A nice article on MCOM in Forbes today:
Ricochet Hits Mark For Small Businesses On The Go
Kevin Ferguson, Forbes.com, 11.08.00, 12:01 AM ET
NEW YORK - As recently as this summer, Metricom's Ricochet, a
high-speed wireless data network, drew shrugs from industry analysts.
Now it's getting rave reviews from small businesses.
The service, which offers always-on Internet access at speeds of at least
128Kbps, is available in 11 markets, including Manhattan, which was
added late last month. Two of those markets, Seattle and Washington,
D.C., are being upgraded to 128Kbps from the service's older 28.8Kbps
net work.
"The days of sitting in the office doing my work are gone. I take my office
with me," crows San Diego, Calif., real estate broker Dee Dee McGann of
Landmark Realty. McGann, who pays Tampa, Fla.-based Internet service
provider (ISP) Wireless WebConnect $75 a month for the service, uses
Ricochet to access real estate and tax databases from the road. Such
access boosts her sales by saving her trips back to the office.
To be fair, McGann is still only one of 30,000 to 45,000 subscribers
expected to use Ricochet by the end of the year. Early attempts by
Metricom (nasdaq: MCOM) to juggle marketing and product development
proved too much for it to handle. And Metricom posted a whopping
third-quarter loss of $54.5 million in October, or $1.77 per share, on
revenue of only $3.9 million, as it continued to build its network.
But the impact of $600 million in funding--$300 million each from Vulcan
Ventures and WorldCom (nasdaq: WCOM)--will have a noticeable impact
on Metricom's subscriber base as early as next spring, says David
Chamberlain, senior analyst with Probe Research of Cedar Mills, N.J.
Chamberlain, who previously offered blistering appraisals of Metricom's
business strategy, now says Ricochet has a good chance of succeeding.
"The company had disappointed me time and again. They were simply
never able to scale up their operations. By unloading all those things that
prevented them from scaling--specifically, tech support and sales--they're
well positioned."
Chamberlain is not only referring to the $600 million investment, but also
Metricom's decision to sell its services through WorldCom and through
ISPs GoAmerica (nasdaq: GOAM), Wireless WebConnect and Juno
Online Services (nasdaq: JWEB). Hackensack, N.J.-based GoAmerica is
the most recent ISP to offer Ricochet, adding the service in nine
metropolitan markets just three weeks ago.
Ricochet seems particularly useful to small businesses whose work can't
always be confined to small screens offered on cell phones and personal
digital assistants (although Ricochet modems are now available for
PDAs). "Ricochet is fast enough for virtually everything I do," says C.
Antonio Romero, part owner of CultureKiosque.com, a Web-based
magazine published from Paris. "On the other hand, the limited Internet
access that I could get over a cell phone is of virtually no value to me. At
most, I could see a critical e-mail and make a cell phone call to respond.
Other than that, what can I do--squint at movie listings and sports scores?
Day trade? For this I pay how much?" Romero expects to subscribe to
Ricochet service in January.
Bryan Thatcher, chief executive officer of FuseBox, a Web site design firm
in New York, is similarly impressed. "We have four sales reps. With this
they can tap into the Internet and show products to potential clients," he
says. Ricochet is not needed by all of FuseBox's 55 employees, he notes.
Other FuseBox employees make do with two-way pagers and wireless
PDAs.
To date, Ricochet customers tend to be lone wolves, individual
subscribers who just happen to work for a small business. But that is
likely to change, says Metricom, and multiple-user subscriptions from
companies like FuseBox will become commonplace. "I think you'll see
more and more corporate buys as the subscriber base increases,"
predicts Metricom Chairman Timothy Dreisbach.
How far might Ricochet fly in the long term? Wireless data networks under
construction that might compete with Metricom--those being built by AT&T
Wireless (nyse: AWE), Verizon Communications (nyse: VZ) and Sprint
PCS (nyse: PCS)--are still years away from completion. Industry analysts
say they're unsure how the market will look in three or four years. And
Dreisbach won't publicly hazard a guess, repeating only marginally useful
statistics that Metricom's expanding wireless network will be available to
100 million people in another year or so. In the short term, though,
Ricochet is flying. |
