Paul Baran, the author of On Distributed Communications, and, some argue, the author of the Internet, started Metricom as a package switched, two-way wireless data company to help the Utility Industry better manage the electrical grid. He and his co-founder, Steve Millard, hired a little known executive out of Zenith Data Systems, Robert Dilworth, to run the company. During the first few years of Mr. Dilworth's tenure as CEO a technology team was assembled that was the most talented packet switched wireless data team in the world. Motorola, Erickson, Bell Labs, Xerox Park, Bell South, IBM...all marveled at the brilliance of the Metricom technology team. They accomplished the impossible.

Soon, however, management recognized that the Utility Industry was a tough group with whom to do business...they took forever to make decisions. Management and the Board made the decision to use the core technology of Metricom as a foundation for a wireless data service that could be sold to the public on a subscription basis...much like the cellular companies were selling voice service to customers.

Within months of this strategic redirection of Metricom, the company was a Wall Street favorite. Paul Allen and Microsoft saw Metricom's technology as a way to provide wireless Internet access to the growing numbers of people who, in 1994, were discovering the World Wide Web. The Metricom team designed and built portable modems; they designed and built pole top radios; they designed and built wired access points; they obtained permissions from cities and counties to hang radios on street lights; they built a data operations center in Texas; they set up product distribution channels for their Ricochet consumer product; they developed print, television and radio advertising campaigns; and, they lit up Ricochet service in the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Los Angeles, New York, Washington D.C.

Paul Allen bought control of the company and began to build out service in the thirty largest metropolitan areas in the United States. Mr. Allen and MCI-Worldcom invested $600 million in this build-out and the public contributed another $1 billion in the form of Junk Bonds. The market value of Metricom reached $10 billion.
In 2002 Metricom went bankrupt.

Executives of the Company provide perceptive and candid reasons for the spectacular success of this pioneer in wireless data and for its equally spectacular demise. There is little consensus among these executives; but, there is great thoughtfulness as to how this all happened.

To view an excerpt of the Metricom video case study, Click Here.