I ordered Ricochet wireless internet last week -- has anyone tried it? Most of the reviews that I have read were excellent...
Anyway if you haven't heard about it go to
www.ricochet.com
I can't get DSL or cable in my area -- I did a lot of research on these bidirectional satellite companies and all the reviews were horrible (I won't go into details) -- I think there were really only two competitors direcpc.com and echostar I think it was...
Anyway sounds like there's a race (and a very expensive one) by some big players to be the first to market w/ a reliable/useful satellite technology for internet -- I think I remember reading that low earth orbit satellites will be the answer but that will be very expensive to deploy -- I think the way it works now is you just aim your satellite dish at ONE particular satellite in space -- and the pointing process is very delicate -- my guess is that over time the earth and satellite move slightly and you lose the speed that you got initially when you signed up -- and it's very expensive and complicated for a technician to come out and point the thing again -- and sounds like they are overselling bandwidth -- so you may be on a satellite that has a lot of bandwidth and then it fills up... Anyway very few people get the advertised speeds...
Ricochet is land based -- works w/ a network of transmitters on light poles scattered every mile to half mile I think within a city... From what I read, everyone that has tried it loves it, it's much faster than cellular modems or any other technologies -- and many users report speeds faster than advertised. Still not sure exactly of all the specifics of how it works but the website is pretty informative -- looks like a cool technology.
I don't work for them BTW ;) I signed up w/ them through Earthlink -- unfortunately -- their tech support sucks -- but regardless I didn't want to go through Juno because IMHO Juno is just a toy...
Anyway...
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-- TheFLY.net/pete.jpg