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Aerie Reviving Ricochet Network

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the wireless-doesnt-want-to-go-on-the-cart dept.

lemmett writes: "It looks like Denver's Aerie Networks is stepping up to the plate and trying to make money with the Ricochet network. We'll see if their new business plan works any better than Metricom's did. From the article: 'Reducing both network and marketing costs and acquiring hundreds of millions of dollars in assets for a song means Aerie can offer cheaper service, which it plans to sell for $39 to $49 a month, according to Aaronson. If Metricom's strategy was to focus on high-end mobile users, Aerie's will be to provide commodity broadband to the many places DSL and cable modems don't tread.'"

1 of 70 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Perhaps this is because I'm not a business grad by bourne · · Score: 3, Informative

    Not necessarily - if the previous guy went bust financing the build-out, which you then inherit for a song, then you are in a better position than they were

    Also, by lowering the price point, they can sell more units. If you sell to three people for $40/month where the previous guys only sold to one person at $75/month, you're making more money. And the $30-$40 price point is the sweet spot for high-speed Internet access, as shown by cable.

    Which leads to the real question - what's the bandwidth on this, and how does it scale as you add users? Since it's 7 nodes per square mile, presumably that's all the density you need to scale to, but I didn't catch the bandwidth in the article... it said 128 Kbps minimum, but didn't say what it scaled up to...