Offering wireless equipment as well as consulting and implementation to companies throughout New Zealand and Australia comes with its own unique set of challenges.

by Jeff Goldman [October 11, 2006]

Ian Hastie founded New Zealand-based distributor LINKIT in 1995 to provide equipment and consulting services to wireless providers in the region. "There was no one in the market who was basically a specialist's radio IT vendor," Hastie says. "Engineering in the local loop, radio in the local loop, was a skill that was just not out there."

As a result, Hastie says, there was a real need for guidance for providers ranging from federal and local governments to early wireless ISPs. "Back then, spectrum was so quiet, the noise level was -95dB everywhere," he says. "But we've taken a lot of those customers into their third or fourth generation unlicensed technology upgrades since then."

LINKIT 37 Teoti St Paraparaumu 6010, Wellington, New Zealand Voice: +64 21 755465 mailto: ian@linkit.co.nz Web contact page

Hastie says being a distributor in New Zealand comes with unique challenges. "Not many American companies appreciate the fact that the New Zealand and Australian markets do not buy 1,000 radios at a time or build networks of 1,000 potential customers or connections at a time," he says. "They might buy 10 to 50 at a time, and then spend three months connecting up those customers."

As a result, Hastie says it was difficult at first to find manufacturers that understood LINKIT's needs. "It took us a while to find companies who would actually accept that (a) we knew what we were doing and we weren't blowing smoke, and (b) that we actually had real projects that would buy only 10 radios but that eventually we would get them up to buying 50 or 100 radios every three months," he says.

Consulting and integration
LINKIT carries Trango Broadband and Redline Communications products for unlicensed wireless, and Ceragon Networks and DragonWave at the licensed level—as well as its own range of LINKIT-branded solutions for everything from high-speed Internet to voice and video over IP.

Key to LINKIT's offering, Hastie says, is the consulting and integration work the company provides. "We help them get through the indecisive stage of not really knowing the entire technology required to become a small ISP," he says. "We do also get a lot of ISPs who say, 'I'm an IT Linux guru; I will build my own Linux router'—in which case we're also a perfect fit, because we fill in the gaps in their radio knowledge."

It's not where he initially imaged LINKIT heading, Hastie says, but there's a real customer demand for it. "On my staff, we've got a full-time, telco-type project manager who can dot the i's and cross the t's on project implementation schedules covering site work, solar and wind power—through to a specialist network guru," he says.

A large part of the challenge in providing such can lie in keeping track of all the regulatory requirements unique to New Zealand, Australia, the Cook Islands, or even Niue Island—but the results, Hastie says, can be uniquely satisfying. "We have in our portfolio people like the Internet Society of Niue, where, hey, if the guy can go fishing more often because the network's so stable, he's a happy man," he says.

Understanding local needs
Hastie says it's sometimes difficult to persuade customers of the value of sticking with a local distributor. "With the internet come predatory distributors from America who think it only costs five dollars to freight something to this end of the world," he says. "They've left some awfully bitter tastes in some of my customers' mouths who have gone and purchased a few radios from America and realized the true cost of getting technology to this end of the world—especially in number and quantity."

Those costs, Hastie says, can add up quickly, from import entry taxes to additional freight costs—along with legal requirements for wireless equipment. "Australia has some very grey areas of legal use," he says. "You can only run 200 Watts EIRP outside of five kilometers of a population center bigger than 3,000 people; otherwise, you're locked back to 4 Watts EIRP. How can a distributor in America understand that difference?"

And Hastie says the range of help that LINKIT can provide is unique, even locally. "There's plenty of consultants out there who will consult to build it, but they won't get their hands dirty," he says. "We have several mechanical engineers who we can bring to the table—so we're here pitching LINKIT, yes, but we're pitching the solution to the customer: 'What do you want to do? Here's how you can achieve it.'"

—End