Well said Tom,
Having watched the cellular and PCS industry grow over the years, vendor
financing/investing was the only way these networks could have been built
out as fast as they were. Being based on a technology that was not specific
to any one manufacturer was a key in those network build outs. WIMAX may be
able to offer those same benefits once it becomes available in the
unlicensed spectrum, although I would guess the manufacturers would be more
apt to do what you say once a more protected spectrum becomes available. I
also agree with your statement that when the manufacturer is the investor
all they want to do is sell equipment, not get you over a barrel and then
take your company away from you in the way most venture capital outfits
would. I can see you've been around that block once or twice :-)
Thank You,
Brian Webster
www.wirelessmapping.com <http://www.wirelessmapping.com>
-----Original Message-----
From: Tom DeReggi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, July 07, 2006 11:11 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; WISPA General List
Subject: Re: More on Clearwire - Intel & Moto invest $900MillionRe:
[WISPA]Clearwire is coming to my area. (eek?)
I'm referring to I use Trango Broadband for 95% of my network.
I believe it is the best choice for long term survivabilty of an independant
WISP.
I stand behind that decission today as the best decission that I could have
made for my situation.
However, there were trade offs in making that decssion. One was it
illiminated every manufacturer other than Trango the from being a potential
manufacturer investor that would have senergy to invest in us. Wimax on the
other hand has 100s of manufacturers that potentially could be investors as
well as suppliers in early stage large scale projects, based on jump
starting and proving their early production runs or technkowlegy embeeded
with products used. Historically, Manufacturers have been key investors.
For example Cisco in Cogent. Or I can refer to an initiative a year or two
back where Redline's investors had been considering investment in WISP
providers that used Redline equipment. Supporting one company (WISP) also
strengthens other investments (in manufacturer's product). Motorola has
numerous attempts to partner with major initative, often in investment, as
lsited in the Clearwire press release. Or a company like TelkoNet that
leases to WISPs to help financially and not only techknowlgy solutions.
WISPs that are serious about growing large, need to consider these things,
as they must have a finance strategy long term to handle their growth when
that time comes or the growth won't occur.
If I expand this conversation to my business specifically... There have been
many offers to just buy my company out and take over. But I won't get the
ROI that I'm looking for if I were to do that, because my company is still
in an early investment stage. Instead what I want is someone to share the
investment burden, so I don't have to take it on all alone. For me
investment in my business is the lease risky thing I can do, I have control
and confindense in things that I can control. However, ISP investors or
consolidators (one of the typical investment sources) think differently.
They'd rather take over, so they have control and maximum return, than share
the burden of investment or compensate adequately for others investment.
Manufacturer investors are potentially good investment partners because they
are not providers and rarely have expertise to take over, and look to invest
in companies that already have successful strategies and staff in place to
succeed.
Clearwire is a much different thing where they can be publically traded,
apposed to small WISPs that are far from the large scale value that large
manufacturers look for before investing. But companies grow, and sooner or
later many WISPs will reach the scale of the Nextweb and Clearwires to
attract major investors.
I'd argue that Wimax's biggest value is not technical, its strategic,
because the number of players that enter the game and have synergies to
partner with vastly grows, and financial/funding options vastly grow with
it.
If I were a WISP I would not be holding my breath for a manufactirer
investor to come, I'm jsut saying its one strategic option to consider that
could exist.
Tom DeReggi
RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc
IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband
----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter R." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "WISPA General List" <wireless@wispa.org>
Sent: Friday, July 07, 2006 12:00 AM
Subject: Re: More on Clearwire - Intel & Moto invest $900 MillionRe:
[WISPA]Clearwire is coming to my area. (eek?)
> What would be the Proprietary Platform?
>
> Tom DeReggi wrote:
>
>> I'll say thats one disadvantage of buying into a proprietary platform,
>> you loose out on investment funds from hardware manufacturers.
>>
>> Tom DeReggi
>> RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc
>> IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband
>
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