By the time this article got forwarded to me, the URL for the original article was gone, but the title's pretty indicative :-) www.metricom.com has a "goodbye" page, with pointers to the bankruptcy auction for interested bidders. A google search reveals that back in September, Metricom turned down Aerie's offer for $20M (oops), and also that Aerie had been planning to spend $3.5B to build a 20000 mile fiber backbone for the ISP they wanted to be.
From: "Steve Stroh" <steve@strohpub.com> To: "Dewayne Hendricks" <dewayne@warpspeed.com> Subject: Metricom assets sold for $8.25 million Date: Fri, 2 Nov 2001 14:36:19 -0800 MIME-Version: 1.0
Dewayne:
What's not mentioned in this article: * What Aerie bought was mostly intellectual property - the software and designs for the radios, patents, etc.
* Unclear is if Aerie bought the existing inventory. Apparently there are lots of radios already manufactured, but not deployed, sitting in storage. * Metricom's WCS spectrum is not included in the sale to Aerie (apparently the asset managers feel that it will fetch considerably as much as $50M - sometime). Unlikely given AT&T Wireless Services' decision to junk their Fixed Wireless System which will free up more WCS spectrum.
* None of the physical assets of the network are included in this sale, including poletop radios, wired access points, network operation center, etc. All of that was "abandoned in place" to free Metricom of the liability of back rent, lease payments, and other liabilities.
* Rights Of Way were similarly abandoned...
It'll be interesting to watch!
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