While giant, gradiose Wireless ISP's like Metrocom (providers of the Ricochet service) are tanking, teeny-weeny little Wireless ISPs with a couple dozen customers are turning a profit.
Schafer had a $10,000 bank loan, a grain silo for an antenna tower and 10 neighbors in Odessa, Wash., willing to give wireless access a try. Allen, the multibillionaire co-founder of Microsoft, plowed a fortune into Metricom, a company that offered its $1 billion Ricochet network in 14 major U.S. cities.
Schafer's business may have been far less ambitious than Allen's, but as it turned out, he got the edge over Allen in one category: profits.
