ATLANTA TECH WEDNESDAY • August 2, 2000
Ta-da! Laptops without wires
Online and unplugged: New service from Metricom links laptops inside I-285 to the Internet via transmitters.
Michael E. Kanell - Staff
Wednesday, August 2, 2000
The office increasingly is everywhere.
But to really take work on the road, you need a wireless connection as fast as the wired service you have in the office. So far, in Atlanta, nobody has offered that.
Now comes Ricochet, a service launched in Atlanta this week by Metricom, a California-based company that is building a national wireless network.
Using a network of shoe-box sized transmitters fastened to telephone poles all over close-in metro Atlanta, Ricochet claims it can give users of laptops and other computers a fast, wireless connection to the Internet.
Marketed in metro Atlanta by Juno and Wireless Web Connect, it offers one more way for millions of people to keep tethered to work, staying more productive as they cart the office home, carry it on the road or pack it alongside swim gear for vacation.
The latest entry into companies trying to tap into a market potentially worth billions of dollars, Metricom is an ambitious, well-financed operation with backing from the likes of WorldCom and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.
So far the market has been dominated by wireless telephone companies like Sprint, Nextel and Southern LINC, which offer Internet access on handsets or through the phone to a laptop.
Other devices, including personal digital assistants like the Palm Pilot and interactive pagers like those from BellSouth, now also offer on-the-move e-mail and --- in some models --- Web access as well.
They can be powerful tools. But each has weaknesses, too. A phone's tiny screen, for example, mandates a pared-down Internet experience. A PDA screen is a little better, but it's not made for writing in-depth reports.
While the technology is improving, all are still molasses slow compared with the high-speed connections used in many offices. And a user generally pays by the minute.
But Ricochet is a different approach.
Executive and PresideChairman, Chief nt Timothy Dreisbach said Metricom's market is the growing number of mobile workers who want full, fast, computer access to the Internet wirelessly.
"What we are doing is giving people --- the mobile professional --- the freedom to be outside the office and access all the information they have in their office."
Metricom is 15 years old and has been operating a lower-speed version of its network in San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C.
It must install new equipment to operate the higher-speed version, so it's going into new markets first. First was San Diego, July 21. This week, it is Atlanta.
Metricom has placed about 2,700 small transmitters on phone poles throughout metro Atlanta, covering most of the area within I-285. Each takes less than 10 minutes to install.
The transmitters are not connected to wires. Instead, the modem on your laptop finds the closest transmitter and links up via a wireless signal. Messages from your laptop are then divided into packets of data and sent. Those data packets will be shuffled from one transmitter to another, taking a variety of routes toward their intended destination. Each will contain an address, which will tell the system where it should go so that the pieces can be reassembled in the right order at the other end.
Metricom has placed about 2,700 small transmitters on phone poles throughout metro Atlanta, covering most of the area within I-285. Each takes less than 10 minutes to install.
It is, in short, the same technology protocol used in the Internet itself.
Metricom, which has only about 10 employees in its Marietta office, put up the equipment here using scores of contractors. The network itself is monitored from Plano, Texas, where technicians are supposed to identify at once any transmitter that goes haywire, then have the local folks take care of problems.
Metricom's service has some potential weaknesses, too. It is not everywhere, and if you take your laptop outside the range of the transmitters, you lose your connection.
And just calling it "high-speed" doesn't make it equal to the speediest of the speedy. It is a bit slower than high-speed lines like a T-1 that deliver data to many offices at 1.5 megabytes per second. But it's a whole bunch faster than a dial-up modem.
The company guarantees transmission speeds of 128,000 bits per second, but says the network is capable of transmitting data at 1 Mb per second. That's compared to dial-up modem speeds of 56,000 bits per second.
At about $75 a month, it's not a service for the average consumer. But then, the target market is made of the same people likely to be working on laptops or considering buying other kinds of wireless Net access.
Metricom cites estimates by the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce that the area is now home to about 220,000 high-tech employees. Then there are tens of thousands of professionals, from chief executives to lawyers, who rely on e-mail.
Despite that seeming dependence on the money-centric technology sector of metro Atlanta's Northside, Metricom says its service will not be limited to high-income areas. After all, there are technicians of various kinds --- from meter readers to tow truck mechanics --- who might be more productive with continual access to messages.
The company has already run ads in national newspapers touting itself and Ricochet. In Atlanta this week Metricom will be running messages on radio, billboards and signs on buses. The companies that will actually sell the service are also expected to start advertising.
ATLANTA TECH: WEDNESDAY FOCUS on TECHNOLOGY and TELECOMMUNICATIONS in METRO ATLANTA
BEAM IT UP
How Metricom's fast wireless works:
1. The laptop's modem finds the nearest Ricochet transmitter and beams up a wireless signal.
2. The message from the laptop is divided into packets of data, each with an address for its destination.
3. The pieces are shuffled from one transmitter to another until they reach a router that takes them into the land-line network.
4. The packets are reassembled in the right order at the other end.
/ TROY OXFORD / Staff |
