Connecting With Real Estate

ISPs hate trying to deal with landlords, so we talked to one ISP that is working with several of the biggest.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [April 20, 2006]

The key to wiring a building, says Andrew Coren, CEO and founder of New York City-based internet solutions provider New York Connect, is to prove to the building's owner that you add value.

It takes time, it's not the only thing the company does, and it's about building a relationship. "It's not just about them getting shared revenue," explains Coren. "We've lit about 35 buildings in our ten years in operation."

Sometimes New York Connect barters service, sometimes there's an up front cash payment for access, sometimes the owner asks New York Connect to pay rent for an office, but money is never the core of a deal.

Working for landlords
"Owners know that tenants want the best service," he says. "We're a total solution provider. We can assist on network issues."

Each realtor has a different need, says Dave Borgioli, vice president in charge of VoIP operations. "One company needed IP addresses for security cameras, another wanted conference room services for the building's conference room.

One key issue that many ISP owners dislike is the amount of information a big company will demand from an ISP. "I let companies do due diligence on me personally and on the company professionally," says Coren.

Owners need to know that the company won't disappear overnight. "They cannot afford to put their company in a Winstar situation," says Coren. He points out that during the boom, many companies were providing business service to buildings, but that many have since gone.

Owners also want the ISP to answer the phone if there's an internet problem. "Sometimes the tenants feel they look smart when they call the building manager instead of us, but the building manager is not prepared to take those calls."

Owners want a company that sees them as an important customer. "They want alternatives to the local monopolistic incumbents who don't care about service," says Coren. "They let us do the phone and the internet and they get the word out about us."

The network
New York Connect provides service to both business and residential customers. It was one of the few companies to get the right to resell Time Warner cable service as a condition of the merger between AOL and Time Warner. It's in a TELEHOUSE data center in New York, where it can connect easily to upstream from NTT/Verio and Yipes (WilTel). Customers don't want to know the details of the network, Coren notes, but they do care that the ISP's upstream connection is multi-homed and redundant.

The company is angling to run the network in some of New York City's most well-known real estate.

But that's not all its doing. It's got plenty of other projects underway, and tomorrow, we'll tell you about USA-CONNECT.

— End