Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Patrick, Scriv and Matt L. on this list are both knocking on the door of 1k subs. Shoot, there's a wisp in Karney Nebraska that put on 1000 subs in just over a year. There are a LOT of 1000 sub wisps or those VERY close to it. Shoot, I'm out in the middle of nowhere with lots of competition and I'm almost up to 300. We have no funding and do no advertising. Business has to fall in my lap. I totally believe at least half of the pew numbers. Marlon (509) 982-2181 Equipment sales (408) 907-6910 (Vonage)Consulting services 42846865 (icq)And I run my own wisp! 64.146.146.12 (net meeting) www.odessaoffice.com/wireless www.odessaoffice.com/marlon/cam - Original Message - From: "Patrick Leary" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'WISPA General List'" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 1:35 PM Subject: RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE! 30% of what number Charles? How many WISPs said they have over 1,000 CPE. I can only think of about 20 with that high a number. I'd like to be able to toss around a better number if it can be substantiated, even anecdotally and unscientifically like an honor survey. Patrick -Original Message- From: Charles Wu [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 1:34 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Some interesting statistics -- 30% of the WISPs who attended our last WiNOG "claimed" on their surveys they had been in the wireless business for more than 5 years and had more than 1k wireless CPE deployed in the field Less than 10% of them claimed to be "pure-play" license-exempt fixed wireless providers This is why we call them Wi- "NOGs" instead of "ISPs" nowadays Don't forget, a lot of rural telcos / CLECs / ILECs (e.g., the "enemy") have gotten into license-exempt fixed wireless... -Charles P.S. - I heard a rumor that the current UL market leader, Motorola Canopy sold close to $100 million in gear last year alone --- CWLab Technology Architects http://www.cwlab.com -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jack Unger Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 1:46 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Hopefully, the 8% (6,000,000) figure includes ONLY end-users who use wireless broadband to get to/from their home and NOT the end-users who have a copper/fiber-based (cable/telco) broadband connection to their home and then use a Wi-Fi router/access point that provides the "final 50-ft" connection wirelessly. There's so much sloppy and innacurate "journalism" these days that I need reassurance that the article means what it appears to be saying. If there are 6,000,000 end-users and if there are 5000 WISPs then each WISP would, on average, have 1,200 subscribers. I'm not sure that this passes the "sniff" test. jack John Scrivner wrote: Check this out from the Pew report. It appears that fixed wireless is much bigger than what even I thought. According to this report 8% of all broadband connections in the US are delivered via fixed broadband wireless. That means you guys! Woo Hoo! Scriv -- Jack Unger ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) - President, Ask-Wi.Com, Inc. Serving the License-Free Wireless Industry Since 1993 Author of the WISP Handbook - "Deploying License-Free Wireless WANs" True Vendor-Neutral WISP Consulting-Training-Troubleshooting Our next WISP Workshop is June 21-22 in Atlanta, GA. Phone (VoIP Over Broadband Wireless) 818-227-4220 www.ask-wi.com -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ This footnote confirms that this email message has been scanned by PineApp Mail-SeCure for the presence of malicious code, vandals & computer viruses. This footnote confirms that this email message has been scanned by PineApp Mail-SeCure for the presence of malicious code, vandals & computer viruses. -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Patrick Leary wrote: > Indeed, and the Pew study is very credible, well circulated on the Hill, and > used frequently as source material for other briefings and other reports. > > Just because something is widely circulated among influential people doesn't make it correct. I do firmly believe that WISPs everywhere should milk that Pew report for all it's worth, just don't drink too much of the Kool-Aid. (Also, Patrick, either your mail system is indulging in necromancy, or your desktop's clock is woefully wrong, as this email that just made it to the list earlier today has a Date: stamp from three weeks ago.) David Smith MVN.net -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Hi John, Where are you at on this? Did we ever get a press release sent out? laters, Marlon(509) 982-2181 Equipment sales(408) 907-6910 (Vonage) Consulting services42846865 (icq) And I run my own wisp!64.146.146.12 (net meeting)www.odessaoffice.com/wirelesswww.odessaoffice.com/marlon/cam - Original Message - From: John Scrivner To: wireless@wispa.org Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 9:35 AM Subject: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Check this out from the Pew report. It appears that fixed wireless is much bigger than what even I thought. According to this report 8% of all broadband connections in the US are delivered via fixed broadband wireless. That means you guys! Woo Hoo!Scriv -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.orgSubscribe/Unsubscribe:http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wirelessArchives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
For a long time WISP networks / BWI / Muniwireless / whatever name you want to give our platforms have been completely ignored as having a real impact on broadband delivery in this country. We get very little press about what we do and what impact we have had for broadband delivery, especially in underserved or unserved market areas. I have a had a big fear for a long time that the government would simply regulate us out of existence if we did not start getting some actual respectable data out there that we exist and that we are really serving broadband to people in a big way. The actual numbers are probably wrong but I bet we are serving at least 4 million people with fixed wireless broadband. That is nothing to sneeze at and certainly could justify a claim that we offer the true third pipe of broadband in this country. That is why I am excited about this report and I feel it is a good thing for us regardless of any errors in reporting. Pew is a respectable source of Internet market information so I doubt the errors will ever be given any real press and even if they did all it would lead to is more talk about the degree of impact we are having in delivering broadband. More talk like that is free press for us and is good. I tell people often that I really do not care if they are talking good or bad about me as much as I care that they are at least talking about me. If you are worthy of discussion then you are making things happen. We made the report, I feel that is good for us. Scriv Tom DeReggi wrote: John, Your responses make sense. I guess the bigger problem I have is, I jsut do not believe the stats. I have rarely found that misleading inaccurate information works to one's advantage for long, on any topic. Because eventually the real picture gets disclosed. I wish WISPs really did have 8% of the market. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: "John Scrivner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "WISPA General List" Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2006 12:50 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Sorry TomI am going to drive a truck through your remarks here. :-) Tom DeReggi wrote: 8% means... You do not get preferrential treatment in legislation. 8% means that 8% of the people are using our service which means that our politicians have to look at how to serve the needs of those customers. It is not about us. It is about our customers. That is the job of public servants. You do not get subsidees to foster growth of a startup industry. Wrong. Grants, loans, etc. are based on needs of CUSTOMERS not of providers. USDA does not care if you get broadband to Farmer Dan via a string between two tin cans if it works. By the way, I was the first broadband in my town, we are not a startup industry any more. You get taxed equally as telcos and cable companies. Do you really think tax policy is different if you serve 8% than if you serve 1/2%? I assure you if the broadband tax cometh, you will be paying, regardless of how many customers you serve. ISPs have a viable alternative, so LECs no longer need to share their networks with ISPs. Like AT&T is so open with their network? PLEASE! 8% is a HUGE percentage of market share. I'm not sure we want to take credit for that. At this stage I think it could work against us. There is only good that can come from people thinking 8% of the US is getting their service from us. We have been on the radar for a long time. Now it is time to deliver broadband over that radar! (That reminds me...where is that 5.4 GHz band!) :-) Scriv Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: "John Scrivner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "WISPA General List" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 6:31 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! The point is we have a well known, if not largely credible source, who has just released a report that says we (Fixed Wireless Broadband Providers) are serving the broadband needs of approximately 8% of US home users. We obviously have been completely ignored in other reports and surveys so for once it is nice to see us represented in some statistically important degree. I am not really that concerned about the exact number of customers. It is just nice to see us making the report in some meaningful way. Scriv David E. Smith wrote: John Scrivner wrote: Check this out from the Pew report. It appears that fixed wireless is much bigger than what even I thought. According to this report 8% of all broadband connections in the US are delivered via fixed broadband wireless. Ouch. That study looks to be horribly methodologically flawed. (It's at http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Broadband_trends2006.pdf if you're interested.) Their survey required the responders to know
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Actually, Cbeyond originally only sold one product. A dynamic T1. Basically, one product offering to a specific target market. Focused. - Peter Patrick Leary wrote: Any operator with some decent residential mix would be drooling to have a $100 ARPU Matt. No matter what technology is being used, that makes for an excellent ROI. Those CLECs you mention are also likely providing fiber and big TDM pipes as a primary focus. Patrick Leary AVP Marketing Alvarion, Inc. o: 650.314.2628 c: 760.580.0080 Vonage: 650.641.1243 -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Travis, Excellent point. We've become victom to that mistake more than once. But whats also important to realize is that the mistake is not always made because someone does not value their time or doesn;t understand your arguement. More so the mistake is made because they under estimated the amount of time that will be required to finish doing the solution themselves. Hind sight is 20/20. When you do it yourself, even if you lose financially, you've learned something, and that has some value to help offset the loss. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: "Travis Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "WISPA General List" Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2006 1:09 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Hi, I think that's the #1 mistake that small or startup operators make: Time is money, so don't waste time or money. I hear stories of people literally spending hours and hours and hours "building" something because they don't want to pay $xxx for it already built. Everyone reading this list should remember - Your time is worth something. For some it may be $10/hour and for others it may be $200/hour. The question you have to always ask is "Can I generate more income by doing it myself, or having it already done so I can work on ". Quick example: You can spend 3-4 hours building a new email server for your network (hardware cost=$500). Or you can buy a ready to run mail server for $1,000. However, if you could generate 5 new clients in that same amount of time each paying $40 per month, you just wasted your time. The 5 clients will pay for that extra $500 in less than 6 months (after costs, etc.) and you will be making more money in the long run. Time is money... don't waste time. :) Travis Microserv Pete Davis wrote: Here is an example of a ROI period ending. I put in a $500/mo T1 and rent a $100/mo tower space. My fixed costs are $600/mo I put in a $1000 AP and router, and buy 100 $200 CPE. I am now $21000 in the hole. Each customer is paying me $50/mo. ($5000/mo total) My ROI is 5 months, and my fixed cost per customer is $6 (upstream bandwidth and tower rent), leaving me $32/mo ($3200) "after ROI" profit. That's all fine and good if this is your hobby, and you are not trying to make a living at this. I just need 5 of these towers/AP's/model to pay for salaries, trucks, replacement CPE, installers, tools, and trips to conventions and trade shows. I also need 3 more of these towers to pay interest on the bank note from borrowing the original $21,000, which was more like $200,000 by the time we over-spent, under planned, over estimated the demand, underestimated the costs, overestimated the employees abilities to work, underestimated the damage that lighting can cause, and so on and so forth. I also need 7 more of these towers to offset the cost of not actually installing 100 clients on day 1, and not getting $100 tower rent, not getting 100 clients per AP, and not getting $200 CPE, and to offset the deadbeats who write hot checks, paying the cell phone bill, buy the fender when an antenna falls off of the roof during an install, buy the insurance to pay for it next time, buy new PCs, put tires on the trucks, change the oil, buying a mail server, buying another server to remove the spam from the first mail server, buying spare servers, routers, tools, and paying consultants when I cannot figure it out. Then I need another 14 towers to pay for the psychotherapist when go nuts trying to manage 2900 subscribers, who are all bitching and moaning because their PC has a virus, or their kid is downloading porn, or maybe they are getting spam, or they can't get their bittorrent client to download more than 500kbps. I am not there yet. We are still working on getting tower number 7 online, and installing customer number 350'ish, and I am not on the mood altering drugs... yet. Eventually, there is a model there for making money in this business somewhere between the hobby stage and the looney bin. The ways to do that should be the same as any other business whether you are selling internet, real estate, health care, computers, or donuts. 1: Time is money, so don't waste time or money. 2. Don't cut corners. 3. Don't piss off the customers. Pete Davis NoDial.net Travis Johnson wrote: Tom, There is no such thing as "average profit per sub after ROI period". Let me give an example: I lease all my CPE. It is a recurring monthly debt that will never go away. Even after 3 years, when I own the CPE, there will be new CPE that needs purchased... and thus new towers, new AP's, new backhauls, new routers, new bandwidth, new whatever. Even if I move that paid for CPE to a new customer on the edges of my network, there are st
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Pete, Great post. The other thing that gets to be a problem as subscriber base grows is You can't be two places at the same time. The average time per sub to support them may not be very high, and easilly done with one technician based on total work hours in a day. But failures rarely are courtious enough to wait for the previous outage to finish getting repaired first. :-) The staffing needs for support can be much higher than expected, if good response time is promised or expected by the subs. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: "Pete Davis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "WISPA General List" Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2006 12:19 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Here is an example of a ROI period ending. I put in a $500/mo T1 and rent a $100/mo tower space. My fixed costs are $600/mo I put in a $1000 AP and router, and buy 100 $200 CPE. I am now $21000 in the hole. Each customer is paying me $50/mo. ($5000/mo total) My ROI is 5 months, and my fixed cost per customer is $6 (upstream bandwidth and tower rent), leaving me $32/mo ($3200) "after ROI" profit. That's all fine and good if this is your hobby, and you are not trying to make a living at this. I just need 5 of these towers/AP's/model to pay for salaries, trucks, replacement CPE, installers, tools, and trips to conventions and trade shows. I also need 3 more of these towers to pay interest on the bank note from borrowing the original $21,000, which was more like $200,000 by the time we over-spent, under planned, over estimated the demand, underestimated the costs, overestimated the employees abilities to work, underestimated the damage that lighting can cause, and so on and so forth. I also need 7 more of these towers to offset the cost of not actually installing 100 clients on day 1, and not getting $100 tower rent, not getting 100 clients per AP, and not getting $200 CPE, and to offset the deadbeats who write hot checks, paying the cell phone bill, buy the fender when an antenna falls off of the roof during an install, buy the insurance to pay for it next time, buy new PCs, put tires on the trucks, change the oil, buying a mail server, buying another server to remove the spam from the first mail server, buying spare servers, routers, tools, and paying consultants when I cannot figure it out. Then I need another 14 towers to pay for the psychotherapist when go nuts trying to manage 2900 subscribers, who are all bitching and moaning because their PC has a virus, or their kid is downloading porn, or maybe they are getting spam, or they can't get their bittorrent client to download more than 500kbps. I am not there yet. We are still working on getting tower number 7 online, and installing customer number 350'ish, and I am not on the mood altering drugs... yet. Eventually, there is a model there for making money in this business somewhere between the hobby stage and the looney bin. The ways to do that should be the same as any other business whether you are selling internet, real estate, health care, computers, or donuts. 1: Time is money, so don't waste time or money. 2. Don't cut corners. 3. Don't piss off the customers. Pete Davis NoDial.net Travis Johnson wrote: Tom, There is no such thing as "average profit per sub after ROI period". Let me give an example: I lease all my CPE. It is a recurring monthly debt that will never go away. Even after 3 years, when I own the CPE, there will be new CPE that needs purchased... and thus new towers, new AP's, new backhauls, new routers, new bandwidth, new whatever. Even if I move that paid for CPE to a new customer on the edges of my network, there are still costs mentioned above for that customer. Maybe I'm not thinking the same as you, but I can never see an "after ROI period". It never happens. Travis Microserv Tom DeReggi wrote: I agree current profit is irrelevant, when considering company totals during the early growth period. But calcualted future Profit clearly is relevant, as far as how much profit will be made per sub, and how soon. Profitabilty can be misleading when jsut considering accounting paperwork (profit loss / balance sheets) I'll give an example: Lets say a company gets an ROI in 1 year. And had 4 years of selling subs. And by the 4th year, profit would be being made from each sub. But then lets says a company had a 100% growth spurt in the 5th year. And lets say there is a 1 year ROI, meaning 12 dollars needs to be spent for ever new dollar that is made. Because the growth rate of the company is so much higher in the later year, the expendatures are far greater than the revenue comming in from the samller customer base taken on the first 4 years. Thus, it appears the
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
