Fixed Wireless Business

IPSCON Wireless Hotshots

ISPCON's gathering of veterans talked about key issues in the wireless broadband industry from a wide variety of perspectves.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [November 21, 2006]

The ISPCON session Hotshots in Wireless truly featured five hotshots:

• Eden Recor is the owner of Grand County Internet, a dialup ISP founded in that has successfully added a WISP arm.
• Lisa Bickford ran InReach Internet until it was acquired by MobilePro, where she is now vice president of ISP operations.
• Mark Esser brings a Coast Guard RF background to his twin roles as chairman of the board of CISPA and president of Markon Computer.
• John Scrivner is the president and owner of Mt. Vernon Net and also president of WISPA.
• David Williams is vice president of products and systems at Covad and unofficially the guy running that part of Covad that is the former NextWeb, which was arguably the best run WISP in the U.S when Covad acquired it.

Keeping it Simple
Recor opened the session and covered the basics. He said that WISPs need to know the costs of the equipment and also of the backbone. WISPs need reliability, and might consider cable and DSL to provide upstream for local access points.

Recor said that he's seen bandwidth costs constantly decreasing and is therefore using month to month contracts where possible.

Over time, he has found which local installers are reliable and uses only the best.

In summary, he repeated his opening remarks, saying, "use a spreadsheet. Find out how your costs are changing over time."

David Williams
Covad's David Williams had a different perspective. He opened his remarks by pointing out that while his company serves urban areas exclusively, most attendees specialize in rural areas.

We caught up with Williams after this session and learned more about what equipment Covad uses and what its plans are (see NextWeb Grows Inside Covad).

John Scrivner
Scrivner said that he founded the ISP to provide dialup in 1997. He's currently reached a plateau where the increase in WISP subscribers is roughly equal to the decrease in dialup subscribers. Since WISP subscribers pay more, his ARPU is rising steadily.

You don't have to run your business all by yourself, but you do need to know how to get things done. "You need to have a business plan," Scrivner said. "You need to make it work or know people who can make it work."

Mark Essner
CISPA's president warned that the ILECs can raise prices at any time. That's how Essner's initial venture lost a lot of money. Now that he's a master of RF, however, he's building a profitable business. An audience member said that surely the ILEC could not raise prices on a long term contract but Bickford advised him to look closely at that contract, as it may have a clause allowing the ILEC to raise prices.

Essner said prices will rise by 50 percent on January 10, 2007.

Essner doesn't trust the phone company any more. "Now, we buy bandwidth from the local water and power companies, and we get 150 Mbps duplex."

Essner also recommended working with cities. He said his company has set up an llc (see ISP Status Symbols: Limited Liability Companies), as a subsidiary, to fulfill one such contract.

Lisa Bickford
Bickford joined InReach in 1999, but the company was founded in 1994 to focus on providing dialup to second- and third-tier markets. "Our peak was 2001, when we had 40,000 dialup accounts," she said.

In November of 2005, MobilePro acquired InReach. MobilePro , Bickford noted, has acquired 21 companies in 2 years. "We sell everything," she said. "We sell dialup at $9.95 per month, DSL at $14.95 per month. We sell hosting, EVDO, wireless (using Cisco, Tropos, and Strix). We're a conglomerate with 14 NOCs."

Conclusion
This overview of the session can only give a brief sketch of what happened. We have tried to select the most important details, but we have had to leave out some information. The speakers and attendees are what make ISPCON great, and this session had one of the strongest groups of speakers and also a knowledgeable audience.

—End