What antenna is this on our street lights?

[navychop]

Several of our street lights have this antenna & box affixed to them. Anybody know what they are, or are used for? I seem to remember some wireless data service from many years back expanding into metro areas before going bust- leftovers from them? From the name on the boxes, it's Metricom, who went under in 2001. Still up, 9 years later? Or has some other organization taken over these boxes and repurposed them?

 

[Bobby]

That is definitely a wireless internet box. It looks exactly like the one on this Wiki page:

[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricochet_%28Internet_service%29"]Ricochet (Internet service) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia@@AMEPARAM@@/wiki/File:Ricochetbox.jpg" class="image"><img alt="" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/6a/Ricochetbox.jpg/200px-Ricochetbox.jpg"@@AMEPARAM@@en/thumb/6/6a/Ricochetbox.jpg/200px-Ricochetbox.jpg[/ame]

It is probably a holdover, nobody wants to spend the money to remove them.

 

[Stargazer]

Maybe someone could get used of them again for some type of purpose on the cheap.

According to the wiki, it says they had over 51,000 customers but spent more than they took in due to not concentrating on certain markets first.