
I got a Sony laptop
I love to look at
So Mama, don't take my Ricochet away
If you took all the sites I read
When I was "working"
And brought them all together for one spell
I know they'd never match
one brilliant round of trolling...
And everything looks worse on DSL
Ricochet
You give us those nice fast downloads
You give us the warez and Napster
Makes you think all the world's a fast freeway, oh yeah!
I got a Sony laptop
I love to look at
So Mama, don't take my Ricochet away
Mama, don't take my Ricochet away
Mama, don't take my Ricochet away
Mama, don't take my Ricochet away
Mama, don't take my Ricochet
Mama, don't take my Ricochet
Mama, don't take my Ricochet (away)
Mama, don't take my Ricochet
Mama, don't take my Ricochet
Mama, don't take my Ricochet (away)
Mama, don't take my Ricochet
(Make your boy just pay and pay)
Mama, don't take my Kodachrome (away)
Now we can only *imagine* what a Ricochet-based wireless Beowolf Cluster would have been like...
While Ricochet is obviously a poor choice for networking in a cluster, a bunch of boxes with ricochet radios in close proximity will still talk to each other even if the retransmitters and other pieces of infrastructure are down -- they just need to use peer to peer mode, that works in proximity with all ricochet devices, even ones where it's "disabled" (so retransmitters don't route it).
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
But imagine the possibilities for Palm. Many pundits feel that wireless messaging (often suggesting the RIM Blackberry as the example) is the next killer app. If Palm could pony up the capital (it is an auction, might be going for pennies on the dollar) and even better, keep expanding it, they might be able to come out shining. Who else might buy it? Other Telco / Wireless types? They're having a hard time right now as they stand on the brink of 3G with no compelling need in sight. MS? Maybe they'd position it for CE just as Palm could use it for the Pilots. Add on a bonus 'MSWireless' subscription to MSN and you've got some possibilities. AOL? Are they doing anything in this area? 'AOL Anywhere' kind of thing?
Its too bad, too, as we would have been able to use something like ricochet here in Vegas.
Bleh!
I have had a Ricochet for 4+ years and every time I pulled it out in public everyone wanted to know about it. Seems that they never told anyone about their service.
I expect someone like Worldcom to puck it up and use that to get into wireless in this country since the Sprint deal fell through. Plus they already offer it as a reseller.
>Under the protection of Chapter 11, the Company
> will seek to restructure its operations and debt
> obligations while maintaining the operation of
> its wireless network
Their "debt obligations" add up to nearly a billion dollars. They have about 50,000 subscribers. Even if they got every subscriber to prepay for ten years of service they probably couldn't meet their debt.
Maybe I just don't understand business, but,
the numbers just don't add up for me. If they add up for some banker, more power to him I guess.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
> They currently have 50,000 customers, most of >which are at high-speed.
>
> Are they losing money every month? If so, WHY? >If not, why couldn't a company come in, buy their >assets
> from auction, and start making money?
They are nearly a billion dollars in debt. You can't look at their assets without looking at their liabilities. The service is US$75-80 per
month, and at just 50,000 customers, how will they
ever get out of debt?
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
On my GPRS phone tethered, I get 1 channel (9.6) same as my cdpd modem. But my multiple-channel GPRS modem should be here shortly. (example 6x = 57.6) http://www.novatelwireless.com/pcproducts/g100.htm l (With compression, I've seen upto dsl type speeds)
The comments are my own, not my employer.
Yikes!
I run a amateur radio packet network here in michigan and it is nowhere near that cost. My "pole units" small 5 watt digipeters that I have 6 of cost me about $10.00 per month for all of them to run... this is a cost of replacing gell cell batteries. Location is 100% free as is the 110V power that uses 10 watts at it's peak, but usually 3 watts. The network link is a linux box, costs about $30.00 a month for parts.
