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Like a hobo who turns out to have been an important folkartist, Ricochet has been better appreciated after itsdemise. The service, which offered mobile wirelessInternet access at 128 kb/s, had its plug pulled inAugust 2001 after its owner, Metricom Inc., in San Jose,

Calif., spent a US $1.1 billion investment pool building andupgrading service in 21 U.S. metropolitan areas at a furious pace.

The dénouement to the Ricochet story has yet to be written.Aerie Networks Inc., Denver, Colo., purchased Metricom’sremaining assets in November and plans to restore the serv-ice to five cities this year.

Meanwhile, Ricochet’s far-better-than-narrowband mobilecapability—fast enough to listen to a Web-based radiostation or to make an Internet telephone call—remainsa high-water mark in Internet connectivity. Subscriberspaid about $75 per month for unlimited service.

Internet access is typically much slower thanRicochet’s 128 kb/s. Outside the office, mostusers dial in to a service provider like AOLor Earthlink at a theoretical limit of 56 kb/s. Actual connections are typicallyno higher than about 45 kb/s, orbarely one-third of Ricochet’s.

Broadband connections,such as digital subscriber line(DSL) or cable modem service,provide higher data rates, butare tethered. Home-boundusers don’t know what it’s liketo answer e-mail from a movietheatre or a commuter ferry, orbrowse the Web (to quote a Ricochet eulogy in the on-linemagazine Salon) “in the backof a speeding Greyhound bus somewhere along a highway in themiddle of Nebraska and even atop Seattle’s Space Needle.”

For such mobility, the United States will have to wait for 3G-cellular services from the likes of Verizon Communications Inc.,New York City, and Sprint PCS, Overland Park, Kan. Even then,speeds will be lower and prices higher. Faster 802.11-based net-works are emerging, but only at access “hot spots”—places like

hotel lobbies, cafes, and airports. That’s nice for looking up a bankbalance while sipping a cup of coffee, but it’s not, as another for-mer Ricochet user lamented, the same as being able to find a loca-tion with a Mapquest search from the side of a road.

Regulated but unlicensed

Ricochet users plugged a $100 custom modem into their laptopsto communicate with poletop transceivers at 900 MHz, a fre-quency that is regulated but unlicensed and therefore free. Itturned out, though, that putting these access points on everysixth or eighth street lamp in major cities (as many as 15 accesspoints per square kilometer) burned through money distressinglyquickly, especially when added to the costs of getting needed per-mits, licenses, rights-of-way, and utility agreements.

Nor was the infrastructure that supported the transceiverscheap. The units passed packets on to wired access points,

typically placed on building roofs (more than one persquare kilometer). These, in turn, were connected by

standard land-based T1 cabling to one or more network interfacefacilities serving that metropolitan area [see figure]. Overseeing itall was a pair of network operations centers in Texas, one in the Dal-las suburb of Plano and the other in Houston.

In putting its network together, Metricom was more innova-tive than revolutionary. The company held several patents, butthey were for, essentially, doing standard things especially well. For

R E S O U R C E S

WEBSIGHTS

Was the high-speed mobile access service ahead of itstime—or merely ahead of its marketing?

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Laptop computerwith modem

Street lamptransceiver

Network router

Internet

Wired access point

Ricochet provided Internet access through a 128-kb/s mobile wireless service in 21 U.S.

cities. Laptops needed a custom modem that passed data to a dense network of transceivers

affixed to street lamps and poletops. In turn, the transceivers sent the data to wired access

points built atop buildings and towers, which were connected to a land-based network and,

ultimately, to the Internet.

What Went Wrong at Ricochet?

BY STEVEN M. CHERRYSenior Associate Editor

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example, U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) reg-ulations for spread-spectrum use of the 900-MHz band requirethat at least 25 channels be used; Ricochet used 160, which max-imized packet success rates and limited interference with otherusers. FCC guidelines require that modems cannot tie up a chan-nel for more than 400 ms continuously; Ricochet limited itself to100 ms per transmission. Packets were sent from the poletoptransceivers either directly to a wired access point or to anotherpoletop transceiver, depending on their geographic relationshipand how busy each device was at the moment.

Ricochet began in 1995 with a handful of cities and a speedof 28.8 kb/s. Beginning in 2000, as many as 13 cities had cov-erage at the 128 kb/s rate. At the time the network went dark,there were only 51 000 subscribers nationwide. The com-pany’s annual revenue was about one-fifth what it would havetaken to sustain the business.

Was the price too high, or was it fate?

The Metricom technology was, by all accounts, first-rate. It’stempting, then, to blame the business plan, the marketing strat-egy, or both. Neither case, though, is as easy to make as it seems.

