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IP: Metricom's failure, new technology, etc....
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2001 13:56:55 -0500
To: dave () farber net Subject: Metricom's failure, new technology, etc.... Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2001 09:03:56 -0500 From: "Mike O'Dell" <mo () ccr org> Scale is important, or at least the customers told Metricom that. Time and again, customers told Metricom that pervasiveness of service was a critical buying decision, hence the interest in doing a large roll-out. the larger footprint also means you have more potential customers to sell to. My take on the Metricom problem is that it was a classic geek failure. the technology was great, and the ops planning and execution was pretty good, too, given all the challenges. the problem is that Metricom would have trouble giving away gold bricks on a streetcorner. they never figured out how to sell the service, and then, when they announced Ricochet-II, they tried a channel model which would normally have improved matters a great deal. the rub, however, was that the channel parteners they teamed with didn't know anymore about selling the service than Metricom did. folks talked a good story and were probably quite earnest in their interest, but the collective clue density on the business development side of Metricom and its channel partners was "insufficient to support Human life". Metricom was never about "Internet Time" - they struggled for quite a while. Metricom's problems were the same that every company faces that has a real product: how do we get to the people who want and need the product? The Metricom network architecture was extremely compelling and, i think, one of the few that ultimately makes sense. the radios were quite good given the technology they had to work with and the system constraints. Oh well. -mo
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