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Fixed Wireless Equipment

WISPs Loved KarlNet

Some equipment from a key innovator in the early stages of the wireless broadband revolution is no longer being supported, WISPs say. But Terabeam says that's just not accurate, and encourages WISPs to contact the company.

[April 26, 2005]

On the ISP-Wireless list in April, MK posted a query from Australia:

"Just had an order knocked back for some Karlnet KN50's. Does anyone know what is going on with these? Is the Karlnet KN50 not available any more?"

[RH opined] "I caught wind of that last week from another WISP. From what little I have been able to gather, Terabeam has allegedly terminated the KN50 as well as the KN105. They sure seem to be following a path of isolation from the WISP market.

I spent an hour on the phone with their VP of Marketing on April 6th. I told them what I didn't like about their current equipment line and why I wasn't interested in buying it. I also told them what I would buy if they would start manufacturing it. They seem to have little appreciation for the need for WISPs to do in field repairs rather than the expensive and time consuming RMA route. The proprietary 6 pin connectors used by RG-Ants and Etherants are also nearly impossible to change in the field unless you want to carry a soldering iron up on top of a roof—NOT ME!

This is the second lengthy conversation I have had with Terabeam Management in the last 9 months. My pleas seem to be falling on deaf ears. You would think that any smart manager would recognize the mass exodus from the Turbocell equipment/software platform that they are forcing on their customers. Former customers are voting with their pocketbooks and Terabeam is not the recipient.

The winners seem to be Tranzeo, Star-OS, Mikrotik, Alvarion, Trango, and Canopy. It sure would be nice if a good company had bought the Karlnet Turbocell product line. It had a lot of potential, if a company with vision had gotten ahold of it, instead of a company full of greed. I hate to figure how much I have paid Karlnet/YDI/Terabeam for licenses in the last 4 years, but I definitely think it has earned me the right to criticize what I feel are poor business decisions. I have given management ample opportunity, time, and assistance to solve the problems they were creating.

I even passed the addresses to all the wireless listservs on so that they could start interfacing directly with WISPs like Kevin Knuth used to do when he was with Karlnet. There have been few sales managers that interfaced directly with customers on the list like Kevin did. It was a sad day when he left Karlnet and the company has never been the same since."

[JN agreed] "I feel the same. To add to it, I recently tried to acquire some more KN-205's to fill up some new locations and burn some sat software I had sitting around in my license-it account. After much yapping I managed to get some channeled through to me via Wincomm. However, their ability to resell them to me was restricted via Terabeam in that I had to purchase a preloaded license on them. Now basically the software I have for the kn205's already's useless unless I can find some hardware from the private sector. Not a happy Karlnet customer. All my new stuff is going Trango and Mikrotik; I am only adding new KarlNet stuff via CPE to existing KarlNet bases."

BH added to the chorus:

"That's bad news I was hoping not to hear. I'm sitting on some KN-205 licenses myself."

MK had some new information to share:

Winncom now say that KN50 have been superseded with KN50 H-II (Hermes II chipset) boards at $50 extra. I don't know if this now includes the radio although I think not. As I'm on the other side of the world this whole thing is taking for ever to find out, I might just have to stay up late tonight and give them a call, the waiting is killing me.

So we contacted Terabeam ourselves. Amit Malhotra, Terabeam's vice president of marketing wrote to us:

Terabeam Wireless has always been a customer-focused company. In 2004, we brought the leading equipment portfolio of YDI together with the pioneering software suite of KarlNet, and established a combined product set that stands second to none. We decided not to sell components to OEMs who might use them in lower-quality finished products and thus dilute the experience we want our customers to have. We are now hearing that some of the decisions we made are adversely impacting the ability of some of our WISP customers to expand their businesses. In recognition of this situation, we have developed a plan to meet the unique needs of such customers, and have been working with our channel partners to put it into action. I encourage such customers to contact their sales representatives for more information or feel free to contact me directly at amit (at) terabeam.com, and we will quickly address the inquiries. We trust this shows we continue to value our WISP customers.

—End