Granted I'm 9600 BPS, but my power and space requirements are very close to theirs.. Sounds like they got raped by location rental and power providers.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
the drivers are very open source...
at
OK
atdt
dialing....
connected
SADGEARHGJ:L%EY#EJK%:$LJ$Q:LUJ:
how would you like it? release the source code to the modems?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Yeah but $10.00 per pole mounted repeater? It costs less that $1.00 per pole for rent (including electrical 100Volts that draws less than .1 amp) from the electrical company here. (I know I asked about renting pole space for 30 poles from the Ambulance company to the dispatch center for a simple network audio connection... I was quoted the above at $0.95 per pole.. $3.00 per pole per month if my equipment used up to .4 amp... they quoted out of the cable-tv rates)
So either in California everyone rapes everyone else in pricing and rent or they placed the boxes on the wrong poles (city owned are the most expensive while electrical are cheapest).
Granted there is some maintaince, but from what I see of the cable-tv boxes that are far more complex and able to get damaged by lightning easier... I'd bet that the repeater boxes got installed and then never touched again.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Even if I had wanted to continue the 28.8k service, it was still $30/month, even though there were plenty of cheaper 56k diakup services available, and they required 1 year pre-payment. Forget it.
Give us a break. So there were cheaper 56k dialup services. Were they wireless?
I pay 27.50 + tax for 9.6kbps CDPD service. I'd have killed for 28kbps wireless at $30/mo.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
If every airport, starbucks and business class hotel in the US deployed 802.11B I suspect there would be practically no need for 3G, Ricochet or the rest.
MobileStar has been doing that for a while. They have 802.11b access points at Starbucks, airports, and hotels. I travel back and forth between Dallas and Houston, two of the covered cities, and I'm mighty tempted by their plans, but the prices are too high. It's $30/mo for local unlimited, or $60/mo for national unlimited. If it worked at my college campus, then I'd be sold. Otherwise, I'm praying for Richochet to make it through.
What's your damage, Heather?
http://www.ricochet.net/news_events/media_center/
Other interesting tidbits for those to lazy to click thru:
So, it's not quite over yet. But, I won't be holding my breath...
This sucks cause Ricochet was a good service, and its bad news that the flat rate access model got rocked in this case. However, check out this list of top 20 creditors, man those are some debts yo!
This substantially increase the cost to business. Also if they included operational costs that would include the maintenance staff and vehicles to support these devices. (Installation, maintenance, etc.). All of these things cost a company money, and nobody does it for free in a business environment.
Also, they may have included there replacement costs, which might be substantially higher than yours. (imediatly swappable units, service contracts for repairs, etc.).
If I'm paying for the service I expect it to work 99% of the time, if its a 'free' service I am much less demanding...
Not only the assets, but the "company as a going concern" or one or several of their markets. In other words, this bankruptcy isn't to just unload the physical assets of the company, but to sell all or parts of an operating entity.
At the time that the modems came out, they didn't have anything else to compare them to. Hell, it would be almost another year before we had x2 and kFlex [okay, both kFlexes, if you want to get picky about it], and then almost another year after that before v.90.
So first off, they weren't significantly slower than a standard modem (28.8kbps vs. 33.6kbps). Second, they were only $30/month if you bought the insurance on 'em. [well, I did, so let's forget that other option]. For $30/month, you were getting a dedicated connection.... in 1996. For any of you other folks out there who tried pricing out something similar, you'd be looking at $150+ for port, and the $20 or so for line. [Hell, you still are these days for dedicated dialup in many areas].
Yes, they had a limited area (I got coverage at my apartment, school, National Airport, and my dad's house, but not my mom's.). For those people that fit their demographic, however, it was a godsend. I could get in an hour of mudding while between classes, without having to go down to a crowded computer lab, or trek back home.
I could get online while sitting at my mom's car in the middle of the Pentagon parking lot, waiting for her to get off work. And hell, as it was the earlier model, with the seperate battery pack, I could use it on my desktop machine, too. [Although a foot or two of contract gives you some damned crappy latency, as the repeater was on the dead other side of the building].
The page you linked to reminded me of the people who bitched about CueCat. Yes, the companies are dumbasses for selling the product without forcing you to get the service, too, however, you're thinking rather highly of yourself if you think everyone should just bow down to you and give you stuff for free. If you don't register your shareware programs, the odds are, that people won't continue releasing stuff as shareware, as it's not worth it to them.
