Not Only Is Ricochet Still Around, But It's Been Sold, Yet Again
from the how-do-they-do-it dept
When Ricochet was launched in the late '90s, its cellular modem service for laptops was pretty unique. However, services from major mobile operators quickly passed it in terms of data speeds, coverage and price, and Metricom, the company behind Ricochet, eventually went bankrupt in 2001. Since then, it's traded hands several times, but its owners have never had much success with it -- which is hardly surprising, again, given the way it's been surpassed in nearly every aspect by other mobile broadband services, as well as the proliferation of WiFi hotspots. The surprising part is that Ricochet still exists at all, but it does, and -- brace yourself -- it's been sold again. It looks like the company only offers low-speed mobile service in the Denver area at this point, but it appears to be trying to expand into the WiFi market as well. We would say that it's probably not long for this world since it still doesn't offer much (if any) benefit over other services, but with the way it's managed to bounce around and stay afloat, perhaps we shouldn't.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
It's not the network, it's the concepts.
Terabeam (which owns Proxim and owned Ricochet) just (july 2) sold two patents to undisclosed purchasers. I'm curious which ones they were, and who they went to.
Ricochet's original brain trust left and founded Airespace, which got eaten by Cisco and became the now-widely-deployed Cisco 1500 outdoor mesh accesspoint. Put a Cisco 1500 next to a second-generation Ricochet network radio, and you can't tell the difference. They're literally built into the same aluminum housing.
Their intellectual property is going places, even if the original network isn't.
Personally, I'm interested in using the still-installed poletops as a modest-speed transport network for amateur radio experimentation, among other things.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
u are a geek
[ link to this | view in thread ]
The fact that the company is still being bounced around is somewhat interesting, although, how fun would it be to play with some poletops as "Myself" suggested?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
The tech is still applicable to unlicensed chunks
Someone smart who applied the same techniques to the now-saturated 2.4Ghz band would have themselves a very useful product...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
IRC, one of the reasons Ricochet is still ...
Chris.
[ link to this | view in thread ]