John, Your responses make sense. I guess the bigger problem I have is, I jsut do not believe the stats. I have rarely found that misleading inaccurate information works to one's advantage for long, on any topic. Because eventually the real picture gets disclosed. I wish WISPs really did have 8% of the market. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: "John Scrivner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "WISPA General List" Sent: Wednesday, May 31, 2006 12:50 AM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Sorry TomI am going to drive a truck through your remarks here. :-) Tom DeReggi wrote: 8% means... You do not get preferrential treatment in legislation. 8% means that 8% of the people are using our service which means that our politicians have to look at how to serve the needs of those customers. It is not about us. It is about our customers. That is the job of public servants. You do not get subsidees to foster growth of a startup industry. Wrong. Grants, loans, etc. are based on needs of CUSTOMERS not of providers. USDA does not care if you get broadband to Farmer Dan via a string between two tin cans if it works. By the way, I was the first broadband in my town, we are not a startup industry any more. You get taxed equally as telcos and cable companies. Do you really think tax policy is different if you serve 8% than if you serve 1/2%? I assure you if the broadband tax cometh, you will be paying, regardless of how many customers you serve. ISPs have a viable alternative, so LECs no longer need to share their networks with ISPs. Like AT&T is so open with their network? PLEASE! 8% is a HUGE percentage of market share. I'm not sure we want to take credit for that. At this stage I think it could work against us. There is only good that can come from people thinking 8% of the US is getting their service from us. We have been on the radar for a long time. Now it is time to deliver broadband over that radar! (That reminds me...where is that 5.4 GHz band!) :-) Scriv Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: "John Scrivner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "WISPA General List" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 6:31 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! The point is we have a well known, if not largely credible source, who has just released a report that says we (Fixed Wireless Broadband Providers) are serving the broadband needs of approximately 8% of US home users. We obviously have been completely ignored in other reports and surveys so for once it is nice to see us represented in some statistically important degree. I am not really that concerned about the exact number of customers. It is just nice to see us making the report in some meaningful way. Scriv David E. Smith wrote: John Scrivner wrote: Check this out from the Pew report. It appears that fixed wireless is much bigger than what even I thought. According to this report 8% of all broadband connections in the US are delivered via fixed broadband wireless. Ouch. That study looks to be horribly methodologically flawed. (It's at http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Broadband_trends2006.pdf if you're interested.) Their survey required the responders to know what they were talking about -- if you have DSL, but a wireless router/access point, and you're not all that technically competent, you may well say your laptop has "wireless" Internet access when that's not quite what they intended. Here's the question they asked: Does the computer you use at home connect to the internet through a dial-up telephone line, or do you have some other type of connection, such as a DSL-enabled phone line, a cable TV modem, a wireless connection, or a T-1 or fiber optic connection? That question gives me a headache, and I'd like to think I do know what I'm talking about most of the time. Note that their survey only had about 1500 Internet-using responders, which is jst barely enough to be considered a statistically valid sample for a population of a couple hundred million. (Their methodology is a bit vague on whether they're sampling all Americans, or just adults, or...) Don't get me wrong; it's an exciting quote. I just hope everyone takes it with the proper perspective, and realizes that it's probably "high" by some unknowable order of magnitude. David Smith MVN.net -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- WISPA W
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "WISPA General List" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 6:19 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Profit is irrelevant for an early stage growth company. -Matt Peter R. wrote: Because number of subs is the measuring stick. Revenue is more important; but profit is the most important. Not many can speak to profit, so they measure in subs. - Peter Matt Liotta wrote: Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the quality of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly whose ARPU is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is only $1.2M per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for very little revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an Atlanta-based CLEC that in recent time went public. Today they have about 17,000 customers, but their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 customers, an ARPU of $761 would be worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a different way, with 17,000 customers an ARPU of $100 would only be $20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in now. A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of customers. -Matt -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Mark Koskenmaki wrote: If the FCC had not thrown the 911 monkeywrench into it, I'd have found a way to roll my own VOIP service and we'd have been selling it at only a slight markup, just to be an added value to my broadband. The 911 thing is just a barrier to entry that for most markets is easy to overcome. Further, there is no reason to only have a slight markup; there is real money to be made on VoIP. When your average business is paying >$0.04 per minute for long distance and it costs you <$0.005 per minute there is some easy money to be made. Although, I think making money on long distance is only going to work for a short time. It is also quite easy to make money on lines. Clearly, bundling VoIP with your data service is a viable way to increase your ARPU. We have a wholesale VoIP program for WISPs that can help if your interested. We just completed an interconnection with Level3 giving access to most of the US from a DID perspective and we will soon have support for E911 in most the markets where it actually exists. There is still no solution to the VoIP E911 requirement for markets that do even have E911 for POTS lines. -Matt -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Tom DeReggi wrote: Matt, used an example of Vonage, that did not show profits. But if that were the case with all investments VCs would not be in business. A certain percentage of them do very well and are very profitable. Thats what VCs are banking on. Some will be highly profitable. A company that is highly profitable, and does not sacrifice in other areas, will most likely sell for higher. Not in all cases, as profitabilty can be used to mislead the status of a company. For example if necessary upgrades are bypassed to show higher profitabilty, when in truth its neglect resulting in reliabilty and performance being sacrificed. A run down network so to speak. Thats why I think there is no real answer on how to evaluate a company based on jsut comparing wether a number is higher than another in one specific area. Actually, Vonage is a successful VC investment. They don't have to be profitable or even survive for very long in the public market, but the fact that they when public allows the VCs to exit with a large gain, which is all they care about. -Matt -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Thanks Mark. Much appreciated. George Mark Nash wrote: I agree. Here's the thing. I put 1 or $1.00 in every numeric field so the #DIV/0 error didn't come up and freak people out. The Infrastructure costs, if any, will appear immediately in the SECOND month. Also, I have a sheet in here called Projects, which is a future use thing that I am using now to just figure out WHEN I can afford them, based on my monthly projections. Mark Nash Network Engineer UnwiredOnline.Net 350 Holly Street Junction City, OR 97448 http://www.uwol.net 541-998- 541-998-5599 fax -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Mark Nash wrote: I have a spreadsheet that I've developed that gives me 5 years of projected monthly costs/revenue/running costs/running revenue/cost per subscriber/debt paydown. It summarizes to 5-year p&l, 5-year debt, 5-year business value (1xannual), 5-year resale value (business value-debt). It does not take into account everything...just: - Existing subs (starting point) - average sub monthly fee - Projected subs/month - any admin cost per sub that you want to put in - CPE cost (estimate high) - installation fee per new sub - referral/commission/discount per new sub - cost to sub out installation of new sub - bandwidth per mb - subs per mb (auto-calculates in the monthly costs as # of subs grow) - cost of tech support person - subs per tech support person (again, auto-calculates) - as an option, monthly amount per sub to outsource tech support - monthly overhead costs (advertising, rent, insurance, etc) - annual overhead costs - special project income (other income and expenses for the project(s)) That might be all. Hit me off-list and I'll let you have it, without my info, of course. I've gotten over the idea that cash flow is everything. Cash flow is alot, but not everything. It took me quite awhile to realize that I should put in the info about business value. This thing lets me play with numbers that affect the profit and loss AS WELL AS the VALUE of my business, which is important to look at over time. Mark Nash Network Engineer UnwiredOnline.Net 350 Holly Street Junction City, OR 97448 http://www.uwol.net 541-998- 541-998-5599 fax I'd take a copy Mark. Thanks for the offer. One of these days we ought to take some time to meet each other seeing we're just "down the road" -- George Rogato Welcome to WISPA www.wispa.org http://signup.wispa.org/ -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
rent profit is irrelevant, when considering company totals during the early growth period. But calcualted future Profit clearly is relevant, as far as how much profit will be made per sub, and how soon. Profitabilty can be misleading when jsut considering accounting paperwork (profit loss / balance sheets) I'll give an example: Lets say a company gets an ROI in 1 year. And had 4 years of selling subs. And by the 4th year, profit would be being made from each sub. But then lets says a company had a 100% growth spurt in the 5th year. And lets say there is a 1 year ROI, meaning 12 dollars needs to be spent for ever new dollar that is made. Because the growth rate of the company is so much higher in the later year, the expendatures are far greater than the revenue comming in from the samller customer base taken on the first 4 years. Thus, it appears the company is losing money and not profiting. When in actuallity, the company has record high success. All pre-existing subs ARE 100% profitable, and lot of new growth has been made to replicate the previous years successful model. So yes, profitable books may mean a company is not growing and not making new sales. However, showing the average profit per sub, after the ROI period is a VERY relevant bit of information. Its what defines the value of the business model in my mind. In other words: Forcasted Profit margin based on current years proven track record. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: "Matt Liotta" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "WISPA General List" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 6:19 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Profit is irrelevant for an early stage growth company. -Matt Peter R. wrote: Because number of subs is the measuring stick. Revenue is more important; but profit is the most important. Not many can speak to profit, so they measure in subs. - Peter Matt Liotta wrote: Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the quality of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly whose ARPU is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is only $1.2M per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for very little revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an Atlanta-based CLEC that in recent time went public. Today they have about 17,000 customers, but their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 customers, an ARPU of $761 would be worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a different way, with 17,000 customers an ARPU of $100 would only be $20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in now. A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of customers. -Matt -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- George Rogato Welcome to WISPA www.wispa.org http://signup.wispa.org/ -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
I have a spreadsheet that I've developed that gives me 5 years of projected monthly costs/revenue/running costs/running revenue/cost per subscriber/debt paydown. It summarizes to 5-year p&l, 5-year debt, 5-year business value (1xannual), 5-year resale value (business value-debt). It does not take into account everything...just: - Existing subs (starting point) - average sub monthly fee - Projected subs/month - any admin cost per sub that you want to put in - CPE cost (estimate high) - installation fee per new sub - referral/commission/discount per new sub - cost to sub out installation of new sub - bandwidth per mb - subs per mb (auto-calculates in the monthly costs as # of subs grow) - cost of tech support person - subs per tech support person (again, auto-calculates) - as an option, monthly amount per sub to outsource tech support - monthly overhead costs (advertising, rent, insurance, etc) - annual overhead costs - special project income (other income and expenses for the project(s)) That might be all. Hit me off-list and I'll let you have it, without my info, of course. I've gotten over the idea that cash flow is everything. Cash flow is alot, but not everything. It took me quite awhile to realize that I should put in the info about business value. This thing lets me play with numbers that affect the profit and loss AS WELL AS the VALUE of my business, which is important to look at over time. Mark Nash Network Engineer UnwiredOnline.Net 350 Holly Street Junction City, OR 97448 http://www.uwol.net 541-998- 541-998-5599 fax - Original Message - From: "Mark Koskenmaki" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "WISPA General List" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 9:34 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Interesting. My highest priced service level is only $65. I have about 80/20 percent mix $38 / $25 per mo customers. I have only 2 that exceed $40 / mo. This is what my business model was built on. I expect that at 500 customers, I will have a really decent paycheck and pretty solid stream of reinvestment at the same time. North East Oregon Fastnet, LLC 509-593-4061 personal correspondence to: mark at neofast dot net sales inquiries to: purchasing at neofast dot net Fast Internet, NO WIRES! - - Original Message - From: "Brad Belton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'WISPA General List'" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 4:56 PM Subject: RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE! No, not really. Our average RMC is similar to CBeyond, but the big difference is how much we keep of that RMC as it compares to CBeyond. CBeyond is still pumping dollars into their direct competitor (MaBell) and operators like us that own their own network do not. I know of ISPs like us all over the country that have similar RMC rates and have been very successful. We don't even consider deploying a radio for less than $200.00 RMC and that will typically require a setup fee that covers 90% of our upfront costs. Majority of the time we require a T1 commitment at $329.95 RMC before deploying. Like I've always said Patrick, the fewer radios we have in the air the better! lol This is not to knock the sub $100 RMC market. Clearly that is a model that has also been a proven winner when applied properly. We work closely with a dozen or more wISPs all of which have proven business models and all are successful. Best, Brad -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Patrick Leary Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 6:15 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE! I stand corrected, fair enough Matt, but wow. That's pretty rich monthly rates and an especially rich ARPU. Patrick -Original Message- From: Matt Liotta [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 3:56 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Again, pointing to CBeyonds numbers it is clear that their average customer is not buying big TDM pipes or fiber-based services. Their starting package is $495 per month, which is just a single T1, while their next package up --which is priced higher than their ARPU-- is $895, which is just two T1s. That's 17,000 high ARPU customers delivering services that technologically are easy for WISPs. There are operators on this list that will sell a customer 3 megs or more of service for less than $495 per month. I'm not saying there isn't a market for low ARPU customers, but the scale required to make any real money seems like quite a challenge. -Matt Patrick Leary wrote: >Any operator with some decent residential mix would be drooling to have >a >$100 ARPU Matt. No matter what technology is being used, that makes for an >excellent ROI. Those CLECs you mention are also likely providing fib
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
llars needs to be spent for ever new dollar that is made. Because the growth rate of the company is so much higher in the later year, the expendatures are far greater than the revenue comming in from the samller customer base taken on the first 4 years. Thus, it appears the company is losing money and not profiting. When in actuallity, the company has record high success. All pre-existing subs ARE 100% profitable, and lot of new growth has been made to replicate the previous years successful model. So yes, profitable books may mean a company is not growing and not making new sales. However, showing the average profit per sub, after the ROI period is a VERY relevant bit of information. Its what defines the value of the business model in my mind. In other words: Forcasted Profit margin based on current years proven track record. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: "Matt Liotta" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "WISPA General List" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 6:19 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Profit is irrelevant for an early stage growth company. -Matt Peter R. wrote: Because number of subs is the measuring stick. Revenue is more important; but profit is the most important. Not many can speak to profit, so they measure in subs. - Peter Matt Liotta wrote: Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the quality of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly whose ARPU is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is only $1.2M per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for very little revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an Atlanta-based CLEC that in recent time went public. Today they have about 17,000 customers, but their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 customers, an ARPU of $761 would be worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a different way, with 17,000 customers an ARPU of $100 would only be $20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in now. A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of customers. -Matt -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Sorry TomI am going to drive a truck through your remarks here. :-) Tom DeReggi wrote: 8% means... You do not get preferrential treatment in legislation. 8% means that 8% of the people are using our service which means that our politicians have to look at how to serve the needs of those customers. It is not about us. It is about our customers. That is the job of public servants. You do not get subsidees to foster growth of a startup industry. Wrong. Grants, loans, etc. are based on needs of CUSTOMERS not of providers. USDA does not care if you get broadband to Farmer Dan via a string between two tin cans if it works. By the way, I was the first broadband in my town, we are not a startup industry any more. You get taxed equally as telcos and cable companies. Do you really think tax policy is different if you serve 8% than if you serve 1/2%? I assure you if the broadband tax cometh, you will be paying, regardless of how many customers you serve. ISPs have a viable alternative, so LECs no longer need to share their networks with ISPs. Like AT&T is so open with their network? PLEASE! 