Yeah, I know wut ya mean...
We have 23 sites both rural and urban sites and our heaviest sites sit
both urban and rural
with 2 cable providers and all the other mobile and satellite options in
our area.
We use Medusa on 5 of our largest sites and everything else falls
within 450i or epmp operations.
The smallest backhall is a Force200 link where everything else is all
ptp670 or 11ghz 1Gb
I think we have a few ptp550 links in there somewhere.
We just put our best foot forward on performance,quality and reliability
as well as local support.
On 11/17/19 9:25 AM, Ken Hohhof wrote:
If that’s all it costs you, kudos.
But we’re running out of spectrum at many towers (there are other
WISPs throughout our service area), plus we also have to add backhaul
capacity, and all that uses power so we need more batteries. We’re
having to run backhauls in licensed spectrum, even to micropops. And
we’re having to add “small cells” to get closer to customers. Because
with all the streaming we can’t have customers at low modulations, and
to reach those customers who move to a low spot surrounded by trees,
and to deal with spectrum exhaustion. All this costs a lot more than
$300.
We have 3.65GHz sites fed via 11 GHz with 10 subscribers. The only
way that makes money is averaging over all our sites. And still we
can’t build enough micropops to get LOS to everyone who chooses to
live down by a creek surrounded by trees. Yesterday I checked photos
from 3 of our towers to a prospective customer and the only thing we
could see was a little of the peak of a 40 ft barn with big gaping
holes in the roof that would be unsafe to walk on, and that was on an
old micropop where we’re out of backhaul capacity to sell 20+ Mbps
speeds (it’s actually fed via an SM from another tower, something we
don’t do anymore). They apparently bought the house from an elderly
couple, at their previous house they had gigabit Metronet fiber.
Well, that was pretty sweet, maybe you shouldn’t have moved.
Honestly, I think the only real, long-term solution to rural broadband
is FTTH. The problem of course is money. And with several companies
launching thousands of LEO satellites promising broadband for
everyone, I think that will suppress even further any large
investments in rural broadband. Investors would also have to weigh
how serious the mobile carriers are about rural fixed wireless, is it
just marketing hype and lobbying to regulators as it has been in the past?
I do find it ironic that we have low flush toilets, energy efficient
appliances, LED light bulbs, alternate day lawn watering, and mandated
fuel efficiency for vehicles, yet conspicuous consumption of Internet
bandwidth seems to be our patriotic duty. With all the content moving
to streaming services like Disney+ and content being priced high to
cable companies but disruptively low for streaming, it’s clear there
won’t be a choice, traditional broadcast and cable TV is dying and
everyone will have to get their TV via the Internet. It’s like having
to get a cellphone because there aren’t any payphones anymore, the
train is leaving and you either buy a ticket or get left behind. For
awhile though, people do have a choice, you can still put up a TV
antenna or get satellite TV. It’s becoming 500 channels of crap though.
Still, if you have gigabit fiber where you live now, maybe don’t move
to Green Acres unless you really like doing country stuff. Or at
least cut down some of the damn trees. Sheesh, miles and miles of
open fields, and then 75 foot trees all around your house.
*From:* AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> *On Behalf Of *Matt Hoppes
*Sent:* Sunday, November 17, 2019 8:43 AM
*To:* AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <af@af.afmug.com>
*Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] tired of entitled streamers
I get that. But my point is - if this is truly a rural environment it
costs maybe $300 to add another access point for capacity.
I just don’t see the point in penalizing customers when the cost to
add capacity is so low.
On Nov 17, 2019, at 8:55 AM, Adam Moffett <dmmoff...@gmail.com
<mailto:dmmoff...@gmail.com>> wrote:
I would say it more nicely, but IMO there's a very valid point
here. Having been at both a 100% rural WISP and an urban WISP
running side by side with cable I can say that it's less stressful
for you if the unsatisfied customers have a real option to leave.
It forces you to stay on top of your game, but also allows a
pressure valve to release the customers you can never satisfy.
And wouldn't we all like to have only the low to median usage and
non-complaining customers? I don't see anything wrong with trying
to strategically dis-incentivize the ones you don't want.