If there's a product that you like, that you use, you have to support them. If you don't, they fold, and everyone's screwed in the long run.
Now, is Metricom a good product? Before, yes. Right now, I don't know their pricing model, or their level of service, so I can't make that call. If they're still in the $30/month range, I'd say definately, if you're presently using dialup. If you're in an area that's widely covered, or go through airports that are, it might also be a godsend. Is it competative with DSL / Cable Modems? As strange as this sounds, I'd say yes, but it depends on the pricing model. There's a good market for those people who want to pay a little more for the always-on connection, but can't justify spending $50-$100/month.
PS. not everything's good about metricom. I had bit of a problem returning the modem after I moved out of a service area, and they tried charging me for another year, and I went through a few phone calls to 'em to get it cleared up, and then realized I had the insurance on it, so I could have just told them I lost it, and to eat the cost, rather than me returning it
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
This makes seance, if the network went down then they would lose the 50,000 subscribers, thus making it a less attractive buy.
Usually seven poletop radios are installed per square mile, one wired access point every ten square miles, and one network interface facility per 600 miles. They list a approximate cost of $2,000 per poletop radio. $180,000 per wired access point, and $550,000 per network interface facility. With a average cost per square mile of approximately $33,000.
The above facilities operating cost is approximately $10/mo per poletop radio, $2,000/mo per wired access point, and $10,000/mo per network interface facility. With wired communication costing approximately $900/mo per wired access point and $12,000/mo per network interface facility. Giving a approximate operating cost of $400/mo per square mile.
Metrocom receives approximately $25/mo in revenue per subscriber. They need 16 subscribers per square mile to cover the operating costs, and 44 subscribers per square mile to cover its operating and equipment costs.
The business model calls for a eight to one ratio of paying subscribers to active subscribers. This is based on ~12% of subscribers using the network at once, and each subscriber averaging 500 mb's a month of transfer.
I believe that the model is good but the main issue is with outsourceing the internet service. People I have talked to at WWC state that they are getting raises, and the outlook is good. If Metrocom had done its own internet service and received double the revenue I believe that would presently be on its way to profitability.
Too bad Palm's stock and cash flow are in the crapper and the company as a whole is really struggling. Maybe MS could buy it with their pocket change and roll-out a Palm.net-type service for CE devices.
According to court documents available at Metricom's website, all the bidders had to provide Letters of Intent to participate including provisional bids by 5p on Aug.1. Any lead bidder will be announced on Monday Aug. 6.
All of the sale paperwork will be in place for the lead bidder before the auction on Aug. 16 and the deal will close on Sept. 7.
With all the wheels currently turning, it seems even less likely that the network will go dark.
Ut toh....
Given Pournelle's success as a computer technology pundit this may be the last nail in their coffin.
(Everyone remember Jerry's Amiga bashing? He tried to defend his dislike of the Amiga for a year with arguments that were technically incorrect and, after having been suitably embaressed for that year by his readers, ended up throwing in the towel in a back handed way by giving the Amiga a "most imrpoved computer" award.)
Once 128k went into beta, 28.8k users were dumped off onto a different vendor, (or atleast my service area was), who was *horrible* to deal with, totally incompetent. I was actually anxious to upgrade to get the faster service AND get away from this vendor and back to being supported by Metricom.
Then everything got switched - Metricom was supporting 28.8k users again but in order to have the 128k service, you had to order it from one of many vendors. I tried to order it through one who had each sent me a special upgrade offer as an existing ricochet user. When I went online to take advantage of the specials, I hit 404 errors all over the place. I tried a different vendor but their online registration wasn't ready yet either, even though they had already spammed me with an "Upgrade NOW" special offer. It was completely frustrating, especially given how expensive the service was.
Even if I had wanted to continue the 28.8k service, it was still $30/month, even though there were plenty of cheaper 56k diakup services available, and they required 1 year pre-payment. Forget it.
I have had a chance to use the 128k service via a company bought modem and it has been okay. Sometimes the connectivity has been fantastic, other times ok, and other times nonexistent. The only reason I used it was because I didn't have to pay for it. Even if I hadn't had an unpleasant prior experience with them, the service is just too expensive given the intermittent quality of connectivity.