8% is a HUGE percentage of market share. I'm not sure we want to take credit for that. At this stage I think it could work against us. There is only good that can come from people thinking 8% of the US is getting their service from us. We have been on the radar for a long time. Now it is time to deliver broadband over that radar! (That reminds me...where is that 5.4 GHz band!) :-) Scriv Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: "John Scrivner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "WISPA General List" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 6:31 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! The point is we have a well known, if not largely credible source, who has just released a report that says we (Fixed Wireless Broadband Providers) are serving the broadband needs of approximately 8% of US home users. We obviously have been completely ignored in other reports and surveys so for once it is nice to see us represented in some statistically important degree. I am not really that concerned about the exact number of customers. It is just nice to see us making the report in some meaningful way. Scriv David E. Smith wrote: John Scrivner wrote: Check this out from the Pew report. It appears that fixed wireless is much bigger than what even I thought. According to this report 8% of all broadband connections in the US are delivered via fixed broadband wireless. Ouch. That study looks to be horribly methodologically flawed. (It's at http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Broadband_trends2006.pdf if you're interested.) Their survey required the responders to know what they were talking about -- if you have DSL, but a wireless router/access point, and you're not all that technically competent, you may well say your laptop has "wireless" Internet access when that's not quite what they intended. Here's the question they asked: Does the computer you use at home connect to the internet through a dial-up telephone line, or do you have some other type of connection, such as a DSL-enabled phone line, a cable TV modem, a wireless connection, or a T-1 or fiber optic connection? That question gives me a headache, and I'd like to think I do know what I'm talking about most of the time. Note that their survey only had about 1500 Internet-using responders, which is jst barely enough to be considered a statistically valid sample for a population of a couple hundred million. (Their methodology is a bit vague on whether they're sampling all Americans, or just adults, or...) Don't get me wrong; it's an exciting quote. I just hope everyone takes it with the proper perspective, and realizes that it's probably "high" by some unknowable order of magnitude. David Smith MVN.net -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Interesting. My highest priced service level is only $65. I have about 80/20 percent mix $38 / $25 per mo customers. I have only 2 that exceed $40 / mo. This is what my business model was built on. I expect that at 500 customers, I will have a really decent paycheck and pretty solid stream of reinvestment at the same time. North East Oregon Fastnet, LLC 509-593-4061 personal correspondence to: mark at neofast dot net sales inquiries to: purchasing at neofast dot net Fast Internet, NO WIRES! - - Original Message - From: "Brad Belton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'WISPA General List'" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 4:56 PM Subject: RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE! > No, not really. Our average RMC is similar to CBeyond, but the big > difference is how much we keep of that RMC as it compares to CBeyond. > CBeyond is still pumping dollars into their direct competitor (MaBell) and > operators like us that own their own network do not. > > I know of ISPs like us all over the country that have similar RMC rates and > have been very successful. We don't even consider deploying a radio for > less than $200.00 RMC and that will typically require a setup fee that > covers 90% of our upfront costs. Majority of the time we require a T1 > commitment at $329.95 RMC before deploying. > > Like I've always said Patrick, the fewer radios we have in the air the > better! lol > > This is not to knock the sub $100 RMC market. Clearly that is a model that > has also been a proven winner when applied properly. We work closely with a > dozen or more wISPs all of which have proven business models and all are > successful. > > Best, > > > Brad > > > > > -Original Message- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On > Behalf Of Patrick Leary > Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 6:15 PM > To: 'WISPA General List' > Subject: RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE! > > I stand corrected, fair enough Matt, but wow. That's pretty rich monthly > rates and an especially rich ARPU. > > Patrick > > -Original Message- > From: Matt Liotta [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 3:56 PM > To: WISPA General List > Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! > > Again, pointing to CBeyonds numbers it is clear that their average > customer is not buying big TDM pipes or fiber-based services. Their > starting package is $495 per month, which is just a single T1, while > their next package up --which is priced higher than their ARPU-- is > $895, which is just two T1s. That's 17,000 high ARPU customers > delivering services that technologically are easy for WISPs. There are > operators on this list that will sell a customer 3 megs or more of > service for less than $495 per month. > > I'm not saying there isn't a market for low ARPU customers, but the > scale required to make any real money seems like quite a challenge. > > -Matt > > Patrick Leary wrote: > > >Any operator with some decent residential mix would be drooling to have a > >$100 ARPU Matt. No matter what technology is being used, that makes for an > >excellent ROI. Those CLECs you mention are also likely providing fiber and > >big TDM pipes as a primary focus. > > > >Patrick Leary > >AVP Marketing > >Alvarion, Inc. > >o: 650.314.2628 > >c: 760.580.0080 > >Vonage: 650.641.1243 > > > >-Original Message- > >From: Matt Liotta [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > >Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 2:52 PM > >To: WISPA General List > >Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! > > > >Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the quality > >of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly whose ARPU > >is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is only $1.2M > >per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for very little > >revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an Atlanta-based CLEC that in > >recent time went public. Today they have about 17,000 customers, but > >their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 customers, an ARPU of $761 would be > >worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a different way, with 17,000 customers an > >ARPU of $100 would only be $20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in > >now. > > > >A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of > >customers. > > > >-Matt > > > >Charles Wu wrote: > > > > > > > >>>30% of what number Charles? > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>> > >>At the
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
This discussion always fascinates me, as almost my entire market is rural and residential. I have just 3% business customers right now. The entire rest is residential. I have never formally surveyed my customers, less than 10% spend $100 or on internet / phone / data services, but I would say that unless I was selling cellular, I could not get to $100 per customer. They just won't spend that much. Now, if we throw in TV to the mix, I could get there... But so far, that's not really been an option to us small operators. However, satellite TV is well established here, and if you're cheap, there's plenty of over the air broadcasting, including community owned translator system. Instead, what I'm seeing, is that my customers are dropping landlines, and going with VOIP voice services, and cellular.This means that most of them are getting voice, long distance, and broadband for the same or less than it used to cost for dialup. In fact, my best advertising has been a multilevel marketing group selling VOIP in my area, and they suggest my wireless system for internet instead of cable or standalone dsl. If the FCC had not thrown the 911 monkeywrench into it, I'd have found a way to roll my own VOIP service and we'd have been selling it at only a slight markup, just to be an added value to my broadband. I learned long ago, that sustainable businesses are built upon offering people 3 things: 1. what they need. 2. Getting thier money's worth. 3. Priced reasonably. And I like to add #4... A decent relationship with your customer - listen, talk, be a friend and loyal to them. North East Oregon Fastnet, LLC 509-593-4061 personal correspondence to: mark at neofast dot net sales inquiries to: purchasing at neofast dot net Fast Internet, NO WIRES! - - Original Message - From: "Patrick Leary" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'WISPA General List'" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 3:14 PM Subject: RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE! > Any operator with some decent residential mix would be drooling to have a > $100 ARPU Matt. No matter what technology is being used, that makes for an > excellent ROI. Those CLECs you mention are also likely providing fiber and > big TDM pipes as a primary focus. > > Patrick Leary > AVP Marketing > Alvarion, Inc. > o: 650.314.2628 > c: 760.580.0080 > Vonage: 650.641.1243 > > -Original Message- > From: Matt Liotta [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 2:52 PM > To: WISPA General List > Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! > > Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the quality > of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly whose ARPU > is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is only $1.2M > per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for very little > revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an Atlanta-based CLEC that in > recent time went public. Today they have about 17,000 customers, but > their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 customers, an ARPU of $761 would be > worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a different way, with 17,000 customers an > ARPU of $100 would only be $20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in > now. > > A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of > customers. > > -Matt > > Charles Wu wrote: > > >>30% of what number Charles? > >> > >> > > > >At the last show, 500+ attended representing about 350ish operators > >Of these, about 40% responded > > > >Unfortunately, we have a confidentiality agreement with our survey > >respondents, so I cannot list names > > > > > > > >>How many WISPs said they have over 1,000 CPE. I can only think of about 20 > >> > >> > >with that high a number. > > > >A recent Tim Saunders article in BBW World alone that showed about 40+ > >Wireless Network Operators w/ 1,000+ CPE (and there are a lot more that Tim > >missed) > > > >Keep in mind, the majority of these operators no longer actively > participate > >in these list-servs, most of em are busy out in the field installing > >customers / running their businesses =) > > > >Did you know that in Sedona, AZ alone (middle of no-where in Northern AZ > >mountains), w/ a total population of ~15k, there are 2 Operators w/ 1,000+ > >CPE? (and there's also cable and DSL competition in town too) > > > >Even at the end of my equipment distribution days (late 2004), I had at > >least 50 customers whom I'd been working with over the years who had > >purchased over 1,000 CPE from me...I know for s
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Here is an example of a ROI period ending. I put in a $500/mo T1 and rent a $100/mo tower space. My fixed costs are $600/mo I put in a $1000 AP and router, and buy 100 $200 CPE. I am now $21000 in the hole. Each customer is paying me $50/mo. ($5000/mo total) My ROI is 5 months, and my fixed cost per customer is $6 (upstream bandwidth and tower rent), leaving me $32/mo ($3200) "after ROI" profit. That's all fine and good if this is your hobby, and you are not trying to make a living at this. I just need 5 of these towers/AP's/model to pay for salaries, trucks, replacement CPE, installers, tools, and trips to conventions and trade shows. I also need 3 more of these towers to pay interest on the bank note from borrowing the original $21,000, which was more like $200,000 by the time we over-spent, under planned, over estimated the demand, underestimated the costs, overestimated the employees abilities to work, underestimated the damage that lighting can cause, and so on and so forth. I also need 7 more of these towers to offset the cost of not actually installing 100 clients on day 1, and not getting $100 tower rent, not getting 100 clients per AP, and not getting $200 CPE, and to offset the deadbeats who write hot checks, paying the cell phone bill, buy the fender when an antenna falls off of the roof during an install, buy the insurance to pay for it next time, buy new PCs, put tires on the trucks, change the oil, buying a mail server, buying another server to remove the spam from the first mail server, buying spare servers, routers, tools, and paying consultants when I cannot figure it out. Then I need another 14 towers to pay for the psychotherapist when go nuts trying to manage 2900 subscribers, who are all bitching and moaning because their PC has a virus, or their kid is downloading porn, or maybe they are getting spam, or they can't get their bittorrent client to download more than 500kbps. I am not there yet. We are still working on getting tower number 7 online, and installing customer number 350'ish, and I am not on the mood altering drugs... yet. Eventually, there is a model there for making money in this business somewhere between the hobby stage and the looney bin. The ways to do that should be the same as any other business whether you are selling internet, real estate, health care, computers, or donuts. 1: Time is money, so don't waste time or money. 2. Don't cut corners. 3. Don't piss off the customers. Pete Davis NoDial.net Travis Johnson wrote: Tom, There is no such thing as "average profit per sub after ROI period". Let me give an example: I lease all my CPE. It is a recurring monthly debt that will never go away. Even after 3 years, when I own the CPE, there will be new CPE that needs purchased... and thus new towers, new AP's, new backhauls, new routers, new bandwidth, new whatever. Even if I move that paid for CPE to a new customer on the edges of my network, there are still costs mentioned above for that customer. Maybe I'm not thinking the same as you, but I can never see an "after ROI period". It never happens. Travis Microserv Tom DeReggi wrote: I agree current profit is irrelevant, when considering company totals during the early growth period. But calcualted future Profit clearly is relevant, as far as how much profit will be made per sub, and how soon. Profitabilty can be misleading when jsut considering accounting paperwork (profit loss / balance sheets) I'll give an example: Lets say a company gets an ROI in 1 year. And had 4 years of selling subs. And by the 4th year, profit would be being made from each sub. But then lets says a company had a 100% growth spurt in the 5th year. And lets say there is a 1 year ROI, meaning 12 dollars needs to be spent for ever new dollar that is made. Because the growth rate of the company is so much higher in the later year, the expendatures are far greater than the revenue comming in from the samller customer base taken on the first 4 years. Thus, it appears the company is losing money and not profiting. When in actuallity, the company has record high success. All pre-existing subs ARE 100% profitable, and lot of new growth has been made to replicate the previous years successful model. So yes, profitable books may mean a company is not growing and not making new sales. However, showing the average profit per sub, after the ROI period is a VERY relevant bit of information. Its what defines the value of the business model in my mind. In other words: Forcasted Profit margin based on current years proven track record. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: "Matt Liotta" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "WISPA General List" Sent: Tuesday, May 3
RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
By the way folks, this is a great and meaningful thread on an important topic. Patrick -Original Message- From: Tom DeReggi [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 8:13 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Yes but Vonage is also a poor example of your arguement as 75% of their expendatures is in advertising. That means 75% of their expendatures could be stopped on demand immediately, without reducing revenue. How quickly could Vonage become profitable, when they reach the approrpiate scale, and they stop marketing? I haven't done the math, but it paints a different picture of potential profitabilty. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: "Matt Liotta" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "WISPA General List" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 10:48 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! > You make a logical point, but the market seems to disagree. Take the > recent Vonage IPO as an example. By all accounts the IPO was a disaster. > They offered their shares at $17 and it is now trading <$13. From the > financials it is clear --at least to me-- that Vonage has no future hope > of profitability. Yet, they managed convince enough people to raise $500M > and while their market cap has dropped from $2.6B, it is still $2B, which > isn't bad considering. I mean this is a company that spends $279 per > customer to acquire each one, which means it takes over 11 months just to > recoup the marketing costs. In 2005, they acquired 870,000 new customers, > which even if they had acquired for free they still wouldn't represent > enough revenue to pay for operations. > > This company simply will not survive and their financials show it. Yet, > their market value is entirely based on their revenue and its ability to > grow. > > -Matt > > Tom DeReggi wrote: > >> I agree current profit is irrelevant, when considering company totals >> during the early growth period. >> But calcualted future Profit clearly is relevant, as far as how much >> profit will be made per sub, and how soon. >> Profitabilty can be misleading when jsut considering accounting paperwork >> (profit loss / balance sheets) >> >> I'll give an example: >> >> Lets say a company gets an ROI in 1 year. And had 4 years of selling >> subs. And by the 4th year, profit would be being made from each sub. >> But then lets says a company had a 100% growth spurt in the 5th year. And >> lets say there is a 1 year ROI, meaning 12 dollars needs to be spent for >> ever new dollar that is made. Because the growth rate of the company is >> so much higher in the later year, the expendatures are far greater than >> the revenue comming in from the samller customer base taken on the first >> 4 years. Thus, it appears the company is losing money and not profiting. >> >> When in actuallity, the company has record high success. All >> pre-existing subs ARE 100% profitable, and lot of new growth has been >> made to replicate the previous years successful model. >> >> So yes, profitable books may mean a company is not growing and not making >> new sales. >> >> However, showing the average profit per sub, after the ROI period is a >> VERY relevant bit of information. Its what defines the value of the >> business model in my mind. >> >> In other words: >> >> Forcasted Profit margin based on current years proven track record. >> >> Tom DeReggi >> RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc >> IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband >> >> >> - Original Message - From: "Matt Liotta" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "WISPA General List" >> Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 6:19 PM >> Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! >> >> >>> Profit is irrelevant for an early stage growth company. >>> >>> -Matt >>> >>> Peter R. wrote: >>> >>>> Because number of subs is the measuring stick. >>>> Revenue is more important; but profit is the most important. >>>> Not many can speak to profit, so they measure in subs. >>>> >>>> - Peter >>>> >>>> >>>> Matt Liotta wrote: >>>> >>>>> Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the >>>>> quality of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly >>>>> whose ARPU is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is >>>>> only $1.2M per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot
RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Fair question and you are right to call me on it Dylan. Roadstar went from a wi-fi based product, went from that to another brand, and from that to Alvarion. Each move was motivated by a desire to much improve the performance from a reliability standpoint, remote and more comprehensive management of the network, reduce faults, increase capacity, and pretty much improve everything so they could scale without scaling the headaches they were experiencing. As well, it is also true that they wanted to increase the equity value of the network. They gained all these things in transitioning to Alvarion. You can are welcome to reach out and ask him if you wish, while as busy as all of us he is pretty assessable. - Patrick From: Dylan Oliver [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 6:52 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! On 5/30/06, Patrick Leary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: You are right about our having some folks going back years. Maybe the longest example would Jason's Midcoast in Maine. Midcoast goes back at least to 1997. In addition to those, we have a pretty good crop of more recent operators that have moved upstream, so to speak. A prototypical example of one like that is Marty Dougherty's Roadstar Internet in Loudon County, VA. He transitioned upward twice from where he started in terms of vendor choice. We also have a healthy number of CLECs, especially post-DSL deregulation. Patrick, If you don't mind, please elucidate us (me) on the subject of upward mobility in the BWIA foodchain .. I'm intrigued by the term "vendor choice" - what are the criteria? What are the benefits of assumed standing? What patterns do you see in the success and failure of network operators? Thanks, -- Dylan Oliver Primaverity, LLC This footnote confirms that this email message has been scanned by PineApp Mail-SeCure for the presence of malicious code, vandals & computer viruses. This footnote confirms that this email message has been scanned by PineApp Mail-SeCure for the presence of malicious code, vandals & computer viruses. -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Ouch. Its got to make you want to throw up, doesn't it. Its amazing what companies get away with financially. It makes you wonder, about the intelligence of the investors. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: "Matt Liotta" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "WISPA General List" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 11:22 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! As I stated, "In 2005, they acquired 870,000 new customers, which even if they had acquired for free they still wouldn't represent enough revenue to pay for operations." In other words, if they stop marketing they aren't profitable. Worse, their valuation is based on growth, which they won't get without marketing. -Matt Tom DeReggi wrote: Yes but Vonage is also a poor example of your arguement as 75% of their expendatures is in advertising. That means 75% of their expendatures could be stopped on demand immediately, without reducing revenue. How quickly could Vonage become profitable, when they reach the approrpiate scale, and they stop marketing? I haven't done the math, but it paints a different picture of potential profitabilty. