I am in Los Angeles, and I am looking for an internte provider that
provides wireless broadband access to the internet in the west los
angeles area.
There used to be a service called ricochet, but they discontinued
service in the area.
Who else could I call

Mistralman --

One broadband option would be Hughes DirecWay satellite broadcasts,
which actually comes in two flavors:
(1)  1-way from satellite: high-speed downlink and telephone uplink. 
Typical speeds are 500Kbps for the downlink and 100Kbps for the
uplink, though satellite companies have backed away from quoting
speeds.  Speed of uploads and downloads depend on a number of factors,
including:
*  Internet congestion 
*  PC configuration 
*  Rain
*  Network congestion 
*  The number of "hops" (number of routers the data passes through) 
*  Time of day 
*  Speed of the target's connection to the Internet 
*  Local access issues such as dirty lines or packet loss 
*  Number of users requesting the content (number of "hits" the site
is receiving)
*  Load on the DIRECWAY network 

Rates are typically about $49 per month but may vary depending on
whether you purchase the satellite transceiver.  Information on
ordering is available here:
http://www.hns.com/default.asp?CurrentPath=direcway/for_home/how_to_get_it/direcway.htm

(2)  2-way (frees up phone line): provides higher speed uplinks than
phone line; available from Best Buy, Earthlink and Pegasus.  Costs are
about $60 per month if you purchase the transceiver; $100 per month if
not:
http://www.hns.com/default.asp?CurrentPath=direcway/for_home/how_to_get_it/earthlink.htm

A third route to take would be to visit Best Buy, the retailer that
carries Hughes satellite equipment nationwide.  They may offer a
better package of hardware and ISP.

A fourth broadband route would be to contact you cable TV company to
see if they're offering data services to your location.

Ricochet's network was a 2.4GHz network that offered speeds as high as
120Kbps.  The company is owned by Metricom, Inc., which has been in
chapter 11 proceedings in San Francisco.  The court just approved the
reorganization plan for Metricom, which goes into effect Sept. 13.

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

---

Clarification of Answer by omnivorous-ga on 21 Oct 2002 20:01 PDT

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Greetings!

Sprint PCS and Verizon now offer wireless internet access at about the
same speed as the old Ricochet service.  Both of them offer PCMCIAA
cards and special data-only pricing.

Ok, it's only about 56K right now, but it's going to get better.  

http://www.sprintpcs.com/
http://www.verzion.com/

Do you have the exact urls where to signup for verizon and sprint?