The End Of Ricochet?

Rumors, Conspiracies, etc.

from the say-it-ain't-so dept

Here’s an article written by a former Metricom employee saying that the end is very near for Ricochet. Not that this is a huge surprise, but it’s still upsetting (especially since I’m connected right now thanks to my ricochet modem). The article is also good in that it does a great job summarizing the mistakes that Metricom made. Of course, most of these mistakes (ridiuclous pricing and marketing strategies) were obvious from the beginning and many people (including me) told them they were making a huge mistake. When I told them (about 2 months before they launched their high speed service), they told me that I didn’t understand the market. This might be true, but it appears they didn’t understand the market much themselves. Anyway, if you want to buy a piece of the Metricom network for yourselves head on over to their auction. There’s still a tiny chance that some wonderful, brilliant, visionary company will come along and buy them out completely and keep things running while marketing it correctly. Unfortunately, that doesn’t look likely. Update: The official story is that they’ll be shutting down the network next Wednesday. What a waste of a really great service.