Ricochet (Internet service)

[4] Ricochet was reportedly officially utilized in the immediate disaster recovery situation of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, partially operated by former employees as volunteers, when even cell phone networks were overloaded.

[5] After bankruptcy, in November 2001, Aerie Networks, a Denver-based broadband firm, purchased the assets of the company at a liquidation sale.

In the meantime, wireless data services carried over the cellular telephone network had become more popular, making the value of Ricochet technology unclear.

The wireless ISP service was an outgrowth of technology Metricom had developed to facilitate remote meter reading for utility companies.

As a result, a significant number of users in the Ricochet service area adopted it as their primary home Internet connection.

It was possible to use specially adapted dialup modems over cellular connections, but this was slow (typically topping out at 9.6 kbit/s), expensive (per-minute charges applied), and often unreliable.

The consumer equipment uses license-free 1 W 900 MHz FHSS encrypted radio modems which respond to standard Hayes "AT" commands.

(A third option, the licensed 2.3 GHz WCS band, was used only in heavily loaded parts of the network and is seldom mentioned in literature).