Ricochet has gone through more lives than a cat stuck in a rotary press (I'm no Dan Rather): The first city-wide wireless networking system has changed hands yet again, the fourth time in six years, and shut down its San Diego operations in favor of focusing in Denver, where it has 6,000 subscribers. Ricochet's latest move announced today is that the company's parent has sold it to Civitas Wireless, a company founded by Ricochet Wireless's president (since 2005), Judi Evans. She is the president, CEO, and majority owner of the new firm, the press release notes. Ricochet scored a deal with Denver in April that allow it to use its existing right of way to deploy Wi-Fi, WiMax, and other wireless technology. While Ricochet spins this as a deal with the city and county, the government never made such an announcement; the deal was really about using real estate, not about a public/private partnership.

Way, way, way back in 1997, when Paul Allen invested in this little idea about putting high-speed, mobile-enabled wireless networks using unlicensed spectrum across entire cities and in airports, the only problem was that high-speed meant 20 to 30 Kbps (later lifted to 128 Kbps). The unlicensed spectrum in question was 900 MHz, which propagates further, but the Ricochet technology was fairly inefficient and noisy compared to 802.11b, which emerged shortly after Ricochet's launch. The service did work, and was a lifeline for people who needed mobile access and would have spent another $20 to $40 per month for a dedicated phone line at home if they couldn't get broadband. (Read this great user review from about 1998; another by Joel Spolsky of Joel on Software from 2000.)

While Ricochet was mobile (external, battery-powered modem), it was expensive ($80 per month is the rate I'm finding), and started coming into its own just as broadband was hitting double-digit percentages of people's homes, and "56K" modems were becoming popular. If you could get 1 Mbps or faster at home over broadband or even 56K over a $20 per month dial-up service, you didn't need Ricochet. Further, cellular operators had already integrated modem-speed networking into cell phones and PC Cards, offering a taste of mobile networking that was often easier and more ubiquitous than Ricochet.

Metricom was fairly unwieldy. They raised hundreds of millions--including $300m from Allen's Vulcan Ventures and $300m from the late, unlamented WorldCom--and built the network fast. But the technology was out of date by the time it was installed, and the service price too high for casual users, and not useful enough for business travelers. Hot spots started to appear nationwide in 2001, and the combination of broadband, early cell data, Wi-Fi, and early hotspots just pithed Ricochet's potential.

Metricom ultimately filed for bankruptcy in 2001, and its assets were sold for about a penny on the dollar to Aerie Networks ($8.25m) late that year. In summer 2002, Aerie resurrected the network in Denver and later San Diego. Aerie sold Ricochet to EDL Holdings in 2003, which then sold it to YDI Wireless (now Terabeam) in 2004. (YDI took its new name from the acquisition of Terabeam, which itself once had over $500m poured into it, until it was sold to YDI for a tenth that. YDI's business plan has been to buy flagging wireless firms and then bolster their product lines. They also bought Proxim and KarlNet.)

For sheer chutzpah, you just have to love this item in The "About Civitas" section of the press release: "Civitas Wireless Solutions, LLC, d.b.a. Ricochet Networks, is the only Managed Service Provider in the wireless Internet industry with a decade of experience operating large-scale wireless deployments." Well, technically true, but puhhhhhhh-leeeeeeeze. That's only true if you count some of the equipment mounted in Denver as continuous employees of the company.