Terabeam has sold its Ricochet Networks business in Denver to Civitas Wireless Solutions, a company formed by Judi Evans, who served as Ricochet's president since 2005. Ricochet has been around since 1994, when it launched a proprietary fixed wireless service in 21 major U.S. cities but subsequently filed for bankruptcy in 2001. The company went through a slew of owners until Terabeam bought the company in 2004.
Ricochet had recently expanded into municipal wireless projects, having announced a muni-WiFi project with the City and County of Denver [1]. Evans told FierceBroadbandWireless that Civitas will continue operating the Ricochet network, which offers low-speed mobile Internet access to some 6,000 users, and use its expertise in running the network to branch out into the municipal wireless market. Ricochet actually owns a significant amount of intellectual property that is critical in terms of operational support and engineering know-how, noted Scott Zumbahlen, vice president of marketing with Civitas.
Civatas plans to target municipalities as customers by either serving as the managed service provider or as the anchor tenant with a traditional subscriber base. "We're interested in the new broadband build, and we have a lot of expertise in terms of call centers, OSS, BSS and the NOC," Zumbahlen said. "There are a lot of municipalities that work with system integrators, but these organizations are looking for someone to manage it. There is a great market opportunity for that."
For more about Civitas' acquisition of Ricochet in Denver:
- read this release [2]
Links:
[1] http://www.fiercebroadbandwireless.com/story/ricochet-moving-into-wifi-muni-wireless/2007-04-09
[2] http://www.terabeam.com/news/pressreleases/pr-20070806-ricochet.php