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: "Matt Liotta" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "WISPA General List" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 10:48 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! You make a logical point, but the market seems to disagree. Take the recent Vonage IPO as an example. By all accounts the IPO was a disaster. They offered their shares at $17 and it is now trading <$13. From the financials it is clear --at least to me-- that Vonage has no future hope of profitability. Yet, they managed convince enough people to raise $500M and while their market cap has dropped from $2.6B, it is still $2B, which isn't bad considering. I mean this is a company that spends $279 per customer to acquire each one, which means it takes over 11 months just to recoup the marketing costs. In 2005, they acquired 870,000 new customers, which even if they had acquired for free they still wouldn't represent enough revenue to pay for operations. This company simply will not survive and their financials show it. Yet, their market value is entirely based on their revenue and its ability to grow. -Matt Tom DeReggi wrote: I agree current profit is irrelevant, when considering company totals during the early growth period. But calcualted future Profit clearly is relevant, as far as how much profit will be made per sub, and how soon. Profitabilty can be misleading when jsut considering accounting paperwork (profit loss / balance sheets) I'll give an example: Lets say a company gets an ROI in 1 year. And had 4 years of selling subs. And by the 4th year, profit would be being made from each sub. But then lets says a company had a 100% growth spurt in the 5th year. And lets say there is a 1 year ROI, meaning 12 dollars needs to be spent for ever new dollar that is made. Because the growth rate of the company is so much higher in the later year, the expendatures are far greater than the revenue comming in from the samller customer base taken on the first 4 years. Thus, it appears the company is losing money and not profiting. When in actuallity, the company has record high success. All pre-existing subs ARE 100% profitable, and lot of new growth has been made to replicate the previous years successful model. So yes, profitable books may mean a company is not growing and not making new sales. However, showing the average profit per sub, after the ROI period is a VERY relevant bit of information. Its what defines the value of the business model in my mind. In other words: Forcasted Profit margin based on current years proven track record. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: "Matt Liotta" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "WISPA General List" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 6:19 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Profit is irrelevant for an early stage growth company. -Matt Peter R. wrote: Because number of subs is the measuring stick. Revenue is more important; but profit is the most important. Not many can speak to profit, so they measure in subs. - Peter Matt Liotta wrote: Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the quality of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly whose ARPU is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is only $1.2M per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for very little revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an Atlanta-based CLEC that in recent time went public. Today they have about 17,000 customers, but their ARPU is $761. With
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Travis, Excellent point. My suggestion does not match your model. My model is different, as I am the financers of our radio equipment. I've paid cash in full upfront for every radio. My cash flow model sucks, but at the end of the first year, its all profit. (All our sales must be a 1 year or less total ROI to accept.) (Well maybe not all profit as there is maintenance and support). The point I was making is that not all business model have the reoccurring cost proportional to the revenue for life. Some business models allow for teh reoccuring costs to go away after a certain time, or atleast not to continue to grow at the same rate as the revenue does. This is when profits are realized. For example in our business model we had huge upfront tower leases. It was tough, and showed negatively on our books. But now that I have them covered in my cash flow positive business, I can continue to grow my customer base without continueing to increase my tower lease costs. Therefore allowing for a higher rate of profitabilty later in the road. Another example is our routers. We spend a lot of money on R&D for our routers, and in our growth stage we lost financially. Not enough volume to recognize the savings of owning the intellectual property of our own routers. However, as we grow our client base, our costs for router equipment does not grow with it, as they scale to high capacity and the cost involved to add new routers is cheap now, since a large poirtion of the R&D stage is over. So maybe a better way to evaluate is... Total profit per sub, based on the life of the CPE??? If you finance your CPE for 3 years, and your business model estimates a CPE replacement every three years, you could ask your self what percentage of the revenue over 3 years is profit after paying the CPE lease? Or what ever criteria you want to use for cost. When other companiess were looking to buy us, we put a higher value on our subs, as it took less cost to maintain the revenue long term. Anotherway to look at it is You can't look at a company's profitabilty based on totals to date, bundling all years. You must seperate the years. The total profit that can be made over 5 years from the subs that were installed this year is This allows the consideration of total company costs. But does not allow the higher growth rate spending to scew the perception of the companies successes. Or maybe another way to word this is Average ARPU means nothing, unless it is disclosed with additional data that shows Average Cost Per User. I don't care how the financial model is structured, as long as the revenues and costs are considered in the same manner, and can be compared to determine average profit. Ultimately determining the rate at whcih average profit per users grows or drops will define a companioes long term profitabilty or viabilty to stay alive. Its also possible a model will result in a decrease in profit, if retails prices drop in the future due to competition, or higher failure rate is acheived than anticipated. This is the whole concept of VC lending. That in 5 years one will ahve atleast 500% return on investment. Meaning as a company grows, it has the ability to become more profitable. Matt, used an example of Vonage, that did not show profits. But if that were the case with all investments VCs would not be in business. A certain percentage of them do very well and are very profitable. Thats what VCs are banking on. Some will be highly profitable. A company that is highly profitable, and does not sacrifice in other areas, will most likely sell for higher. Not in all cases, as profitabilty can be used to mislead the status of a company. For example if necessary upgrades are bypassed to show higher profitabilty, when in truth its neglect resulting in reliabilty and performance being sacrificed. A run down network so to speak. Thats why I think there is no real answer on how to evaluate a company based on jsut comparing wether a number is higher than another in one specific area. A successfull business is one that has many areas that are balanced as far as numbers reached. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: "Travis Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "WISPA General List" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 10:54 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Tom, There is no such thing as "average profit per sub after ROI period". Let me give an example: I lease all my CPE. It is a recurring monthly debt that will never go away. Even after 3 years, when I own the CPE, there will be new CPE that needs purchased... and thus new towers, new AP's, new backhauls, new routers, new bandwidth, new whatever. Even if I move that paid for CPE to a new customer on the edges of my network, there are still costs mentioned abo
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
As I stated, "In 2005, they acquired 870,000 new customers, which even if they had acquired for free they still wouldn't represent enough revenue to pay for operations." In other words, if they stop marketing they aren't profitable. Worse, their valuation is based on growth, which they won't get without marketing. -Matt Tom DeReggi wrote: Yes but Vonage is also a poor example of your arguement as 75% of their expendatures is in advertising. That means 75% of their expendatures could be stopped on demand immediately, without reducing revenue. How quickly could Vonage become profitable, when they reach the approrpiate scale, and they stop marketing? I haven't done the math, but it paints a different picture of potential profitabilty. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: "Matt Liotta" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "WISPA General List" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 10:48 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! You make a logical point, but the market seems to disagree. Take the recent Vonage IPO as an example. By all accounts the IPO was a disaster. They offered their shares at $17 and it is now trading <$13. From the financials it is clear --at least to me-- that Vonage has no future hope of profitability. Yet, they managed convince enough people to raise $500M and while their market cap has dropped from $2.6B, it is still $2B, which isn't bad considering. I mean this is a company that spends $279 per customer to acquire each one, which means it takes over 11 months just to recoup the marketing costs. In 2005, they acquired 870,000 new customers, which even if they had acquired for free they still wouldn't represent enough revenue to pay for operations. This company simply will not survive and their financials show it. Yet, their market value is entirely based on their revenue and its ability to grow. -Matt Tom DeReggi wrote: I agree current profit is irrelevant, when considering company totals during the early growth period. But calcualted future Profit clearly is relevant, as far as how much profit will be made per sub, and how soon. Profitabilty can be misleading when jsut considering accounting paperwork (profit loss / balance sheets) I'll give an example: Lets say a company gets an ROI in 1 year. And had 4 years of selling subs. And by the 4th year, profit would be being made from each sub. But then lets says a company had a 100% growth spurt in the 5th year. And lets say there is a 1 year ROI, meaning 12 dollars needs to be spent for ever new dollar that is made. Because the growth rate of the company is so much higher in the later year, the expendatures are far greater than the revenue comming in from the samller customer base taken on the first 4 years. Thus, it appears the company is losing money and not profiting. When in actuallity, the company has record high success. All pre-existing subs ARE 100% profitable, and lot of new growth has been made to replicate the previous years successful model. So yes, profitable books may mean a company is not growing and not making new sales. However, showing the average profit per sub, after the ROI period is a VERY relevant bit of information. Its what defines the value of the business model in my mind. In other words: Forcasted Profit margin based on current years proven track record. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: "Matt Liotta" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "WISPA General List" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 6:19 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Profit is irrelevant for an early stage growth company. -Matt Peter R. wrote: Because number of subs is the measuring stick. Revenue is more important; but profit is the most important. Not many can speak to profit, so they measure in subs. - Peter Matt Liotta wrote: Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the quality of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly whose ARPU is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is only $1.2M per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for very little revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an Atlanta-based CLEC that in recent time went public. Today they have about 17,000 customers, but their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 customers, an ARPU of $761 would be worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a different way, with 17,000 customers an ARPU of $100 would only be $20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in now. A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of customers. -Matt -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipe
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Yes but Vonage is also a poor example of your arguement as 75% of their expendatures is in advertising. That means 75% of their expendatures could be stopped on demand immediately, without reducing revenue. How quickly could Vonage become profitable, when they reach the approrpiate scale, and they stop marketing? I haven't done the math, but it paints a different picture of potential profitabilty. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: "Matt Liotta" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "WISPA General List" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 10:48 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! You make a logical point, but the market seems to disagree. Take the recent Vonage IPO as an example. By all accounts the IPO was a disaster. They offered their shares at $17 and it is now trading <$13. From the financials it is clear --at least to me-- that Vonage has no future hope of profitability. Yet, they managed convince enough people to raise $500M and while their market cap has dropped from $2.6B, it is still $2B, which isn't bad considering. I mean this is a company that spends $279 per customer to acquire each one, which means it takes over 11 months just to recoup the marketing costs. In 2005, they acquired 870,000 new customers, which even if they had acquired for free they still wouldn't represent enough revenue to pay for operations. This company simply will not survive and their financials show it. Yet, their market value is entirely based on their revenue and its ability to grow. -Matt Tom DeReggi wrote: I agree current profit is irrelevant, when considering company totals during the early growth period. But calcualted future Profit clearly is relevant, as far as how much profit will be made per sub, and how soon. Profitabilty can be misleading when jsut considering accounting paperwork (profit loss / balance sheets) I'll give an example: Lets say a company gets an ROI in 1 year. And had 4 years of selling subs. And by the 4th year, profit would be being made from each sub. But then lets says a company had a 100% growth spurt in the 5th year. And lets say there is a 1 year ROI, meaning 12 dollars needs to be spent for ever new dollar that is made. Because the growth rate of the company is so much higher in the later year, the expendatures are far greater than the revenue comming in from the samller customer base taken on the first 4 years. Thus, it appears the company is losing money and not profiting. When in actuallity, the company has record high success. All pre-existing subs ARE 100% profitable, and lot of new growth has been made to replicate the previous years successful model. So yes, profitable books may mean a company is not growing and not making new sales. However, showing the average profit per sub, after the ROI period is a VERY relevant bit of information. Its what defines the value of the business model in my mind. In other words: Forcasted Profit margin based on current years proven track record. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: "Matt Liotta" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "WISPA General List" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 6:19 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Profit is irrelevant for an early stage growth company. -Matt Peter R. wrote: Because number of subs is the measuring stick. Revenue is more important; but profit is the most important. Not many can speak to profit, so they measure in subs. - Peter Matt Liotta wrote: Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the quality of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly whose ARPU is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is only $1.2M per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for very little revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an Atlanta-based CLEC that in recent time went public. Today they have about 17,000 customers, but their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 customers, an ARPU of $761 would be worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a different way, with 17,000 customers an ARPU of $100 would only be $20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in now. A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of customers. -Matt -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Matt, Ok. Let me clarify my statement. It depends on wether you are valuing a company considering... wether its your money getting invested or someone elses. Finding a buyer to pay the price based on no profit potential, and trading publically, are two totally different animals. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: "Matt Liotta" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "WISPA General List" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 10:48 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! You make a logical point, but the market seems to disagree. Take the recent Vonage IPO as an example. By all accounts the IPO was a disaster. They offered their shares at $17 and it is now trading <$13. From the financials it is clear --at least to me-- that Vonage has no future hope of profitability. Yet, they managed convince enough people to raise $500M and while their market cap has dropped from $2.6B, it is still $2B, which isn't bad considering. I mean this is a company that spends $279 per customer to acquire each one, which means it takes over 11 months just to recoup the marketing costs. In 2005, they acquired 870,000 new customers, which even if they had acquired for free they still wouldn't represent enough revenue to pay for operations. This company simply will not survive and their financials show it. Yet, their market value is entirely based on their revenue and its ability to grow. -Matt Tom DeReggi wrote: I agree current profit is irrelevant, when considering company totals during the early growth period. But calcualted future Profit clearly is relevant, as far as how much profit will be made per sub, and how soon. Profitabilty can be misleading when jsut considering accounting paperwork (profit loss / balance sheets) I'll give an example: Lets say a company gets an ROI in 1 year. And had 4 years of selling subs. And by the 4th year, profit would be being made from each sub. But then lets says a company had a 100% growth spurt in the 5th year. And lets say there is a 1 year ROI, meaning 12 dollars needs to be spent for ever new dollar that is made. Because the growth rate of the company is so much higher in the later year, the expendatures are far greater than the revenue comming in from the samller customer base taken on the first 4 years. Thus, it appears the company is losing money and not profiting. When in actuallity, the company has record high success. All pre-existing subs ARE 100% profitable, and lot of new growth has been made to replicate the previous years successful model. So yes, profitable books may mean a company is not growing and not making new sales. However, showing the average profit per sub, after the ROI period is a VERY relevant bit of information. Its what defines the value of the business model in my mind. In other words: Forcasted Profit margin based on current years proven track record. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: "Matt Liotta" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "WISPA General List" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 6:19 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Profit is irrelevant for an early stage growth company. -Matt Peter R. wrote: Because number of subs is the measuring stick. Revenue is more important; but profit is the most important. Not many can speak to profit, so they measure in subs. - Peter Matt Liotta wrote: Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the quality of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly whose ARPU is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is only $1.2M per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for very little revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an Atlanta-based CLEC that in recent time went public. Today they have about 17,000 customers, but their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 customers, an ARPU of $761 would be worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a different way, with 17,000 customers an ARPU of $100 would only be $20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in now. A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of customers. -Matt -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Tom, There is no such thing as "average profit per sub after ROI period". Let me give an example: I lease all my CPE. It is a recurring monthly debt that will never go away. Even after 3 years, when I own the CPE, there will be new CPE that needs purchased... and thus new towers, new AP's, new backhauls, new routers, new bandwidth, new whatever. Even if I move that paid for CPE to a new customer on the edges of my network, there are still costs mentioned above for that customer. Maybe I'm not thinking the same as you, but I can never see an "after ROI period". It never happens. Travis Microserv Tom DeReggi wrote: I agree current profit is irrelevant, when considering company totals during the early growth period. But calcualted future Profit clearly is relevant, as far as how much profit will be made per sub, and how soon. Profitabilty can be misleading when jsut considering accounting paperwork (profit loss / balance sheets) I'll give an example: Lets say a company gets an ROI in 1 year. And had 4 years of selling subs. And by the 4th year, profit would be being made from each sub. But then lets says a company had a 100% growth spurt in the 5th year. And lets say there is a 1 year ROI, meaning 12 dollars needs to be spent for ever new dollar that is made. Because the growth rate of the company is so much higher in the later year, the expendatures are far greater than the revenue comming in from the samller customer base taken on the first 4 years. Thus, it appears the company is losing money and not profiting. When in actuallity, the company has record high success. All pre-existing subs ARE 100% profitable, and lot of new growth has been made to replicate the previous years successful model. So yes, profitable books may mean a company is not growing and not making new sales. However, showing the average profit per sub, after the ROI period is a VERY relevant bit of information. Its what defines the value of the business model in my mind. In other words: Forcasted Profit margin based on current years proven track record. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: "Matt Liotta" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "WISPA General List" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 6:19 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Profit is irrelevant for an early stage growth company. -Matt Peter R. wrote: Because number of subs is the measuring stick. Revenue is more important; but profit is the most important. Not many can speak to profit, so they measure in subs. - Peter Matt Liotta wrote: Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the quality of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly whose ARPU is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is only $1.2M per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for very little revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an Atlanta-based CLEC that in recent time went public. Today they have about 17,000 customers, but their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 customers, an ARPU of $761 would be worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a different way, with 17,000 customers an ARPU of $100 would only be $20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in now. A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of customers. -Matt -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
