Ricochet has been bought by YDI Wireless. C/Net has the poop on the $3.5 million deal.
Denver-based Ricochet, one of the first “city-cloud” providers used 2.4 GHz networking to link their access points on lamposts. End users could receive 128Kbps using a small, portable modem that worked on the unlicensed 900 Mhz band. It’s available in San Diego and Denver, but was once available in more than a dozen metropolitan areas.
YDI, a provider of wireless-infrastructure products, hopes to relaunch the service in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and the other major cities where the ISP used to operate. The company plans to retain the name “Ricochet” for the service.“Although Ricochet has generally operated as a service provider, this is a great match for YDI,” Robert Fitzgerald, YDI’s chief executive, said in a statement. “With the purchase of Ricochet, YDI further expands the breadth of its product offering with robust mesh technology products operating in the 2.4GHz and 900MHz frequencies.”
YDI’s customers had been asking for products in the low-frequency range, which allows wireless connections to pass through walls and other obstacles. The company had been offering only high-frequency, or line-of-sight wireless offerings. The Ricochet deal gives YDI an Internet service option; the company had previously only been a product vendor.
