Fixed Wireless Business

Wireless in the Keys — continued

Q: What wireless equipment do you like? I'm particularly interested in your pre-WiMAX gear.

Pre-WiMAX doesn't sound like something I'd say. I'd say WiMAX to discourage Wi-Fi questions but not 'pre'. That's someone else's marketing spew. The last I looked, a WiMAX standard was about two years past due. I think the MIMO part is all anybody is using but I haven't looked in a long time. We do 802.11 on WAR boards using StarOS V3 now. The last Trango gear was decommissioned when the original Clear Channel link died. We already had a redundant link on WRAP boards when it happened, so the upgrade to WAR boards was not a panic.

StarOS V3 on WAR boards can only be described as incredible by someone who started out with Breezecom frequency hopping (FHSS) technology. It was a long row to hoe but we're cooking now. Everything works like the textbook says it's supposed to, even bridging. The OLSR functions flawlessly and cloaking has helped in numerous environments.

You can get a WAR2 with 200mW 2.4 GHz Compex radio assembled in a RooTenna from Valemount for $190. Or you can put a 5 GHz radio in it and have 5.3 GHz to 5.8 GHz available. No waiting on manufacturers to use the 5.4 GHz to 5.7 GHz spectrum released in February. StarOS V3 has both sharing requirements built in.

Ubiquiti just came out with 700 mW 900 MHz radios that go on WAR boards. The OS just sees them as an 802.11 radio. We're just deploying the first production links this week so we don't know much yet. During field testing, a 1/4 mile ground level link through jungle and buildings with wide beam antennas performed perfectly with -82 RSSI. It maintained a link down to -110 and didn't drop packets until -96. 2x cloaked did 1600 Kbps of throughput; 4x cloaked did 800 Kbps of actual throughput. This is an exciting 'stay tuned' one.

Q: So you've kept tech support in house? Why did you choose to do so?

We transitioned how we do tech support during the deregulation blitzkrieg. We expanded our support to 24/7 by using a level one support group in Knoxville. Small company and they've been good at customizing the service to fit our unique needs.

We answer the phones locally, business hours. Majority of calls are not tech support related and are handled on the spot. If it's broken email, the call is transferred to the level one group. If it's broken connectivity, a repair ticket is opened and Dillon or Travis picks it up. The Knoxville guys escalate anything they can't handle to level two and that gets picked up based on the type of service the customer is paying for. A business customer is likely to get a call back at night or during the weekend. A residential customer gets call back the next day at the latest.

We've always encouraged e-mail support and one of us generally picks those up within an hour. Every customer pays us for 'service' each month. They want to be able to talk to a human with a name that they can call back and be recognized. Otherwise, they may as well get the vanilla of the month deal from BellSouth or Comcast. We get a lot of customers whose service wasn't reliable or fast enough in the past. But we get a lot more because they want decent customer service and to be something other than a number.

Q: Is STAC Compression still important to the business? Have you looked at dialup accelerator products?

We've had STAC compression available forever and I don't think we've had more than three customers ever use it. And it works great. Highly compressible data will download at 80 Kbps to 100 Kbps. Dialup customers today are content with 5 Kbps or 6 Kbps or they buy broadband service. The proxy technique is intriguing, but it wouldn't sell here. Dialup is for backup or grandma's e-mail service.

Q: Is SpamAssassin solving your problems? I'm hearing that certain spammers now test their stuff against Assassin before e-mailing it. Have you looked at augmenting it with anything.

That's Travis' purview but he's been using SpamAssassin since it was new and buggy and mutilated a customer's Wall Street Journal. We've always been bleeding edge, emphasis on bleeding! He's upgraded and fine-tuned over the years but I don't think he's considering using any other spam and virus slapper.

I mention something I read and he tells me how Spam Assassin does it better. There's a lot of parts to it these days. Spammers can test till hell freezes and real time databases are still going to limit them to hours of beating the system.

Q: Thanks!

No problem. I like rambling about the fun parts and the great family. It's ten years we've been on this road and you'd be surprised what can change in a few days. Last week, we didn't have any 900 MHz spectrum in production. After Saturday, we should be able to figure out how it performs in the field. Please don't hesitate to ask if you have more questions.

—End

 

Wireless in the Keys page 1: Introduction

Wireless in the Keys page 2: Growing the Business

Wireless in the Keys page 3: Technology