If nothing else, it is certainly easier to pay for the roof rights when the revenue is worth it. -Matt Tom DeReggi wrote: Its also easier getting roof rights, when the request comes from a large tenant, who is likely the prospect for > $1000 rates. I find larger ARPU models are more predicatable, allthough more work is involved in finding the prospect base. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: "Matt Liotta" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "WISPA General List" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 9:03 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Our APRU is currently at $669 and we have been raising that each quarter. The difference between us and CBeyond is that we don't pay any ILEC to delivery our service. Oh, and we don't have 17,000 customers... yet! BTW, our sales team has found it easier to sell >$1000 services than <$400. -Matt Patrick Leary wrote: I stand corrected, fair enough Matt, but wow. That's pretty rich monthly rates and an especially rich ARPU. Patrick -Original Message- From: Matt Liotta [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 3:56 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Again, pointing to CBeyonds numbers it is clear that their average customer is not buying big TDM pipes or fiber-based services. Their starting package is $495 per month, which is just a single T1, while their next package up --which is priced higher than their ARPU-- is $895, which is just two T1s. That's 17,000 high ARPU customers delivering services that technologically are easy for WISPs. There are operators on this list that will sell a customer 3 megs or more of service for less than $495 per month. I'm not saying there isn't a market for low ARPU customers, but the scale required to make any real money seems like quite a challenge. -Matt Patrick Leary wrote: Any operator with some decent residential mix would be drooling to have a $100 ARPU Matt. No matter what technology is being used, that makes for an excellent ROI. Those CLECs you mention are also likely providing fiber and big TDM pipes as a primary focus. Patrick Leary AVP Marketing Alvarion, Inc. o: 650.314.2628 c: 760.580.0080 Vonage: 650.641.1243 -Original Message- From: Matt Liotta [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 2:52 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the quality of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly whose ARPU is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is only $1.2M per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for very little revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an Atlanta-based CLEC that in recent time went public. Today they have about 17,000 customers, but their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 customers, an ARPU of $761 would be worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a different way, with 17,000 customers an ARPU of $100 would only be $20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in now. A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of customers. -Matt Charles Wu wrote: 30% of what number Charles? At the last show, 500+ attended representing about 350ish operators Of these, about 40% responded Unfortunately, we have a confidentiality agreement with our survey respondents, so I cannot list names How many WISPs said they have over 1,000 CPE. I can only think of about 20 with that high a number. A recent Tim Saunders article in BBW World alone that showed about 40+ Wireless Network Operators w/ 1,000+ CPE (and there are a lot more that Tim missed) Keep in mind, the majority of these operators no longer actively participate in these list-servs, most of em are busy out in the field installing customers / running their businesses =) Did you know that in Sedona, AZ alone (middle of no-where in Northern AZ mountains), w/ a total population of ~15k, there are 2 Operators w/ 1,000+ CPE? (and there's also cable and DSL competition in town too) Even at the end of my equipment distribution days (late 2004), I had at least 50 customers whom I'd been working with over the years who had purchased over 1,000 CPE from me...I know for sure that most of these guys are still operating and in business If you think about it, 1,000 isn't all that much -- take a look at the numbers If you've been a WISP since 2001, and you've been steadily buying CPE / installing 20 net new customers (minus churn, etc) / month (~ 1 install / working day / month), in over 5 years time (e.g., today in 2006), you'd have 1,200 customers Nowadays, w/ $150-$200 turn-key WISP CPE pricing (Motorola, Tranzeo, Trango), it's hard to even buy CPE in anything smaller than a 20-pack -Charles P.S. -- now anot
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
You make a logical point, but the market seems to disagree. Take the recent Vonage IPO as an example. By all accounts the IPO was a disaster. They offered their shares at $17 and it is now trading <$13. From the financials it is clear --at least to me-- that Vonage has no future hope of profitability. Yet, they managed convince enough people to raise $500M and while their market cap has dropped from $2.6B, it is still $2B, which isn't bad considering. I mean this is a company that spends $279 per customer to acquire each one, which means it takes over 11 months just to recoup the marketing costs. In 2005, they acquired 870,000 new customers, which even if they had acquired for free they still wouldn't represent enough revenue to pay for operations. This company simply will not survive and their financials show it. Yet, their market value is entirely based on their revenue and its ability to grow. -Matt Tom DeReggi wrote: I agree current profit is irrelevant, when considering company totals during the early growth period. But calcualted future Profit clearly is relevant, as far as how much profit will be made per sub, and how soon. Profitabilty can be misleading when jsut considering accounting paperwork (profit loss / balance sheets) I'll give an example: Lets say a company gets an ROI in 1 year. And had 4 years of selling subs. And by the 4th year, profit would be being made from each sub. But then lets says a company had a 100% growth spurt in the 5th year. And lets say there is a 1 year ROI, meaning 12 dollars needs to be spent for ever new dollar that is made. Because the growth rate of the company is so much higher in the later year, the expendatures are far greater than the revenue comming in from the samller customer base taken on the first 4 years. Thus, it appears the company is losing money and not profiting. When in actuallity, the company has record high success. All pre-existing subs ARE 100% profitable, and lot of new growth has been made to replicate the previous years successful model. So yes, profitable books may mean a company is not growing and not making new sales. However, showing the average profit per sub, after the ROI period is a VERY relevant bit of information. Its what defines the value of the business model in my mind. In other words: Forcasted Profit margin based on current years proven track record. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: "Matt Liotta" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "WISPA General List" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 6:19 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Profit is irrelevant for an early stage growth company. -Matt Peter R. wrote: Because number of subs is the measuring stick. Revenue is more important; but profit is the most important. Not many can speak to profit, so they measure in subs. - Peter Matt Liotta wrote: Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the quality of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly whose ARPU is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is only $1.2M per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for very little revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an Atlanta-based CLEC that in recent time went public. Today they have about 17,000 customers, but their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 customers, an ARPU of $761 would be worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a different way, with 17,000 customers an ARPU of $100 would only be $20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in now. A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of customers. -Matt -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Its also easier getting roof rights, when the request comes from a large tenant, who is likely the prospect for > $1000 rates. I find larger ARPU models are more predicatable, allthough more work is involved in finding the prospect base. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: "Matt Liotta" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "WISPA General List" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 9:03 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Our APRU is currently at $669 and we have been raising that each quarter. The difference between us and CBeyond is that we don't pay any ILEC to delivery our service. Oh, and we don't have 17,000 customers... yet! BTW, our sales team has found it easier to sell >$1000 services than <$400. -Matt Patrick Leary wrote: I stand corrected, fair enough Matt, but wow. That's pretty rich monthly rates and an especially rich ARPU. Patrick -Original Message- From: Matt Liotta [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 3:56 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Again, pointing to CBeyonds numbers it is clear that their average customer is not buying big TDM pipes or fiber-based services. Their starting package is $495 per month, which is just a single T1, while their next package up --which is priced higher than their ARPU-- is $895, which is just two T1s. That's 17,000 high ARPU customers delivering services that technologically are easy for WISPs. There are operators on this list that will sell a customer 3 megs or more of service for less than $495 per month. I'm not saying there isn't a market for low ARPU customers, but the scale required to make any real money seems like quite a challenge. -Matt Patrick Leary wrote: Any operator with some decent residential mix would be drooling to have a $100 ARPU Matt. No matter what technology is being used, that makes for an excellent ROI. Those CLECs you mention are also likely providing fiber and big TDM pipes as a primary focus. Patrick Leary AVP Marketing Alvarion, Inc. o: 650.314.2628 c: 760.580.0080 Vonage: 650.641.1243 -Original Message- From: Matt Liotta [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 2:52 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the quality of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly whose ARPU is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is only $1.2M per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for very little revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an Atlanta-based CLEC that in recent time went public. Today they have about 17,000 customers, but their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 customers, an ARPU of $761 would be worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a different way, with 17,000 customers an ARPU of $100 would only be $20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in now. A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of customers. -Matt Charles Wu wrote: 30% of what number Charles? At the last show, 500+ attended representing about 350ish operators Of these, about 40% responded Unfortunately, we have a confidentiality agreement with our survey respondents, so I cannot list names How many WISPs said they have over 1,000 CPE. I can only think of about 20 with that high a number. A recent Tim Saunders article in BBW World alone that showed about 40+ Wireless Network Operators w/ 1,000+ CPE (and there are a lot more that Tim missed) Keep in mind, the majority of these operators no longer actively participate in these list-servs, most of em are busy out in the field installing customers / running their businesses =) Did you know that in Sedona, AZ alone (middle of no-where in Northern AZ mountains), w/ a total population of ~15k, there are 2 Operators w/ 1,000+ CPE? (and there's also cable and DSL competition in town too) Even at the end of my equipment distribution days (late 2004), I had at least 50 customers whom I'd been working with over the years who had purchased over 1,000 CPE from me...I know for sure that most of these guys are still operating and in business If you think about it, 1,000 isn't all that much -- take a look at the numbers If you've been a WISP since 2001, and you've been steadily buying CPE / installing 20 net new customers (minus churn, etc) / month (~ 1 install / working day / month), in over 5 years time (e.g., today in 2006), you'd have 1,200 customers Nowadays, w/ $150-$200 turn-key WISP CPE pricing (Motorola, Tranzeo, Trango), it's hard to even buy CPE in anything smaller than a 20-pack -Charles P.S. -- now another interesting statistics is the "top-end" of the license-exempt operator market -- although a lot of people nowadays have over
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Are you sure about that. I was told we were not lumped in with Satelite. We were not listed as the volume was not large enough to get a percentage point. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: "Dawn DiPietro" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "WISPA General List" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 6:39 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Scriv, It is absolutely a step in the right direction considering all the other recent reports lump WISP's in with Satellite. Regards, Dawn DiPietro John Scrivner wrote: The point is we have a well known, if not largely credible source, who has just released a report that says we (Fixed Wireless Broadband Providers) are serving the broadband needs of approximately 8% of US home users. We obviously have been completely ignored in other reports and surveys so for once it is nice to see us represented in some statistically important degree. I am not really that concerned about the exact number of customers. It is just nice to see us making the report in some meaningful way. Scriv David E. Smith wrote: John Scrivner wrote: Check this out from the Pew report. It appears that fixed wireless is much bigger than what even I thought. According to this report 8% of all broadband connections in the US are delivered via fixed broadband wireless. Ouch. That study looks to be horribly methodologically flawed. (It's at http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Broadband_trends2006.pdf if you're interested.) Their survey required the responders to know what they were talking about -- if you have DSL, but a wireless router/access point, and you're not all that technically competent, you may well say your laptop has "wireless" Internet access when that's not quite what they intended. Here's the question they asked: Does the computer you use at home connect to the internet through a dial-up telephone line, or do you have some other type of connection, such as a DSL-enabled phone line, a cable TV modem, a wireless connection, or a T-1 or fiber optic connection? That question gives me a headache, and I'd like to think I do know what I'm talking about most of the time. Note that their survey only had about 1500 Internet-using responders, which is jst barely enough to be considered a statistically valid sample for a population of a couple hundred million. (Their methodology is a bit vague on whether they're sampling all Americans, or just adults, or...) Don't get me wrong; it's an exciting quote. I just hope everyone takes it with the proper perspective, and realizes that it's probably "high" by some unknowable order of magnitude. David Smith MVN.net --- --- -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
8% means... You do not get preferrential treatment in legislation. You do not get subsidees to foster growth of a startup industry. You get taxed equally as telcos and cable companies. ISPs have a viable alternative, so LECs no longer need to share their networks with ISPs. 8% is a HUGE percentage of market share. I'm not sure we want to take credit for that. At this stage I think it could work against us. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: "John Scrivner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "WISPA General List" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 6:31 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! The point is we have a well known, if not largely credible source, who has just released a report that says we (Fixed Wireless Broadband Providers) are serving the broadband needs of approximately 8% of US home users. We obviously have been completely ignored in other reports and surveys so for once it is nice to see us represented in some statistically important degree. I am not really that concerned about the exact number of customers. It is just nice to see us making the report in some meaningful way. Scriv David E. Smith wrote: John Scrivner wrote: Check this out from the Pew report. It appears that fixed wireless is much bigger than what even I thought. According to this report 8% of all broadband connections in the US are delivered via fixed broadband wireless. Ouch. That study looks to be horribly methodologically flawed. (It's at http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Broadband_trends2006.pdf if you're interested.) Their survey required the responders to know what they were talking about -- if you have DSL, but a wireless router/access point, and you're not all that technically competent, you may well say your laptop has "wireless" Internet access when that's not quite what they intended. Here's the question they asked: Does the computer you use at home connect to the internet through a dial-up telephone line, or do you have some other type of connection, such as a DSL-enabled phone line, a cable TV modem, a wireless connection, or a T-1 or fiber optic connection? That question gives me a headache, and I'd like to think I do know what I'm talking about most of the time. Note that their survey only had about 1500 Internet-using responders, which is jst barely enough to be considered a statistically valid sample for a population of a couple hundred million. (Their methodology is a bit vague on whether they're sampling all Americans, or just adults, or...) Don't get me wrong; it's an exciting quote. I just hope everyone takes it with the proper perspective, and realizes that it's probably "high" by some unknowable order of magnitude. David Smith MVN.net -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
