Best of the ISP-Lists

Fixed Wireless Business

WISPs Work All The Holidays

Like every small business, the local ISP is on call on a national holiday.

[December 20, 2005]

On Thanksgiving day, November 25, 2005, BG spoke to the ISP-Wireless list about working on national holidays:

I guess that one thing about being a WISP—or having any small, local business—is that you have to have a serious work ethic. In particular, you have be prepared to give up your holidays to make others' holidays better.

We've had half a dozen install requests since Tuesday, and to keep folks happy, we've been up on the rooftops getting the radios hung, including one install on Thanksgiving morning so that a family could look for Black Friday sales on the Internet. (We DID take Thanksgiving afternoon off to stuff a turkey and then stuff ourselves WITH the turkey.)

Today, it's up on the rooftops again, during everyone else's long weekend. But it's a satisfying feeling. My wife and I make a great construction crew (believe it or not, our first date began with her helping me to install a radio.) We know our trade and our equipment. It's good exercise and a good way to burn off the extra calories, and we enjoy making the customers happy. Plenty of time for play later, on snowy days when the weather makes it too dangerous to climb.

If folks hear footsteps on the roof on Christmas Eve, it probably won't be reindeer! It may be us, preparing a surprise for the kids on Christmas morning.

Hope all you other WISPs are having as much fun as we are, and are pulling for our industry by keeping up pressure on your representatives in government to give us a fair shake and some spectrum of our own. (This is what WISPs—and their customers especially—REALLY need for Christmas.) This is a make-or-break time for wireless broadband; we independents will either establish a permanent niche or be driven out by the telcos and cell phone providers. We love what we do and want to keep doing it, so we sure hope that the latter doesn't happen.

[SR replied] "You are so right, BG. We can drive up to a potential customer and my wife will say whether it will work or not with 90 percent accuracy. It is amazing. Did a site survey with my 19 year old son today. He is the best. He knows his part and just does it. We get to spend the drive time talking and sharing and he gets paid for it to boot. Great pay, pay him as a contractor. He doesn't pay income tax yet, and I can take it as an expense.

We did take yesterday off, and will tomorrow as the other sons, wives and grandson will be here. But, if the phone rings, we will probably answer it.

Spectrum for Christmas? I have my stocking ready."

—End