Ricochet 2 is a high speed wireless internet service that offers between 128kbps and 180kbps sustained data rate to mobile users. It is being deployed by MCOM with the help of a $600 million investment by WCOM and Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures.
FWIW, I used Ricochet 1 here in Seattle for about six months in 1998, well after they first rolled it out. Although they claimed 28.8KB speeds, I never got over about 19.2kb even though my (fixed) location allowed me to "see" about a dozen transceivers at close range. So if that's a typical experience, and if the Ricochet 2 claims of speed are similarly inflated compared to real-world experience...
Notes: Ricochet is deployed using hundreds - or even thousands - of small trancievers mounted (and drawing power from) the photocell on top of city streetlights. They pay the host city a lease fee for use of same, and blanket the area with these nano-cells (each one might cover a 10-square-block area, I'd guess). Technology, IIRC, uses the unlicensed (900mhz?) band and uses some sort of spread-spectrum, bursty, packet-optimized transmission scheme (I am very hazy on the details, as should be obvious from the preceeding). The poletop units communicate to the mothership WAP (wired access point) - a big base station connected to the Net at large. From there you're talking straight TCP/IP to the world.
The service was very reliable for me, but it was too expensive and too slow compared to a simple copper pair after 56kb modems became widely available, so I dropped it. Will be interesting to see how the 'high speed' service fares.
Would appreciate it if someone who knows the technical innards of both systems to comment on the similarities and differences, as well as the potential competitive aspects.
-Rose- |
