Dedicated Dialup for $100 Per Month

ISPs can learn from this new business service offer from ISP veteran New Edge Networks, part of EarthLink, precisely because no new technology is involved.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [April 19, 2006]

Vancouver, Wash.-based New Edge Networks announced a new service for business customers in areas where broadband is not available at the Electronic Transactions Association annual meeting and expo in Las Vegas, which New Edge has attended for the past several years:

New Edge Networks offers its Always-on Internet Service on a month-to-month basis or one-year service terms, starting at $99.95 with full rebates on installation. Customers provide a dedicated business grade telephone line. The service is offered to multi-location business customers, whose Always-on sites do not exceed 20 percent of all sites.

We immediately ask Sal Cinquegrani, executive director of corporate communications for New Edge Networks, whether satellite can compete for these locations.

He says satellite could compete with New Edge's Always-on Internet Service dedicated dialup offering, but only where latency is not an issue. Of course, weather conditions could also affect satellite broadband connections. On the other hand, New Edge does resell satellite service.

Customers prefer low latency networks because of the appications they enable.

"Our retail customers are using their networks to do back office, inventory management, and digital monitoring," says Cinquegrani.

He adds that targeted customers include gas stations with convenience stores, quick service restaurants, and retail outletts.

Not a new service
This is not a new service. Dedicated dialup is widely available, for a higher price from some providers, a lower price from others, and for the same price from yet another group of ISPs.

The brilliance of this offer is precisely that this is not new technology. Instead, a recognized market demand is being served at no incremental cost to New Edge. No new hardware or software was required for the service.

Cinquegrani says the product competes directly with frame relay, which can cost a store $250 or $300 per month.

Many stores, however, still have a separate line for each cash register, he says. "I'm just giving you an example," he says, "but if you're running a food service outlet with five cash registers, you could have one phone line for each register."

If each phone line costs $40 month, the New Edge service is exactly half price. That's because businesses need only one line. "Dedicated always on dialup can be shared," says Cinquegrani.

He says that a merchant can complete a business transaction in 2 to 3 seconds with an always on dialup line as opposed to 12 to 15 seconds if the cashier has to dial in for each transaction. Transaction speed adds up throughout the day, and is crucial to a business' profitability—just ask venture capitalist Francis McInerney, whose theory of information velocity is at the core of his work.

Features
We ask why, if the access price is so compelling, New Edge is offering these extra features:

New Edge Networks' Always-on Internet Service includes unlimited Internet access, a dynamic IP address, 10 email boxes, remote email access, anti-spam and anti-virus filtering, Web hosting, and use of dial-up equipment.

"It provides added flexibility," says Cinquegrani.

— End