Rtev... Just from memory, Allen has been in metricom for quite a while. In the past he has invested in a lot of companies that didn't really pay off (some did like AOL but he got out too early) - metricom was one that never did much.
Until the internet, or maybe vulcan has a new management team I'm not sure, but prior to this year I considered Allen to be a pretty average venture capitalist... but now, he's awesome. I have no idea what changed.
Anyway back to metricom... we have had ricochet in Silicon Valley for a long time. Its ok, a fee-based service for wireless data connections. The problem is the cell-phone world is now providing internet access whereas in the past they did not. Qcom is one of those, you can get to the internet with a PDA. Metricom probably won't be able to compete with these giants for general access, they will need to rewrite their business plan for a niche product or something. Anyway look into metricom in detail before you jump in, is my point.
Edit... when I wrote this, I wasn't aware of the wcom connection... they already are using another wireless protocol I thought, metricom is totally separate, hmmmm, ok there is more to this than meets the eye, I may have misspoke (unbelievable I know) |