Regardless, Metricom deserves an A for effort.
- tokengeekgrrl
He's been trying to get broadband into his middle-of-downtown home forever, and Ricochet was the first thing to come through for him, so maybe tht was just wishfull thinking.
It really is a pity that the maze of regulations of phone and airwaves have strangled competition and prevented good (actually, any) broadband service from being extended to most of the US. The lesson here is that we can't afford to regulate things; regulation may seem to fix a current problem, but it will cause MUCH worse problems down the road, and be politically impossible to remove when it has proven itself disasterously bad (think California electricity).
See what I've been reading.
Looking at the filename for the link provide shows it as being "z-027-20 largest for website.wgp.pdf" Seeing the double extension, my first thought after having been flooded with SirCam emails was 'Oh jeeze... another victim of the SirCam virus...' ;-) Anyone else starting to have this odd reaction to various files? :-)
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
I'll miss Ricochet, but I'm not tossing my hardware yet...I believe the network will be the low-flying version of Iridium and get picked up for pennies on the dollar. Maybe no downtime? We'll see.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
No, I wasn't typing...I had AIM open and never lost my connection to my office mates.
Too ****ing bad about losing this technology, though.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
At the prices cited, they used pretty expensive equipment, but with the equipment going at fire sale prices, it occurs to me that if another serious bidder doesn't step up, one approach might be to get a cooperative of users in a dense area, like the Bay Area, to buy it.
Of course, there are other user cooperative plans that people have brewing, but this one has the equipment installed. It would work even better if the user/owners didn't have to pay monthly fees to use what they bought, of course, but since there are monthly costs, that could be the killer.
I could see corporations buying shares in the network to give all their employees access at a low price, for example, as well as users.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
If you badly need wireless access, start supporting (or simply start) your local community wireless networking effort! Freenetworks.org lists the big ones. Community wireless networks are groups of techies with 802.11b APs and cards connected together to form networks covering a large area, and eventually most of them plan to cover their respective cities. One benefit: 802.11b offers speeds of up to 11MBps (like you didn't know that) which is a heck of a lot faster than Ricochet. Also, the Ricochet gear should be hitting the surplus market soon...
This
I know UUNet's not the most popular company with the Slashdot crowd, but they have been reselling Ricochet services for some time now as UUNet Wireless. If UUNet were to buy them out, they'd have much better exposure in the corporate market (being sold by UUNet more aggressively, and by Worldcom), and hopefully be run off of UUNet's very nice backbone.
Just my $.04 (inflation).
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
The owner of toaster.net has assembled a more comprehensive list. He himself created a community net by the simple expedient of opening up a wireless net he had installed for his own use. His only restrictions are the obvious ones: no permanent connections, no spam, no bandwidth hogging (unless you ask first).
It's nice. But I have to wonder. In an internet totally infested with spammers, script kiddies, goat-sexers, and other abusers of electronic openness, how long can this kind of free service last?
__
I'm guessing that having 20 users on a node cost them barely more than 5... the cost was to put the transceiver on a pole in the first place.
Too bad they couldn't sign up users fast enough to get some economies of scale going and lower prices. That, and the fact that they seemed to never advertise. (Los Angeles, anyway).
Maybe they were leaving the marketing to their resellers... but none of them did shit, either.
All I can say is this is a damn shame. Ricochet had a fine service, while it lasted.
Were they a victim of their own pricing? I think so. If their service had been $40, it could have easily competed with home DSL and cable, and been very attractive to users with no other broadband choices. Instead, they wanted $74.95 (in my area), which buys some DARN high speed DSL.
Maybe I'm missing something (I'm no business major, for sure), but isn't it better to sell your product to triple the number of users for 1/2 the money?
The other thing that killed them was lack of exposure. They just rolled out Los Angeles/Orange County a few months ago, yet I heard nothing about it - I only knew because I'd been watching for it. Even some geeky friends of mine didn't know they'd arrived, or had even never heard of the technology.
Seriously, who would be the kind of company with the capital to afford it, that also has a need for the network? Someone like MCI? One of the cellular providers?