I agree current profit is irrelevant, when considering company totals during the early growth period. But calcualted future Profit clearly is relevant, as far as how much profit will be made per sub, and how soon. Profitabilty can be misleading when jsut considering accounting paperwork (profit loss / balance sheets) I'll give an example: Lets say a company gets an ROI in 1 year. And had 4 years of selling subs. And by the 4th year, profit would be being made from each sub. But then lets says a company had a 100% growth spurt in the 5th year. And lets say there is a 1 year ROI, meaning 12 dollars needs to be spent for ever new dollar that is made. Because the growth rate of the company is so much higher in the later year, the expendatures are far greater than the revenue comming in from the samller customer base taken on the first 4 years. Thus, it appears the company is losing money and not profiting. When in actuallity, the company has record high success. All pre-existing subs ARE 100% profitable, and lot of new growth has been made to replicate the previous years successful model. So yes, profitable books may mean a company is not growing and not making new sales. However, showing the average profit per sub, after the ROI period is a VERY relevant bit of information. Its what defines the value of the business model in my mind. In other words: Forcasted Profit margin based on current years proven track record. Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: "Matt Liotta" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "WISPA General List" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 6:19 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Profit is irrelevant for an early stage growth company. -Matt Peter R. wrote: Because number of subs is the measuring stick. Revenue is more important; but profit is the most important. Not many can speak to profit, so they measure in subs. - Peter Matt Liotta wrote: Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the quality of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly whose ARPU is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is only $1.2M per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for very little revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an Atlanta-based CLEC that in recent time went public. Today they have about 17,000 customers, but their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 customers, an ARPU of $761 would be worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a different way, with 17,000 customers an ARPU of $100 would only be $20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in now. A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of customers. -Matt -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Or they measure in ARPU to mask profitabilty. A higher ARPU subs is not always more profitable. Average ARPU also does not show retention rate. Having an average ARPU of $700 buck does not do any good if they are only a customer for 6 months, if they end up being disatisfied after the fact. Nor is a higher ARPU that much better if the world has to be given away to get the $700 ARPU. Getting an ARPU of $700 for a T1 speed line is pretty darn impressive. But not neessarilly so, if 20mbps links need to be given away to get it, meaning less growth possibilty. And a reoccurring cost following the ARPU longer. (Not that I'm saying high ARPU is not good.) I think their are more important factors like, Time till ROI? Profit during that time, and anticipated profit per year after that time (ROI). Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: "Peter R." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "WISPA General List" Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 6:12 PM Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Because number of subs is the measuring stick. Revenue is more important; but profit is the most important. Not many can speak to profit, so they measure in subs. - Peter Matt Liotta wrote: Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the quality of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly whose ARPU is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is only $1.2M per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for very little revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an Atlanta-based CLEC that in recent time went public. Today they have about 17,000 customers, but their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 customers, an ARPU of $761 would be worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a different way, with 17,000 customers an ARPU of $100 would only be $20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in now. A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of customers. -Matt -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
are also likely providing fiber and big TDM pipes as a primary focus. Patrick Leary AVP Marketing Alvarion, Inc. o: 650.314.2628 c: 760.580.0080 Vonage: 650.641.1243 -Original Message----- From: Matt Liotta [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 2:52 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the quality of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly whose ARPU is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is only $1.2M per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for very little revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an Atlanta-based CLEC that in recent time went public. Today they have about 17,000 customers, but their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 customers, an ARPU of $761 would be worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a different way, with 17,000 customers an ARPU of $100 would only be $20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in now. A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of customers. -Matt Charles Wu wrote: 30% of what number Charles? At the last show, 500+ attended representing about 350ish operators Of these, about 40% responded Unfortunately, we have a confidentiality agreement with our survey respondents, so I cannot list names How many WISPs said they have over 1,000 CPE. I can only think of about 20 with that high a number. A recent Tim Saunders article in BBW World alone that showed about 40+ Wireless Network Operators w/ 1,000+ CPE (and there are a lot more that Tim missed) Keep in mind, the majority of these operators no longer actively participate in these list-servs, most of em are busy out in the field installing customers / running their businesses =) Did you know that in Sedona, AZ alone (middle of no-where in Northern AZ mountains), w/ a total population of ~15k, there are 2 Operators w/ 1,000+ CPE? (and there's also cable and DSL competition in town too) Even at the end of my equipment distribution days (late 2004), I had at least 50 customers whom I'd been working with over the years who had purchased over 1,000 CPE from me...I know for sure that most of these guys are still operating and in business If you think about it, 1,000 isn't all that much -- take a look at the numbers If you've been a WISP since 2001, and you've been steadily buying CPE / installing 20 net new customers (minus churn, etc) / month (~ 1 install / working day / month), in over 5 years time (e.g., today in 2006), you'd have 1,200 customers Nowadays, w/ $150-$200 turn-key WISP CPE pricing (Motorola, Tranzeo, Trango), it's hard to even buy CPE in anything smaller than a 20-pack -Charles P.S. -- now another interesting statistics is the "top-end" of the license-exempt operator market -- although a lot of people nowadays have over 1,000 CPE installed, ALMOST NONE have been able to successfully scale beyond the 10,000 CPE level -- still trying to figure that one out... --- CWLab Technology Architects http://www.cwlab.com -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Patrick Leary Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 3:35 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Patrick -Original Message- From: Charles Wu [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 1:34 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Some interesting statistics -- 30% of the WISPs who attended our last WiNOG "claimed" on their surveys they had been in the wireless business for more than 5 years and had more than 1k wireless CPE deployed in the field Less than 10% of them claimed to be "pure-play" license-exempt fixed wireless providers This is why we call them Wi- "NOGs" instead of "ISPs" nowadays Don't forget, a lot of rural telcos / CLECs / ILECs (e.g., the "enemy") have gotten into license-exempt fixed wireless... -Charles P.S. - I heard a rumor that the current UL market leader, Motorola Canopy sold close to $100 million in gear last year alone ----------- CWLab Technology Architects http://www.cwlab.com -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jack Unger Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 1:46 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Hopefully, the 8% (6,000,000) figure includes ONLY end-users who use wireless broadband to get to/from their home and NOT the end-users who have a copper/fiber-based (cable/telco) broadband connection to their home and then use a Wi-Fi router/access point that provides the "final 50-ft" connection wirelessly. There's so much sloppy and innacurate "journalis
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
I can't speak directly to your market, but my experience with rural markets has been eye opening. I assumed that all the high ARPU customers where in the city and the rural markets wouldn't pay for dedicated services. Turned out I was completely wrong. Businesses in rural markets have the same telecommunication concerns as businesses in the cities. The same small businesses don't want T1s of course, while many franchises are required to have them. Often times the rural markets are screaming for choices since there isn't much if any competition. Voice is certainly a killer service in rural markets. We have found businesses that used DSL for data, but paid thousands per month for voice. The fact that we can bundle voice with our data service enables our bundled price to often be similar in price to DSL and POTS lines. Ultimately, the rural market is smaller, but the market is still there for valuable services. The more valuable the service, the more the revenue it can generate. -Matt Matt Larsen - Lists wrote: Trying to price service like that in my market would result in an ARPU of $0. Been there, done that with the licensed LMDS players that bought my first ISP. They laughed at our 802.11 radios as "baby monitors". The LMDS equipment is long gone, and unlicensed wireless broadband is now the dominant form of broadband in my market. Chalk up another loss for the too-smart east-coasters that thought they would come into sticksville and take the market over. All of the "easy pickings" T1 customers are long gone, other than a few banks and others that can't switch or don't want to switch to anything else. Matt Larsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Matt Liotta wrote: Our APRU is currently at $669 and we have been raising that each quarter. The difference between us and CBeyond is that we don't pay any ILEC to delivery our service. Oh, and we don't have 17,000 customers... yet! BTW, our sales team has found it easier to sell >$1000 services than <$400. -Matt Patrick Leary wrote: I stand corrected, fair enough Matt, but wow. That's pretty rich monthly rates and an especially rich ARPU. Patrick -Original Message- From: Matt Liotta [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 3:56 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Again, pointing to CBeyonds numbers it is clear that their average customer is not buying big TDM pipes or fiber-based services. Their starting package is $495 per month, which is just a single T1, while their next package up --which is priced higher than their ARPU-- is $895, which is just two T1s. That's 17,000 high ARPU customers delivering services that technologically are easy for WISPs. There are operators on this list that will sell a customer 3 megs or more of service for less than $495 per month. I'm not saying there isn't a market for low ARPU customers, but the scale required to make any real money seems like quite a challenge. -Matt Patrick Leary wrote: Any operator with some decent residential mix would be drooling to have a $100 ARPU Matt. No matter what technology is being used, that makes for an excellent ROI. Those CLECs you mention are also likely providing fiber and big TDM pipes as a primary focus. Patrick Leary AVP Marketing Alvarion, Inc. o: 650.314.2628 c: 760.580.0080 Vonage: 650.641.1243 -Original Message- From: Matt Liotta [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 2:52 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the quality of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly whose ARPU is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is only $1.2M per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for very little revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an Atlanta-based CLEC that in recent time went public. Today they have about 17,000 customers, but their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 customers, an ARPU of $761 would be worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a different way, with 17,000 customers an ARPU of $100 would only be $20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in now. A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of customers. -Matt Charles Wu wrote: 30% of what number Charles? At the last show, 500+ attended representing about 350ish operators Of these, about 40% responded Unfortunately, we have a confidentiality agreement with our survey respondents, so I cannot list names How many WISPs said they have over 1,000 CPE. I can only think of about 20 with that high a number. A recent Tim Saunders article in BBW World alone that showed about 40+ Wireless Network Operators w/ 1,000+ CPE (and there are a lot more that Tim missed) Keep in mind, the majority of
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
I am working on the dedicated bandwidth market and was making some headway until Qwest rolled out their DSL services at the begining of the month and now it is the education process all over again. Trying to explain that 3-7 meg DSL is NOT the same quality as a dedicated 1.5 meg circuit. But they still look at $475/T1 vs $80/DSL and think hey if I get only half of the DSL speed I'm still way ahead, and right now the DSL is new enough that congestion is not an issue. As for my market, until DSL was brought in, it has been a profitable business, I wasn't planning on retiring on just that business but it was paying the bills including my salary. Now instead of me being the only broadband provider that provided any real bandwidth I now have 2 other active DSL competitors and several others that provide DSL statewide. I'm not saying my market is now unfavorable, just that I'm not sure what is going to happen in terms of growth. Sam Tetherow Sandhills Wireless Matt Liotta wrote: Two things I would offer in regard to your situation. First, there are plenty of businesses in rural areas that buy T1s from the ILEC right now. There may not be thousands, but it doesn't take that many high ARPU customers. Case in point; we recently entered a rural market that had two local ISPs of interest. One ISP was considered the most successful and had hundreds of customers. The other ISP had only 22 customers and was largely unknown. The later ISP had more revenue and was profitable with far fewer customers. Second, I am not sure I understand the logic of operating a business in a market that isn't favorable. I know plenty of people want to deliver underserved areas, but those areas are underserved for a reason. That reason could mean a greenfield opportunity awaits or it could just mean the area doesn't make economic sense. -Matt Sam Tetherow wrote: I know I'm in a more rural area, but the only thing I have 17,000 of in my coverage area is cows, now if I could get the RFID thing going and do realtime tracking... ;) I'm curious how many WISPs would have the coverage area that would include even a possible 1000 T1s. I know that there are WISPs in larger metro areas but I've always had the opinion that the larger number of WISPs are rural. As for $495 for a T1, that is more than I'm charging and the 3meg that is being sold for <$495 is best effort internet service I'm sure. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with only having high ARPU customers, if I could I would, but in my service area I couldn't make a business float only offering business services, hell, now that DSL is being offered it remains to be seen if I can make a residential and business WISP float. Sam Tetherow Sandhills Wireless Matt Liotta wrote: Again, pointing to CBeyonds numbers it is clear that their average customer is not buying big TDM pipes or fiber-based services. Their starting package is $495 per month, which is just a single T1, while their next package up --which is priced higher than their ARPU-- is $895, which is just two T1s. That's 17,000 high ARPU customers delivering services that technologically are easy for WISPs. There are operators on this list that will sell a customer 3 megs or more of service for less than $495 per month. I'm not saying there isn't a market for low ARPU customers, but the scale required to make any real money seems like quite a challenge. -Matt Patrick Leary wrote: Any operator with some decent residential mix would be drooling to have a $100 ARPU Matt. No matter what technology is being used, that makes for an excellent ROI. Those CLECs you mention are also likely providing fiber and big TDM pipes as a primary focus. Patrick Leary AVP Marketing Alvarion, Inc. o: 650.314.2628 c: 760.580.0080 Vonage: 650.641.1243 -Original Message- From: Matt Liotta [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 2:52 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the quality of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly whose ARPU is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is only $1.2M per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for very little revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an Atlanta-based CLEC that in recent time went public. Today they have about 17,000 customers, but their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 customers, an ARPU of $761 would be worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a different way, with 17,000 customers an ARPU of $100 would only be $20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in now. A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of customers. -Matt Charles Wu wrote: 30% of what number Charles? At the last show, 500+ attended representing about 350ish operato
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
On 5/30/06, Patrick Leary <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: You are right about our having some folks going back years. Maybe thelongest example would Jason's Midcoast in Maine. Midcoast goes back at leastto 1997. In addition to those, we have a pretty good crop of more recent operators that have moved upstream, so to speak. A prototypical example ofone like that is Marty Dougherty's Roadstar Internet in Loudon County, VA.He transitioned upward twice from where he started in terms of vendor choice. We also have a healthy number of CLECs, especially post-DSLderegulation.Patrick,If you don't mind, please elucidate us (me) on the subject of upward mobility in the BWIA foodchain .. I'm intrigued by the term "vendor choice" - what are the criteria? What are the benefits of assumed standing? What patterns do you see in the success and failure of network operators? Thanks,-- Dylan OliverPrimaverity, LLC -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Yes. But I do not believe it. I don't see how the GAO can get it that wrong, less than a 10th of a percent compared to 8%. There is no way Fixed Wireless has 8% of the market share. They must be including subscribers that have installed Wifi SoHo routers behind their Cable or DSL modems. The last thing we want is the world falsely believing that we are equivellent providers compared to Cable and DSL, based on economy of scale. Tom DeReggiRapidDSL & Wireless, IncIntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband - Original Message - From: John Scrivner To: wireless@wispa.org Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 12:35 PM Subject: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Check this out from the Pew report. It appears that fixed wireless is much bigger than what even I thought. According to this report 8% of all broadband connections in the US are delivered via fixed broadband wireless. That means you guys! Woo Hoo!Scriv -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.orgSubscribe/Unsubscribe:http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wirelessArchives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Trying to price service like that in my market would result in an ARPU of $0. Been there, done that with the licensed LMDS players that bought my first ISP. They laughed at our 802.11 radios as "baby monitors". The LMDS equipment is long gone, and unlicensed wireless broadband is now the dominant form of broadband in my market. Chalk up another loss for the too-smart east-coasters that thought they would come into sticksville and take the market over. All of the "easy pickings" T1 customers are long gone, other than a few banks and others that can't switch or don't want to switch to anything else. Matt Larsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Matt Liotta wrote: Our APRU is currently at $669 and we have been raising that each quarter. The difference between us and CBeyond is that we don't pay any ILEC to delivery our service. Oh, and we don't have 17,000 customers... yet! BTW, our sales team has found it easier to sell >$1000 services than <$400. -Matt Patrick Leary wrote: I stand corrected, fair enough Matt, but wow. That's pretty rich monthly rates and an especially rich ARPU. Patrick -Original Message- From: Matt Liotta [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 3:56 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Again, pointing to CBeyonds numbers it is clear that their average customer is not buying big TDM pipes or fiber-based services. Their starting package is $495 per month, which is just a single T1, while their next package up --which is priced higher than their ARPU-- is $895, which is just two T1s. That's 17,000 high ARPU customers delivering services that technologically are easy for WISPs. There are operators on this list that will sell a customer 3 megs or more of service for less than $495 per month. I'm not saying there isn't a market for low ARPU customers, but the scale required to make any real money seems like quite a challenge. -Matt Patrick Leary wrote: Any operator with some decent residential mix would be drooling to have a $100 ARPU Matt. No matter what technology is being used, that makes for an excellent ROI. Those CLECs you mention are also likely providing fiber and big TDM pipes as a primary focus. Patrick Leary AVP Marketing Alvarion, Inc. o: 650.314.2628 c: 760.580.0080 Vonage: 650.641.1243 -Original Message- From: Matt Liotta [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 2:52 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the quality of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly whose ARPU is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is only $1.2M per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for very little revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an Atlanta-based CLEC that in recent time went public. Today they have about 17,000 customers, but their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 customers, an ARPU of $761 would be worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a different way, with 17,000 customers an ARPU of $100 would only be $20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in now. A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of customers. -Matt Charles Wu wrote: 30% of what number Charles? At the last show, 500+ attended representing about 350ish operators Of these, about 40% responded Unfortunately, we have a confidentiality agreement with our survey respondents, so I cannot list names How many WISPs said they have over 1,000 CPE. I can only think of about 20 with that high a number. A recent Tim Saunders article in BBW World alone that showed about 40+ Wireless Network Operators w/ 1,000+ CPE (and there are a lot more that Tim missed) Keep in mind, the majority of these operators no longer actively participate in these list-servs, most of em are busy out in the field installing customers / running their businesses =) Did you know that in Sedona, AZ alone (middle of no-where in Northern AZ mountains), w/ a total population of ~15k, there are 2 Operators w/ 1,000+ CPE? (and there's also cable and DSL competition in town too) Even at the end of my equipment distribution days (late 2004), I had at least 50 customers whom I'd been working with over the years who had purchased over 1,000 CPE from me...I know for sure that most of these guys are still operating and in business If you think about it, 1,000 isn't all that much -- take a look at the numbers If you've been a WISP since 2001, and you've been steadily buying CPE / installing 20 net new customers (minus churn, etc) / month (~ 1 install / working day / month), in over 5 years time (e.g., today in 2006), you'd have 1,200 customers Nowadays, w/ $150-$200 turn-key WISP CPE pricing (Motorola,
RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Actually, I've begun to notice the same thing. A couple of our current customers bought some customized web programming from us for 1000's and we just took a stab in midair... ;) -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Matt Liotta Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 9:04 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Our APRU is currently at $669 and we have been raising that each quarter. The difference between us and CBeyond is that we don't pay any ILEC to delivery our service. Oh, and we don't have 17,000 customers... yet! BTW, our sales team has found it easier to sell >$1000 services than <$400. -Matt Patrick Leary wrote: >I stand corrected, fair enough Matt, but wow. That's pretty rich >monthly rates and an especially rich ARPU. > >Patrick > >-Original Message- >From: Matt Liotta [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 3:56 PM >To: WISPA General List >Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! > >Again, pointing to CBeyonds numbers it is clear that their average >customer is not buying big TDM pipes or fiber-based services. Their >starting package is $495 per month, which is just a single T1, while >their next package up --which is priced higher than their ARPU-- is >$895, which is just two T1s. That's 17,000 high ARPU customers >delivering services that technologically are easy for WISPs. There are >operators on this list that will sell a customer 3 megs or more of >service for less than $495 per month. > >I'm not saying there isn't a market for low ARPU customers, but the >scale required to make any real money seems like quite a challenge. > >-Matt > >Patrick Leary wrote: > > > >>Any operator with some decent residential mix would be drooling to >>have a $100 ARPU Matt. No matter what technology is being used, that >>makes for an excellent ROI. Those CLECs you mention are also likely >>providing fiber and big TDM pipes as a primary focus. >> >>Patrick Leary >>AVP Marketing >>Alvarion, Inc. >>o: 650.314.2628 >>c: 760.580.0080 >>Vonage: 650.641.1243 >> >>-Original Message- >>From: Matt Liotta [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >>Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 2:52 PM >>To: WISPA General List >>Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! >> >>Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the >>quality of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly >>whose ARPU is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is >>only $1.2M per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for >>very little revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an >>Atlanta-based CLEC that in recent time went public. Today they have >>about 17,000 customers, but their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 >>customers, an ARPU of $761 would be worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a >>different way, with 17,000 customers an ARPU of $100 would only be >>$20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in now. >> >>A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of >>customers. >> >>-Matt >> >>Charles Wu wrote: >> >> >> >> >> >>>>30% of what number Charles? >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>At the last show, 500+ attended representing about 350ish operators >>>Of these, about 40% responded >>> >>>Unfortunately, we have a confidentiality agreement with our survey >>>respondents, so I cannot list names >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>>>How many WISPs said they have over 1,000 CPE. I can only think of >>>>about >>>> >>>> >20 > > >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>with that high a number. >>> >>>A recent Tim Saunders article in BBW World alone that showed about >>>40+ Wireless Network Operators w/ 1,000+ CPE (and there are a lot >>>more that >>> >>> >Tim > > >>>missed) >>> >>>Keep in mind, the majority of these operators no longer actively >>> >>> >>> >>> >>participate >> >> >> >> >>>in these list-servs, most of em are busy out in the field installing >>>customers / running their businesses =) >>> >>>Did you know that in Sedona, AZ alone (midd
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Two things I would offer in regard to your situation. First, there are plenty of businesses in rural areas that buy T1s from the ILEC right now. There may not be thousands, but it doesn't take that many high ARPU customers. Case in point; we recently entered a rural market that had two local ISPs of interest. One ISP was considered the most successful and had hundreds of customers. The other ISP had only 22 customers and was largely unknown. The later ISP had more revenue and was profitable with far fewer customers. Second, I am not sure I understand the logic of operating a business in a market that isn't favorable. I know plenty of people want to deliver underserved areas, but those areas are underserved for a reason. That reason could mean a greenfield opportunity awaits or it could just mean the area doesn't make economic sense. -Matt Sam Tetherow wrote: I know I'm in a more rural area, but the only thing I have 17,000 of in my coverage area is cows, now if I could get the RFID thing going and do realtime tracking... ;) I'm curious how many WISPs would have the coverage area that would include even a possible 1000 T1s. I know that there are WISPs in larger metro areas but I've always had the opinion that the larger number of WISPs are rural. As for $495 for a T1, that is more than I'm charging and the 3meg that is being sold for <$495 is best effort internet service I'm sure. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with only having high ARPU customers, if I could I would, but in my service area I couldn't make a business float only offering business services, hell, now that DSL is being offered it remains to be seen if I can make a residential and business WISP float. Sam Tetherow Sandhills Wireless Matt Liotta wrote: Again, pointing to CBeyonds numbers it is clear that their average customer is not buying big TDM pipes or fiber-based services. Their starting package is $495 per month, which is just a single T1, while their next package up --which is priced higher than their ARPU-- is $895, which is just two T1s. That's 17,000 high ARPU customers delivering services that technologically are easy for WISPs. There are operators on this list that will sell a customer 3 megs or more of service for less than $495 per month. I'm not saying there isn't a market for low ARPU customers, but the scale required to make any real money seems like quite a challenge. -Matt Patrick Leary wrote: Any operator with some decent residential mix would be drooling to have a $100 ARPU Matt. No matter what technology is being used, that makes for an excellent ROI. Those CLECs you mention are also likely providing fiber and big TDM pipes as a primary focus. Patrick Leary AVP Marketing Alvarion, Inc. o: 650.314.2628 c: 760.580.0080 Vonage: 650.641.1243 -Original Message- From: Matt Liotta [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 2:52 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the quality of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly whose ARPU is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is only $1.2M per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for very little revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an Atlanta-based CLEC that in recent time went public. Today they have about 17,000 customers, but their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 customers, an ARPU of $761 would be worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a different way, with 17,000 customers an ARPU of $100 would only be $20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in now. A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of customers. -Matt Charles Wu wrote: 30% of what number Charles? At the last show, 500+ attended representing about 350ish operators Of these, about 40% responded Unfortunately, we have a confidentiality agreement with our survey respondents, so I cannot list names How many WISPs said they have over 1,000 CPE. I can only think of about 20 with that high a number. A recent Tim Saunders article in BBW World alone that showed about 40+ Wireless Network Operators w/ 1,000+ CPE (and there are a lot more that Tim missed) Keep in mind, the majority of these operators no longer actively participate in these list-servs, most of em are busy out in the field installing customers / running their businesses =) Did you know that in Sedona, AZ alone (middle of no-where in Northern AZ mountains), w/ a total population of ~15k, there are 2 Operators w/ 1,000+ CPE? (and there's also cable and DSL competition in town too) Even at the end of my equipment distribution days (late 2004), I had at least 50 customers whom I'd been working with over the years who had purchased over 1,000 CPE from me...I know for sure that most of
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Our APRU is currently at $669 and we have been raising that each quarter. The difference between us and CBeyond is that we don't pay any ILEC to delivery our service. Oh, and we don't have 17,000 customers... yet! BTW, our sales team has found it easier to sell >$1000 services than <$400. -Matt Patrick Leary wrote: I stand corrected, fair enough Matt, but wow. That's pretty rich monthly rates and an especially rich ARPU. Patrick -Original Message- From: Matt Liotta [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 3:56 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Again, pointing to CBeyonds numbers it is clear that their average customer is not buying big TDM pipes or fiber-based services. Their starting package is $495 per month, which is just a single T1, while their next package up --which is priced higher than their ARPU-- is $895, which is just two T1s. That's 17,000 high ARPU customers delivering services that technologically are easy for WISPs. There are operators on this list that will sell a customer 3 megs or more of service for less than $495 per month. I'm not saying there isn't a market for low ARPU customers, but the scale required to make any real money seems like quite a challenge. -Matt Patrick Leary wrote: Any operator with some decent residential mix would be drooling to have a $100 ARPU Matt. No matter what technology is being used, that makes for an excellent ROI. Those CLECs you mention are also likely providing fiber and big TDM pipes as a primary focus. Patrick Leary AVP Marketing Alvarion, Inc. o: 650.314.2628 c: 760.580.0080 Vonage: 650.641.1243 -Original Message- From: Matt Liotta [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 2:52 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the quality of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly whose ARPU is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is only $1.2M per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for very little revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an Atlanta-based CLEC that in recent time went public. Today they have about 17,000 customers, but their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 customers, an ARPU of $761 would be worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a different way, with 17,000 customers an ARPU of $100 would only be $20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in now. A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of customers. -Matt Charles Wu wrote: 30% of what number Charles? At the last show, 500+ attended representing about 350ish operators Of these, about 40% responded Unfortunately, we have a confidentiality agreement with our survey respondents, so I cannot list names How many WISPs said they have over 1,000 CPE. I can only think of about 20 with that high a number. A recent Tim Saunders article in BBW World alone that showed about 40+ Wireless Network Operators w/ 1,000+ CPE (and there are a lot more that Tim missed) Keep in mind, the majority of these operators no longer actively participate in these list-servs, most of em are busy out in the field installing customers / running their businesses =) Did you know that in Sedona, AZ alone (middle of no-where in Northern AZ mountains), w/ a total population of ~15k, there are 2 Operators w/ 1,000+ CPE? (and there's also cable and DSL competition in town too) Even at the end of my equipment distribution days (late 2004), I had at least 50 customers whom I'd been working with over the years who had purchased over 1,000 CPE from me...I know for sure that most of these guys are still operating and in business If you think about it, 1,000 isn't all that much -- take a look at the numbers If you've been a WISP since 2001, and you've been steadily buying CPE / installing 20 net new customers (minus churn, etc) / month (~ 1 install / working day / month), in over 5 years time (e.g., today in 2006), you'd have 1,200 customers Nowadays, w/ $150-$200 turn-key WISP CPE pricing (Motorola, Tranzeo, Trango), it's hard to even buy CPE in anything smaller than a 20-pack -Charles P.S. -- now another interesting statistics is the "top-end" of the license-exempt operator market -- although a lot of people nowadays have over 1,000 CPE installed, ALMOST NONE have been able to successfully scale beyond the 10,000 CPE level -- still trying to figure that one out... --- CWLab Technology Architects http://www.cwlab.com -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Patrick Leary Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 3:35 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: RE: [WISP
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
I know I'm in a more rural area, but the only thing I have 17,000 of in my coverage area is cows, now if I could get the RFID thing going and do realtime tracking... ;) I'm curious how many WISPs would have the coverage area that would include even a possible 1000 T1s. I know that there are WISPs in larger metro areas but I've always had the opinion that the larger number of WISPs are rural. As for $495 for a T1, that is more than I'm charging and the 3meg that is being sold for <$495 is best effort internet service I'm sure. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with only having high ARPU customers, if I could I would, but in my service area I couldn't make a business float only offering business services, hell, now that DSL is being offered it remains to be seen if I can make a residential and business WISP float. Sam Tetherow Sandhills Wireless Matt Liotta wrote: Again, pointing to CBeyonds numbers it is clear that their average customer is not buying big TDM pipes or fiber-based services. Their starting package is $495 per month, which is just a single T1, while their next package up --which is priced higher than their ARPU-- is $895, which is just two T1s. That's 17,000 high ARPU customers delivering services that technologically are easy for WISPs. There are operators on this list that will sell a customer 3 megs or more of service for less than $495 per month. I'm not saying there isn't a market for low ARPU customers, but the scale required to make any real money seems like quite a challenge. -Matt Patrick Leary wrote: Any operator with some decent residential mix would be drooling to have a $100 ARPU Matt. No matter what technology is being used, that makes for an excellent ROI. Those CLECs you mention are also likely providing fiber and big TDM pipes as a primary focus. Patrick Leary AVP Marketing Alvarion, Inc. o: 650.314.2628 c: 760.580.0080 Vonage: 650.641.1243 -Original Message- From: Matt Liotta [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 2:52 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the quality of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly whose ARPU is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is only $1.2M per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for very little revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an Atlanta-based CLEC that in recent time went public. Today they have about 17,000 customers, but their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 customers, an ARPU of $761 would be worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a different way, with 17,000 customers an ARPU of $100 would only be $20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in now. A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of customers. -Matt Charles Wu wrote: 30% of what number Charles? At the last show, 500+ attended representing about 350ish operators Of these, about 40% responded Unfortunately, we have a confidentiality agreement with our survey respondents, so I cannot list names How many WISPs said they have over 1,000 CPE. I can only think of about 20 with that high a number. A recent Tim Saunders article in BBW World alone that showed about 40+ Wireless Network Operators w/ 1,000+ CPE (and there are a lot more that Tim missed) Keep in mind, the majority of these operators no longer actively participate in these list-servs, most of em are busy out in the field installing customers / running their businesses =) Did you know that in Sedona, AZ alone (middle of no-where in Northern AZ mountains), w/ a total population of ~15k, there are 2 Operators w/ 1,000+ CPE? (and there's also cable and DSL competition in town too) Even at the end of my equipment distribution days (late 2004), I had at least 50 customers whom I'd been working with over the years who had purchased over 1,000 CPE from me...I know for sure that most of these guys are still operating and in business If you think about it, 1,000 isn't all that much -- take a look at the numbers If you've been a WISP since 2001, and you've been steadily buying CPE / installing 20 net new customers (minus churn, etc) / month (~ 1 install / working day / month), in over 5 years time (e.g., today in 2006), you'd have 1,200 customers Nowadays, w/ $150-$200 turn-key WISP CPE pricing (Motorola, Tranzeo, Trango), it's hard to even buy CPE in anything smaller than a 20-pack -Charles P.S. -- now another interesting statistics is the "top-end" of the license-exempt operator market -- although a lot of people nowadays have over 1,000 CPE installed, ALMOST NONE have been able to successfully scale beyond the 10,000 CPE level -- still trying to figure that one out... --- CWLab
RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
