Metricom assets sold for $8.25 million

[Bill Stewart]

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 at strohpub.com>
 >To: "Dewayne Hendricks" <dewayne at 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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