Santa Clara takes over MetroFi network for meter reading: The city might also expand free public access. Advertisements will be removed as well as logins. This action is a far cry from the last time a firm said they were withdrawing from a wireless business that had spread nodes all over Santa Clara (that would be Metricom's Ricochet network). With Ricochet, users needed proprietary modems; with Wi-Fi, the city can turn the network to serve several purposes without worrying about public access adapters.