Wave Broadband Buys

A cable company based in Washington state might be the biggest ISP you haven't heard of. As it grows, it's buying equipment you'll be looking at soon, if you're on the same path of success.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [July 25, 2006]

We show sources for all data on our ISP Rankings because we might have missed one, such as Seattle, Wash.-based cable company Wave Broadband, which claims 140,000 customers in Washington and California but does not disclose how many of those subscribe to internet services.

Even if it's not the 23rd largest ISP in the nation, it's growing so fast that it was a very pleased equipment supplier, Vernon Hills, Ill.-based CDW, who asked us to speak to Wave.

We're talking to Steve Mount, Wave's NOC director, and Tim Bergman, IT manager.

Mount says the NOC, based in Kirkland, a Seattle suburb, is growing fast. The NOC's telephone and e-mail support staff, sales and billing, and also engineers and technicians has tripled in the past year he says, to about 55 employees. The company is leasing more space in the building.

The NOC is growing because the company is growing (and that's why CDW likes it so much). "We have 50 percent year on year subscriber growth," claims Mount.

New equipment makes better work
The company has therefore been upgrading its equipment. It replaced older servers. It also upgraded other key items. IT managers are comfortable with ordering servers and desktops. They feel they know the prices and the options. But when they place an order for equipment they only buy every few years, they are not as confident of their own knowledge.

Bergman says that when he started looking at backup solutions, he approached CDW with what he saw as a real conundrum. He wanted a full featured tape backup system on a strict budget. "We got the exact device we needed: a Quantum autoloading brand new LTO http://www.lto.org tape drive. It can handle up to sixteen tapes simultaneously and store a total of 15 TB of information. Compared to the old solution, it was an improvement of eight to sixteen times in terms of capacity and transfer rates, and it was all within the budget. We're a careful, fledgling company, so we need to cost justify everything."

Mount says the company also recently replaced key work servers, holding databases used by multiple offices, with an HP blade server. "The upgrade increased productivity by speeding up access to data and by increasing the size of the database our servers were able to hold. Even our e-mail storage capacity increased significantly."

All along, Mount says, CDW has helped his department present its needs to the COO and CEO. Bergman says that when he first presented the tape drive product to CDW, the leader of Wave Broadband's support team at CDW, Jasmine, set up a conference call with CDW experts and also with consultants from HP.

Offering services
Like all ISPs, Wave Broadband is adding services to its portfolio to increase the average revenue per user. In April, the company started offering a VoIP product, WavePhone. The product is now available in three markets in Washington and one in California. Mount says that the company has not advertised it and has nevertheless managed to sign up 1,000 subscribers. The product uses a Sprint backbone and Mount says his company has a great relationship with Sprint.

The company is learning about Wi-Fi, and has a free hotspot in La Conner, Wash. "Pretty soon, via software, we'll lock it down and offer it free to customers and charge a pay as you go fee to non customers," says Mount.

"So," we ask, "are you in Oregon at all?"

"Not yet," Mount replies. "And no further comment."

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