Metricom, Inc. (NASDAQ: MCOM), leading provider of mobile data networking and technology, today announced additional markets planned for its Ricochet 128 kbps service. Right-of-way efforts have now expanded and are currently underway in nine additional metropolitan areas including Baltimore, Boston, Denver, Detroit, Kansas City, Miami, Minneapolis, St. Louis, and Salt Lake City. These nine metros will join the initial dozen markets previously announced as part of Ricochet 128 kbps mobile data access expansion, which is ultimately expected to include additional markets and cover 100 million people by mid-2001.
"Our goal is to provide mobile workers the freedom to work away from their office and maintain or increase productivity with high-speed access to the information they need to do their job," said Lee Gopadze, Senior Vice President of Right-of-way and Government Affairs. "We achieve part of this goal by selecting markets that fit the mobile professional demographics, and obtaining the Right-of-way to hang our infrastructure in areas that best serve their need to be productive from wherever they need to work - from client sites, at home, in the field, etc."
Right-of-way is the first step to bringing Ricochet to a local market. Once permission from each municipality in a targeted service area has been granted, Metricom conducts local Radio Frequency engineering to guide the installation of network equipment. When an entire market is ready for deployment, installing Ricochet equipment in each community is simple and requires no trenching or major disturbance to the city. Metricom's network infrastructure includes small micro cell radios attached to streetlight and utility poles as well as Wired Access Points that are located in buildings and serve to connect the wireless networks to a wired backbone network and the Internet.
Ricochet offers a mobile data solution that helps users replicate their office computing experience, accessing online company resources as well as the Internet from literally anywhere in coverage areas without the confines of an office or wall jack. Ricochet is positioned to capture a significant share of the growing mobile professional market with the fastest data connection speeds, "always-on" connections, flat-rate "all-you-can-use" pricing, no metered roaming fees, and true mobility to 70 mph. These benefits are a result of the Ricochet architecture, which is based on a digital packet-switched network employing spread-spectrum radio frequency transmission and standard Internet protocol (IP).
These nine markets join the previously announced Ricochet target service areas including: Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Washington, DC.
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