In Darin's shoes the thing I'd try to remember is that the GB
values are going to be a moving target trending ever upwards.
You'll have to evaluate and probably raise those GB allowances
every year to keep the median customers satisfied and maintain
that balance.
-Adam
On 11/16/2019 3:07 PM, Darin Steffl wrote:
Matt,
You can simply go away. We have competitor wisp's and many
have poor reviews. We simply do it best and have the highest
Facebook ratings of any ISP.
We simply want to make heavy users pay more. Why should we
raise prices for all customers when only a small percentage
are the ones driving us to upgrade things? I'll take 5 average
customers at 200gb per month over one customer using 1TB.
You may be a tech guy but not understand business very well.
The point of this is to drive away bad customers and keep good
ones. Good customers will not be penalized with these plans.
Fewer customers with the same amount of revenue means higher
profit, plain and simple.
On Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 1:52 PM Matt Hoppes
<mattli...@rivervalleyinternet.net
<mailto:mattli...@rivervalleyinternet.net>> wrote:
Wow. Yikes. If I was in your area you’d be driving me to
start a competing ISP with you.
You’ll drive your users away.
Seriously. It doesn’t cost that much to upgrade a tower or
backhaul to support more capacity.
On Nov 16, 2019, at 2:18 PM, Darin Steffl
<darin.ste...@mnwifi.com <mailto:darin.ste...@mnwifi.com>>
wrote:
We're moving away from "truly unlimited" plans and
going to unlimited with X amount of high-speed data
between noon and midnight.
For example, we'll have plans with high-speed data
amounts of 65, 300, 600, 900, 1200, 1800GB a month
with that data only being counted 12 hours each day.
Outside noon to midnight, the data will not count to
encourage them to shift large downloads to our off
peak times. If they insist on streaming on 4 devices
during peak and using 100GB per day like some homes,
their bill will be well over $250 a month. Here is our
rural pricing for these proposed plans. Once they hit
their threshold, they slow down to 1 mbps. We will
never have overage charges so they're in full control
of their cost. Either they lower their usage or pay
more to continue the high usage.
What I call abusive usage continues to increase and I
feel we need to have plans like these to make heavy
users pay for the cost of us upgrading our gear
earlier than planned for. These plans are also still
way better than any satellite plan in terms of caps
and latency.
35 Meg/65GB - $65
25 Meg/300GB - $90 35 Meg/600GB - $110
45 Meg/900GB - $130
55 Meg/1,200GB - $150
55-100 Meg/1,800GB - $200
On Sat, Nov 16, 2019, 11:50 AM Nate Burke
<n...@blastcomm.com <mailto:n...@blastcomm.com>> wrote:
Give them what you sell them. If they call in
more than 3 times complaining then say 'you
obviously can't provide them the experience
they're expecting, and that you'll be out in a few
days to remove the equipment.' That should either
silence them, or push them to hughesnet and they
can see what being rural really means.
On 11/16/2019 11:31 AM, Ken Hohhof wrote:
Anybody else losing their patience with streamers?
The people who just moved from somewhere they
had gigabit fiber to the middle of nowhere in
a low spot surrounded by tons of trees, and
say they stream all their TV on 3-4 screens at
the same time.
I want to yell at them, if you had affordable
blazing fast Internet, and it’s that important
to you, why did you move? And if you had to
move, why didn’t you move to a nice suburb
with fiber or at least cable? And why do you
have to stream everything? You could get
satellite TV. Yes, it’s expensive, get over
it. You could put up a TV antenna. You could
get DVDs by mail. Or if moving to the country
was so important, you could go out on the ATV
or horse or snowmobile, or go hunting, or feed
the chickens and mini goats. If they’re
streaming all the time, I have to suspect the
reason for moving to Green Acres was to save
on property taxes, and the reason for
streaming is to avoid paying $200/month to
DirecTV or DISH.
It’s gotten so bad, a significant number of
prospective customers say they only want
Internet to stream, anything else they can do
on their phone. And when a streaming
subscription is sub $10 (or free with Amazon
Prime), they’re thinking Internet is like
shipping, it shouldn’t cost more than the item
being delivered.
I know, “OK boomer”.
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