FWD: Internet without Ma Bell

[edgar@spectrx.saigon.com (Edgar W. Swank)]

I seem to remember this subject being discussed here a few months
ago (speculating). Now here's the reality!  This was posted to
a local newsgroup on this BBS.

Here is an article from WiReD magazine, issue 1.6, December 1993 page 28.

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TUNING INTO THE NET
        Data networking is a tiresome topic at best, butmany staid
analysts in the high-tech world perked up and took notice when Microsoft
co-founder Paul Allen recently purchased US $17.5 million worth of stock in
Metricom Inc. based in Los Gatos, California, this networking company
specializes in providing low-cost, high-speed networking services over
unlicensed radio spectrum.
        Analysts call Metricom "daring," "bold," and "innovative."
Why?  It's managed to build a high-bandwidth data service over the
900-MHz band of unlicensed radio spectrum. The cost: just US$9.95 a month
for unlimited, high speed 14.4-Kbps connection or US$2.95 if all you need is a
2400-baud connection so that you can keep track of, say, your network
of coke machines(don't laugh, this is a very real application).  If
you want an ultra-speedy 56-Kbps connectivity(the kind businesses currently
pay hundreds of dollars a month for), it'll cost just US$19.95 a month.
Please go back and read those prices again.  They're not typos.
        Developed for te utility industry, Metricom's technology has
Paul Allen all aflutter because it works like the net does: Hundreds of
independent, intelligent, IP-addressable "nodes" - essentially radios
linking Metricom's network together - are hung all over the place.
Small and inexpensive, these devices can piggyback unobtrusively on
lampposts and buildings, so there's no need to rent or buy real estate for huge
radio towers (competitors like Ram Mobile Data and Ardis use licensed radio
spectrum and large transmission towers).  And Metricom's radio modems, which
mimic regular modems so computers and applications can't tell the difference,
sell for less than US$500 and will more likely than not be miniaturized from
their current size, roughly the heft of a TV remote, to PCMCIA cards,
ideal for all the PDA's we're waiting to buy.
        "It's neighborhood networking," says Paul Allen, an analyst for
Forrester Research of Cambridge, Massachusetts. "This technology has a lot
of potential."
        Flush wit Allen's cash, Metricom plans to extend it's networking
infrastructure from it's base in Silicon Valley to the rest of Northern
California, then throughout the major cities in the United States.

Metricom +1 408 399 8200 -John Battelle

--
edgar@spectrx.saigon.com (Edgar W. Swank)
SPECTROX SYSTEMS +1.408.252.1005  Cupertino, Ca