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Ricochet was one of the pioneering wireless Internet access services in the United States, before Wi-Fi, 3G, and other technologies were available to the general public. It was developed and first offered by Metricom Incorporated, which shut down in 2001. The service was originally known as the Micro Cellular Data Network, or MCDN, gaining the Ricochet name when opened to public use. ==History== Metricom was founded in 1985, initially selling radios to electric, gas, oil, and water industrial customers. One of its founders was Paul Baran. Paul Allen took a controlling stake in Metricom in 1997. Service began in 1994 in Cupertino, California, and was quickly deployed throughout Silicon Valley (the northern part of Santa Clara Valley) by 1995, the rest of the San Francisco Bay Area by 1996, and to other cities throughout the end of the 1990s. By this time, the original network had been upgraded, via firmware improvements, to almost twice its original throughput, and was operating at roughly the speed of a 56 kbit/s dialup modem; in addition, Ricochet introduced a higher-speed (nominally 128 kbit/s, in practice often faster) service in 1999; monthly fees for this service were more than double those for the original service. At its height, in early 2001, Ricochet service was available in Atlanta, Baltimore, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis, New York City and surrounding New Jersey, Philadelphia, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Phoenix, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. Over 51,000 subscribers paid for the service. In July 2001, however, Ricochet's owner, Metricom, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and shut down its service. Like many companies during the dot-com boom, Metricom had spent more money than it took in and concentrated on a nationwide rollout and marketing instead of developing select markets.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url= http://ricochet.us/ )〕 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.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Ricochet 128kbps Wireless Flat-Rate Internet )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ricochet (Internet service)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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