Ricochet: Vendor Fadeway Leads To Implementer Assay. Interested In Hardware, Anyone?

Speaking of municipal wireless access, I had an interesting email exchange yesterday with Trev Holman, from the City of El Cajon, CA’s Traffic Engineering Department. Below is his initial message to me:

I read your article from 2001 entitled "Wireless network’s fast, on-the-go access makes waves", regarding Metricom and Richochet related to their wireless internet system. I work for the City of El Cajon, CA, which entered an agreement with Metricom and then Richochet to allow them to use our existing street light poles to mount their MCDN Network Microcells. As you are probably aware they are now discontinuing the use of these devices in our area due to poor market response.

I was wondering if you might know whether or not these devices, the MCDN Network Microcells, had any value at all. We were given all of these devices and are probably just going to trash them but didn’t [know] if there might be some interest in parts etc?

Thanks

I’ve heard of folks using Ricochet modems in a peer-to-peer ad hoc fashion, but I haven’t come across any use for the (normally) intermediary microcells. I bet my clever engineering readers could come up with an application (or a few), though! I asked Trev if I could publish his request on Brian’s Brain, and he readily and enthusiastically assented.

I’ll encourage Trev to monitor this blog post for comments; if you’d prefer a more private interchange with him, email me and I’ll subsequently forward your message. I really look forward to reading the output of your brainstorming, and I bet others will be interested as well, so I encourage you to publicly share your thoughts if at all possible.

p.s….and I can’t help but wonder if the city of Mountain View, CA will be emailing me in a few years, looking for folks interested in obsolete pole-mounted Google Wi-Fi access points?