A friend has Ricochet as his only Internet connection, and uses his
modems only for BBSing. He likes the capability to be always on-line,
quite a lot (It was one of the major selling points for him, and it's
been attracting MY attention - no more 20-minutes of idle & you're
kicked off. Just plain "unlimited" service, at a fairly affordable
cost. His mail server snags his mail almost the instant it's sent to
him...)
Only 28.8k on his modem (And you have to rent/buy the Ricochet Modem,
of course) - The capability to be always on-line is pretty nice. I
think you cannot get "connect" when moving at high speeds (> 20 MPH or
so?) IIRC, but park your car & you're connected quickly... (Heh. If
only Cell Phones worked the same way!) I think a faster {33.6} modem's
coming out? And I know I've seen a demo or mockup (or something!) of a
much smaller Ricochet Modem than he has... www.ricochet.com, I think?
Also, on "business-oriented use" of Amateur Radio, my understanding is
that such calls or e-mail as, say, contacting the wife/girlfriend to
tell her "I'll be working late, but will be home at 8 PM or so", are
considered "Personal Use" & OK for the amateur radio bands; No
receiving mass orders for your company's products, obviously! The
policy sounded pretty reasonable last I read it (I think there should be
a copy at ?www.ars.org? or fcc.gov anyways of the policy interpretation
details!)
Mark Willis
Jeremy Lemieux wrote:
>
> >> Ricochet... The basic model rental price is right, and they offer flat-rate
> >> internet service @ 29.95/mo. Great, except that the coverage is limited as
> >> of now.
> >
> >Where they have service, it's great. I use one in the SF Bay Area all of
> >the time with good success. There are some places where either the net or
> >the reception is worse than others and thus transfer rates are low, but
> >the packets still get through.
>
> Yeah, I've heard nothing but good reports about Ricochet from people in DC
> and SF, haven't heard much from Seattle.
>
> Do you (or does anyone else) know what the situation is with the covered
> airports? Is there a proprietary login that has to be used in those
> locations? The website suggests not, but is pretty vague.
>
> And what about the universities? Do you have to have a university-supplied
> account, or can you stop by as an outsider and hook up?
>
> If it is in fact possible to use the ricochet at these airports and
> universities, the ricochet coverage extends to every region of the country
> (pretty much).
>
> The Univ of Mass was at one time looking at getting a Ricochet tower, but
> dropped it in favor of campus-wide ethernet. At the time, I got a fairly
> extensive batch of knowledge about the technology (as I am part of the
> "Wiring Project" here), but even then, I never saw mention of the above
> "outsider" situation.
>
> >> Amateur (packet) radio...
> >
> >If you're conducting anything business oriented via email, you cannot use
> >packet as it is part of the amateur service.
>
> This is no problem...In my case, at least, it's all personal, and is fine
> under the amateur regulations as far as I can read.
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