Was the price, usually $75 per month, optimal? Accordingto John Wernke, who was Metricom’s senior vice president ofmarketing and sales, the company held a consumer-only, asopposed to a business-oriented, trial in San Diego offering theservice directly from Metricom at $39 per month for accesslimited to just that city. The result of that test was a tenfoldincrease in subscribers.

But it was too late. At around the same time, the stock priceplunged and the continued existence of the company was in seri-ous doubt. For the marketing team, “2001 was to be our year,”Wernke told IEEE Spectrum. “But we never got the chance.”

Should Ricochet have gone slower? Metricom could havebuilt a handful of cities at a time, conserving its cash. But if it hadtaken that approach, National Semiconductor wouldn’t have builtthe chipset for a smaller, regional provider requiring fewer sets.Nor would Fortune 500 customers have signed up their city-hop-ping executives and salespeople.

Wernke points his finger at another culprit: fate. The eco-nomic downturn of 2000–2001 hit dot-coms and telecom com-panies hardest. Metricom had one foot in each sector. Evenunder its most aggressive business plans, and with no indus-try recession, the company wouldn’t have been cash-positiveuntil late 2002.

“Had we been a year earlier in getting the 128-kb/s servicedone, we would have been at the top of the market as far asaccess to more capital was concerned,” Wernke said. “Had webeen a year later, the capital markets would have been muchmore conservative, and we would have been forced to buildmuch more slowly.”

Life after Ricochet

Where can ex-customers go today? For comparable service,nowhere. Verizon and Sprint will be rolling out their 3G networks,supposed to offer data rates of 144 kb/s (the minimum neededto be considered 3G). Sadly, though, when it comes to data rates,

there’s often a lot more sophistry than speed, according to AlanA. Reiter, president of Wireless Internet & Mobile Computing, aconsulting firm in Chevy Chase, Md.

The advertised 128-kb/s Ricochet data rate was an atypicallyhonest number; users usually got that rate and sometimes a lotmore, as much as 180 kb/s. Reiter contrasted that to the true datarates for Verizon and Sprint, which, he said, will be somewherebetween 20 and 60 kb/s, depending on the balance of band-widths between uploading and downloading. The services willalso charge per minute or per packet, a far cry from Ricochet’sunlimited access.

The good news, Reiter said, is that these carriers haveexpertise in building nationwide wireless networks, billingsystems, installations, and customer support. “And,” he added,“prices can go down.”

Reiter also saw a source of hope in the 802.11 wireless net-working protocol, which operates at rates of up to 11 Mb/s. Heexpects VoiceStream, Bellevue, Wash., to buy bankrupt Mobile-Star Network Corp., Richardson, Texas, a provider of 802.11 serv-ices to airports, cafes, and hotels. He noted that Sprint is one ofthe investors in Boingo Wireless Inc., Santa Monica, Calif., anaggregator of networks like MobileStar’s.

Also promising is 802.11’s capability of being integratedwith cellular access. In January, RF Solutions Inc., in Nor-cross, Ga., announced a chip set that supports both digital cel-lular phones and 802.11 formats. “What we might see,” saidReiter, “would be islands of high-speed [802.11] coverage, twonetworks, and one provider for billing—all on maybe one dualcard in your computer or PDA.”

An aerie for a phoenix

Where can customers go tomorrow? Maybe back to Ricochet.What Aerie Networks bought last fall for a mere $8.8 millionwas the Ricochet name, intellectual property, and warehousedequipment. (The other, “deployed,” assets, such as the poletoptransceivers and wired access points, were “abandoned inplace.” Most are still operational.) Aerie expects to have theRicochet service returned to San Francisco, Los Angeles, andSan Diego over the summer, and to New York City and Wash-ington, D.C., by the end of the year.

Aerie’s coverage will not be as complete as Metricom’s. Itextends into suburbs less and even allows holes within cities. JohnDee, Aerie’s vice president for sales and product management,told Spectrum: “We want to use a high degree of common sense—we need a good footprint, but we see great value in Ricochet as a[fixed-location] access service.” He also expects to see a tiered offer-ing, charging $39–$49 for service in a single metropolitan areaand charging more for access in all other areas.

Meanwhile, Aerie has to make deals with the same munic-ipalities, utilities, and landlords that Metricom did, thoughhopefully not the same deals.

If Aerie’s ultimate goal with Ricochet is similar to its formerowner’s—a national network with 128-kb/s wireless mobile ac-cess or even faster—getting there can be slower. “We have accessto what someone else put a lot of money into,” Dee said, but “Met-ricom needed millions of customers at $75 to be profitable.” •

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