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Technology Stocks : METRICOM - Wireless Data Communications -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ynot who wrote (1182)	7/7/1999 1:12:00 PM
From: AJ Berger	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3376

Uptick is from a 1pm MarketWatch Story Watch out for the Ricochet See the guy at Starbucks with the laptop and what looks like an antenna attached to it? He's on the Internet, via wireless connection, and one of the ways to get there is through old fashioned radio waves. A service like Ricochet is available in a handful of major markets. A series of signal grabbing antennas scattered throughout a metropolitan area picks up what he's sending and moves it out onto the Net. Ricochet is a product of Metricom Inc. (MCOM: news, msgs) and it's stock has suddenly jumped to life after word leaked that MCI WorldCom (WCOM: news, msgs) and Paul Allen's Vulcan Ventures invested $600 million in the company. At Interactive Week Online, Larry Barrett writes that the investments don't leave much left for the public to feast on. The deal gives Vulcan 49 percent ownership and WorldCom 38 percent. But that leaves 13 percent of the stock still out there, and for those who own it, or get a chance to buy it, they're looking at a money losing company on a fast track growth course that's now got the deep pocket backing of WorldCom. Barrett says it's just another value added service for WorldCom to polish up and offer to its customers. For Metricom, Ricochet is the way of the future. It plans to offer a faster wireless service in 12 major cities soon, and by mid-2001 Metricom plans to have added 50 metropolitan areas to its Ricochet coverage. Ricochet subscriptions grew 37 percent last year and among its biggest customers are IBM (IBM: news, msgs), Xerox (XRX: news, msgs) and the Los Angeles Police Department.