Hey - killer idea - what if PALM bought the network, now that would be HOT. They could replace their current Palm.net offering (slow, expensive) with a high speed, always on offering for the same amount of money, and also tie you into a Palm device at the same time. In fact, the more I think about it, the more it sounds like a damn fine idea! What is a network like Ricochet worth?
Looks like all the assets are for sale, who knows maybe one of the big boyz will snap it up and keep it running with their own people. Sorry to see more job losses in this battered sector.
Metricom is having an auction of everything they own, including their 15 wired cities and patents. Presumably a company could come in and get the whole shebang for a relatively cheap price.
They currently have 50,000 customers, most of which are at high-speed.
Are they losing money every month? If so, WHY? If not, why couldn't a company come in, buy their assets from auction, and start making money?
Seems like you'd be buying a "ready-made" business, filling a need (until 3G becomes wide spread, anyway). You wouldn't have the debt that buried Metricom.
So any Metricom employees care to explain what went wrong?
"And like that
Around a mile or more, depending on obstructions. See my other reply in this thread.
I probably worded the part about cell phones badly, but I believe if you reread the sentence you would still see what I meant: cell phone companies sell phones for a high price normally, but lower the price if you pay for service. Metricom doesn't do this. They don't offer the modems for full price. They offer the modems for a discounted price, assuming you will pay for service later. This is a much bigger risk because the modems are actually useful without service, while cell phone carriers know you can't really do anything until you come crawling to them for cell service.
The beef I have with Metricom is this:
a) I buy two modems
b) They work on their own just fine in non-Metricom territory.
c) They fail to operate in Metricom territory.
I don't even live in Metricom territory, but I am just close enough to a city that _is_ covered and so I am affected. If the Fry's I had purchased the modems from was just a few more miles away, I probably wouldn't have needed to write that web page.
I know Metricom has a business to run, but there are better ways to handle these situations. First of all, they could have just stopped building modems with peer-to-peer support (it was definitely an engineering decision to include it, not a management one). Instead, they try to block it via their network nameserver. As it stands, it almost looks like Metricom is sabotaging nearby P2P networks. It works fine in one area, but not another. Perhaps I should have built my own nameserver system for my modems to use. But what if Metricom subscribers near me started using my nameserver instead of Metricom's? Ick, what a situation that would be. And then who is right?
It's a range/speed tradeoff. Ricochet modems have been known to operate at least a mile in most cases. My own tests prove this true, and I can't get near that range with my 802.11 cards.
I've also heard stories (from Metricom representatives before they went anti-P2P) of cases where people have achieved up to 10 miles in areas with no obstructions; ie, when used over water, plains, or to link two tall buildings.
-Justin
They sucked anyway.
'course, if they are truly going to pack up and go home, maybe it's time to head to Fry's and stock up?
You mean "ricochet" won't bounce back this time?
* rimshot *
Lucky for me, there's no "that joke should be taken out back and shot repeatedly in the head until it screams and dies and then shot some more" moderation choice.
:-D
---
The big problem with Ricochet was the coverage area. I spend almost enough time in silicon valley to make it worthwhile. But I'm not too keen on spending $70 a month for a service I can't use arround my home in Boston. If I lived in Palo Alto I would not be too happy paying that amount for a system I can't make use of when I am on the road.
If every airport, starbucks and business class hotel in the US deployed 802.11B I suspect there would be practically no need for 3G, Ricochet or the rest.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
From the About page:
Ricochet at 128 kbps is available in Atlanta, Baltimore, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis St. Paul, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego and San Francisco and 15 airports nationwide. These areas join the Washington DC and Seattle 28.8 kbps service areas, allowing Ricochet users to take advantage of the freedom of wireless mobility on a nationwide basis. Coverage will continue expanding and is targeted to reach 46 markets in 2001.
It's always sad to take a look at the mission statements of bankrupt companies, they always have such big, unfulfilled dreams, and they almost never bother to change the About page even after they go under. It's like looking through old photographs of Russia's plans to go to the moon.
Microsoft hasn't gotten around to changing it's page yet. They never do. Again, it's sad.
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
C'mon, moderators - this is actually funny and on subject (albeit it lightly)...