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To: Whatnot who wrote (129210)	5/23/2003 9:12:18 AM
From: Dexter Lives On	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

Funny that you should bring up Ricochet. It died, precisely because it tried to offer ubiquitous service with a proprietary technology... Sound familiar?!

To: Whatnot who wrote (129210)	5/23/2003 10:00:42 AM
From: Stock Farmer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 152472

Whatnot - strange. You seem to be mixing up the operators with the equipment providers while discussing an investment in the platform technology. Not wise, IMHO. Like confusing Vesper with CDMA. Operators like Ricochet will come and go. Like eToys was an "Internet" business and it vanished like most of the folks who tried to find a business model based on the Internet. That doesn't mean that the Internet failed to achieve widespread technological adoption. Same, I think, with WiFi. The technology is a winner. It just hasn't won yet. How will it end up being used? Your guess is as good as mine. But for now, there is sufficient functional utility being provided that large carriers can afford to GIVE IT AWAY as a loss leader in order to attract customers to other services. When you see this happening, on a broad basis - not just carriers, but airports, cafes, cities, corporations... you know that there is MASSIVE utility to the fundamental underlying capability that the technology is bringing to fruition. Whether there is a business model that will spring up to capture and exploit this utility directly is irrelevant. There are already enough business models that are being successfully augmented by the raw capability to create critical mass that drives innovation and technological advancement. Sooner or later a sufficiently robust business model will arise, if only through a Darwinian process of trial and error. I suspect the winning model is already operational, just not on a large scale. It would not also surprise me if the operators of the model don't know what they have at this time. Like an efficient online marketplace for pez dispenser collectors barely dreamed of becoming eBay. At its outset, there wasn't really a very good Internet business model that made anybody any money either. Most people couldn't see it anyway. And yet the Internet is pervasive and the technology is unassailably integrated into the very fabric of society. It's more important to look at the signs of utility than it is for evidence that utility is being successfully exploited. In the case of Internet, the fact that people were tripping over themselves to provide stuff for free (which is the quintessential lousy business model) spoke of latent utility. Linux showed the same promise. Same with WiFi. I don't suggest rushing out and investing in cockamamy schemes to make money delivering WiFi voice-mail to teenagers, for example. I suggest investing in fundamental underlying technology providers. You aren't suggesting that folks betting on CDMA should be investing in Verizon. Or Vesper. Why would you argue that a successful bet on WiFi needs to be placed on an operator? John