No, not really. Our average RMC is similar to CBeyond, but the big difference is how much we keep of that RMC as it compares to CBeyond. CBeyond is still pumping dollars into their direct competitor (MaBell) and operators like us that own their own network do not. I know of ISPs like us all over the country that have similar RMC rates and have been very successful. We don't even consider deploying a radio for less than $200.00 RMC and that will typically require a setup fee that covers 90% of our upfront costs. Majority of the time we require a T1 commitment at $329.95 RMC before deploying. Like I've always said Patrick, the fewer radios we have in the air the better! lol This is not to knock the sub $100 RMC market. Clearly that is a model that has also been a proven winner when applied properly. We work closely with a dozen or more wISPs all of which have proven business models and all are successful. Best, Brad -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Patrick Leary Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 6:15 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE! I stand corrected, fair enough Matt, but wow. That's pretty rich monthly rates and an especially rich ARPU. Patrick -Original Message- From: Matt Liotta [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 3:56 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Again, pointing to CBeyonds numbers it is clear that their average customer is not buying big TDM pipes or fiber-based services. Their starting package is $495 per month, which is just a single T1, while their next package up --which is priced higher than their ARPU-- is $895, which is just two T1s. That's 17,000 high ARPU customers delivering services that technologically are easy for WISPs. There are operators on this list that will sell a customer 3 megs or more of service for less than $495 per month. I'm not saying there isn't a market for low ARPU customers, but the scale required to make any real money seems like quite a challenge. -Matt Patrick Leary wrote: >Any operator with some decent residential mix would be drooling to have a >$100 ARPU Matt. No matter what technology is being used, that makes for an >excellent ROI. Those CLECs you mention are also likely providing fiber and >big TDM pipes as a primary focus. > >Patrick Leary >AVP Marketing >Alvarion, Inc. >o: 650.314.2628 >c: 760.580.0080 >Vonage: 650.641.1243 > >-Original Message- >From: Matt Liotta [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 2:52 PM >To: WISPA General List >Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! > >Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the quality >of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly whose ARPU >is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is only $1.2M >per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for very little >revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an Atlanta-based CLEC that in >recent time went public. Today they have about 17,000 customers, but >their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 customers, an ARPU of $761 would be >worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a different way, with 17,000 customers an >ARPU of $100 would only be $20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in >now. > >A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of >customers. > >-Matt > >Charles Wu wrote: > > > >>>30% of what number Charles? >>> >>> >>> >>> >>At the last show, 500+ attended representing about 350ish operators >>Of these, about 40% responded >> >>Unfortunately, we have a confidentiality agreement with our survey >>respondents, so I cannot list names >> >> >> >> >> >>>How many WISPs said they have over 1,000 CPE. I can only think of about 20 >>> >>> >>> >>> >>with that high a number. >> >>A recent Tim Saunders article in BBW World alone that showed about 40+ >>Wireless Network Operators w/ 1,000+ CPE (and there are a lot more that Tim >>missed) >> >>Keep in mind, the majority of these operators no longer actively >> >> >participate > > >>in these list-servs, most of em are busy out in the field installing >>customers / running their businesses =) >> >>Did you know that in Sedona, AZ alone (middle of no-where in Northern AZ >>mountains), w/ a total population of ~15k, there are 2 Operators w/ 1,000+ >>CPE? (and there's also cable and DSL competition in town too) >> >>Even at the end of my equipment distribution days (late 2004), I had at >>least 50 customers whom I
RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
I stand corrected, fair enough Matt, but wow. That's pretty rich monthly rates and an especially rich ARPU. Patrick -Original Message- From: Matt Liotta [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 3:56 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Again, pointing to CBeyonds numbers it is clear that their average customer is not buying big TDM pipes or fiber-based services. Their starting package is $495 per month, which is just a single T1, while their next package up --which is priced higher than their ARPU-- is $895, which is just two T1s. That's 17,000 high ARPU customers delivering services that technologically are easy for WISPs. There are operators on this list that will sell a customer 3 megs or more of service for less than $495 per month. I'm not saying there isn't a market for low ARPU customers, but the scale required to make any real money seems like quite a challenge. -Matt Patrick Leary wrote: >Any operator with some decent residential mix would be drooling to have a >$100 ARPU Matt. No matter what technology is being used, that makes for an >excellent ROI. Those CLECs you mention are also likely providing fiber and >big TDM pipes as a primary focus. > >Patrick Leary >AVP Marketing >Alvarion, Inc. >o: 650.314.2628 >c: 760.580.0080 >Vonage: 650.641.1243 > >-Original Message- >From: Matt Liotta [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 2:52 PM >To: WISPA General List >Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! > >Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the quality >of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly whose ARPU >is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is only $1.2M >per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for very little >revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an Atlanta-based CLEC that in >recent time went public. Today they have about 17,000 customers, but >their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 customers, an ARPU of $761 would be >worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a different way, with 17,000 customers an >ARPU of $100 would only be $20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in >now. > >A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of >customers. > >-Matt > >Charles Wu wrote: > > > >>>30% of what number Charles? >>> >>> >>> >>> >>At the last show, 500+ attended representing about 350ish operators >>Of these, about 40% responded >> >>Unfortunately, we have a confidentiality agreement with our survey >>respondents, so I cannot list names >> >> >> >> >> >>>How many WISPs said they have over 1,000 CPE. I can only think of about 20 >>> >>> >>> >>> >>with that high a number. >> >>A recent Tim Saunders article in BBW World alone that showed about 40+ >>Wireless Network Operators w/ 1,000+ CPE (and there are a lot more that Tim >>missed) >> >>Keep in mind, the majority of these operators no longer actively >> >> >participate > > >>in these list-servs, most of em are busy out in the field installing >>customers / running their businesses =) >> >>Did you know that in Sedona, AZ alone (middle of no-where in Northern AZ >>mountains), w/ a total population of ~15k, there are 2 Operators w/ 1,000+ >>CPE? (and there's also cable and DSL competition in town too) >> >>Even at the end of my equipment distribution days (late 2004), I had at >>least 50 customers whom I'd been working with over the years who had >>purchased over 1,000 CPE from me...I know for sure that most of these guys >>are still operating and in business >> >>If you think about it, 1,000 isn't all that much -- take a look at the >>numbers >> >>If you've been a WISP since 2001, and you've been steadily buying CPE / >>installing 20 net new customers (minus churn, etc) / month (~ 1 install / >>working day / month), in over 5 years time (e.g., today in 2006), you'd >> >> >have > > >>1,200 customers >> >>Nowadays, w/ $150-$200 turn-key WISP CPE pricing (Motorola, Tranzeo, >>Trango), it's hard to even buy CPE in anything smaller than a 20-pack >> >>-Charles >> >>P.S. -- now another interesting statistics is the "top-end" of the >>license-exempt operator market -- although a lot of people nowadays have >>over 1,000 CPE installed, ALMOST NONE have been able to successfully scale >>beyond the 10,000 CPE level -- still trying to figure that one out... >> >
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Again, pointing to CBeyonds numbers it is clear that their average customer is not buying big TDM pipes or fiber-based services. Their starting package is $495 per month, which is just a single T1, while their next package up --which is priced higher than their ARPU-- is $895, which is just two T1s. That's 17,000 high ARPU customers delivering services that technologically are easy for WISPs. There are operators on this list that will sell a customer 3 megs or more of service for less than $495 per month. I'm not saying there isn't a market for low ARPU customers, but the scale required to make any real money seems like quite a challenge. -Matt Patrick Leary wrote: Any operator with some decent residential mix would be drooling to have a $100 ARPU Matt. No matter what technology is being used, that makes for an excellent ROI. Those CLECs you mention are also likely providing fiber and big TDM pipes as a primary focus. Patrick Leary AVP Marketing Alvarion, Inc. o: 650.314.2628 c: 760.580.0080 Vonage: 650.641.1243 -Original Message- From: Matt Liotta [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 2:52 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the quality of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly whose ARPU is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is only $1.2M per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for very little revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an Atlanta-based CLEC that in recent time went public. Today they have about 17,000 customers, but their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 customers, an ARPU of $761 would be worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a different way, with 17,000 customers an ARPU of $100 would only be $20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in now. A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of customers. -Matt Charles Wu wrote: 30% of what number Charles? At the last show, 500+ attended representing about 350ish operators Of these, about 40% responded Unfortunately, we have a confidentiality agreement with our survey respondents, so I cannot list names How many WISPs said they have over 1,000 CPE. I can only think of about 20 with that high a number. A recent Tim Saunders article in BBW World alone that showed about 40+ Wireless Network Operators w/ 1,000+ CPE (and there are a lot more that Tim missed) Keep in mind, the majority of these operators no longer actively participate in these list-servs, most of em are busy out in the field installing customers / running their businesses =) Did you know that in Sedona, AZ alone (middle of no-where in Northern AZ mountains), w/ a total population of ~15k, there are 2 Operators w/ 1,000+ CPE? (and there's also cable and DSL competition in town too) Even at the end of my equipment distribution days (late 2004), I had at least 50 customers whom I'd been working with over the years who had purchased over 1,000 CPE from me...I know for sure that most of these guys are still operating and in business If you think about it, 1,000 isn't all that much -- take a look at the numbers If you've been a WISP since 2001, and you've been steadily buying CPE / installing 20 net new customers (minus churn, etc) / month (~ 1 install / working day / month), in over 5 years time (e.g., today in 2006), you'd have 1,200 customers Nowadays, w/ $150-$200 turn-key WISP CPE pricing (Motorola, Tranzeo, Trango), it's hard to even buy CPE in anything smaller than a 20-pack -Charles P.S. -- now another interesting statistics is the "top-end" of the license-exempt operator market -- although a lot of people nowadays have over 1,000 CPE installed, ALMOST NONE have been able to successfully scale beyond the 10,000 CPE level -- still trying to figure that one out... --- CWLab Technology Architects http://www.cwlab.com -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Patrick Leary Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 3:35 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Patrick -Original Message- From: Charles Wu [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 1:34 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Some interesting statistics -- 30% of the WISPs who attended our last WiNOG "claimed" on their surveys they had been in the wireless business for more than 5 years and had more than 1k wireless CPE deployed in the field Less than 10% of them claimed to be "pure-play" license-exempt fixed wireless providers This is why we call them Wi- "NOGs" instead of "ISPs" nowadays Don't forget, a lot of rural telcos / CLECs / ILECs (e.g., the "enemy"
RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Indeed, and the Pew study is very credible, well circulated on the Hill, and used frequently as source material for other briefings and other reports. Patrick Leary AVP Marketing Alvarion, Inc. o: 650.314.2628 c: 760.580.0080 Vonage: 650.641.1243 -Original Message- From: John Scrivner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 3:31 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! The point is we have a well known, if not largely credible source, who has just released a report that says we (Fixed Wireless Broadband Providers) are serving the broadband needs of approximately 8% of US home users. We obviously have been completely ignored in other reports and surveys so for once it is nice to see us represented in some statistically important degree. I am not really that concerned about the exact number of customers. It is just nice to see us making the report in some meaningful way. Scriv David E. Smith wrote: >John Scrivner wrote: > > >>Check this out from the Pew report. It appears that fixed wireless is much >>bigger than what even I thought. According to this report 8% of all broadband >>connections in the US are delivered via fixed broadband wireless. >> >> > >Ouch. That study looks to be horribly methodologically flawed. > >(It's at http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Broadband_trends2006.pdf if >you're interested.) > >Their survey required the responders to know what they were talking >about -- if you have DSL, but a wireless router/access point, and you're >not all that technically competent, you may well say your laptop has >"wireless" Internet access when that's not quite what they intended. > >Here's the question they asked: > > > >>Does the computer you use at home connect to the internet through a >>dial-up telephone line, or do you have some other type of connection, >>such as a DSL-enabled phone line, a cable TV modem, a wireless >>connection, or a T-1 or fiber optic connection? >> >> > >That question gives me a headache, and I'd like to think I do know what >I'm talking about most of the time. > >Note that their survey only had about 1500 Internet-using responders, >which is jst barely enough to be considered a statistically valid >sample for a population of a couple hundred million. (Their methodology >is a bit vague on whether they're sampling all Americans, or just >adults, or...) > >Don't get me wrong; it's an exciting quote. I just hope everyone takes >it with the proper perspective, and realizes that it's probably "high" >by some unknowable order of magnitude. > >David Smith >MVN.net > > -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ This footnote confirms that this email message has been scanned by PineApp Mail-SeCure for the presence of malicious code, vandals & computer viruses. This footnote confirms that this email message has been scanned by PineApp Mail-SeCure for the presence of malicious code, vandals & computer viruses. -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Peter, While true in the simple sense, for this industry that is not always the case at this point. You need to remember that the larger WISPs continue to convert revenue into CAPEX as they scale and seek to capture new markets. I know many operators that tell me if they stopped investing in new markets they would be pretty much instantly profitable at this point. This is especially true of newer entrants. Also, when BWA is but a PART of the total business (and that is USUALLY the case), you need to look at the wireless play within integrated business. For example, consider the long (good empirical data) example of Midwest Wireless, based in Mankato, MN. Midwest also has around 400k cellular subscribers. Interestingly, when Midwest bundles a cellular sub with BWA service, the cellular churn for that customer drops to almost literally zero. That has a direct impact on the total bottom line. Similar examples can be found throughout the industry. Patrick Leary AVP Marketing Alvarion, Inc. o: 650.314.2628 c: 760.580.0080 Vonage: 650.641.1243 -Original Message- From: Peter R. [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 3:13 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Because number of subs is the measuring stick. Revenue is more important; but profit is the most important. Not many can speak to profit, so they measure in subs. - Peter Matt Liotta wrote: > Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the > quality of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly > whose ARPU is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is > only $1.2M per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for > very little revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an > Atlanta-based CLEC that in recent time went public. Today they have > about 17,000 customers, but their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 > customers, an ARPU of $761 would be worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a > different way, with 17,000 customers an ARPU of $100 would only be > $20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in now. > > A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of > customers. > > -Matt -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ This footnote confirms that this email message has been scanned by PineApp Mail-SeCure for the presence of malicious code, vandals & computer viruses. This footnote confirms that this email message has been scanned by PineApp Mail-SeCure for the presence of malicious code, vandals & computer viruses. -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Scriv, It is absolutely a step in the right direction considering all the other recent reports lump WISP's in with Satellite. Regards, Dawn DiPietro John Scrivner wrote: The point is we have a well known, if not largely credible source, who has just released a report that says we (Fixed Wireless Broadband Providers) are serving the broadband needs of approximately 8% of US home users. We obviously have been completely ignored in other reports and surveys so for once it is nice to see us represented in some statistically important degree. I am not really that concerned about the exact number of customers. It is just nice to see us making the report in some meaningful way. Scriv David E. Smith wrote: John Scrivner wrote: Check this out from the Pew report. It appears that fixed wireless is much bigger than what even I thought. According to this report 8% of all broadband connections in the US are delivered via fixed broadband wireless. Ouch. That study looks to be horribly methodologically flawed. (It's at http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Broadband_trends2006.pdf if you're interested.) Their survey required the responders to know what they were talking about -- if you have DSL, but a wireless router/access point, and you're not all that technically competent, you may well say your laptop has "wireless" Internet access when that's not quite what they intended. Here's the question they asked: Does the computer you use at home connect to the internet through a dial-up telephone line, or do you have some other type of connection, such as a DSL-enabled phone line, a cable TV modem, a wireless connection, or a T-1 or fiber optic connection? That question gives me a headache, and I'd like to think I do know what I'm talking about most of the time. Note that their survey only had about 1500 Internet-using responders, which is jst barely enough to be considered a statistically valid sample for a population of a couple hundred million. (Their methodology is a bit vague on whether they're sampling all Americans, or just adults, or...) Don't get me wrong; it's an exciting quote. I just hope everyone takes it with the proper perspective, and realizes that it's probably "high" by some unknowable order of magnitude. David Smith MVN.net --- --- -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Any operator with some decent residential mix would be drooling to have a $100 ARPU Matt. No matter what technology is being used, that makes for an excellent ROI. Those CLECs you mention are also likely providing fiber and big TDM pipes as a primary focus. Patrick Leary AVP Marketing Alvarion, Inc. o: 650.314.2628 c: 760.580.0080 Vonage: 650.641.1243 -Original Message- From: Matt Liotta [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 2:52 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the quality of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly whose ARPU is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is only $1.2M per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for very little revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an Atlanta-based CLEC that in recent time went public. Today they have about 17,000 customers, but their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 customers, an ARPU of $761 would be worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a different way, with 17,000 customers an ARPU of $100 would only be $20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in now. A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of customers. -Matt Charles Wu wrote: >>30% of what number Charles? >> >> > >At the last show, 500+ attended representing about 350ish operators >Of these, about 40% responded > >Unfortunately, we have a confidentiality agreement with our survey >respondents, so I cannot list names > > > >>How many WISPs said they have over 1,000 CPE. I can only think of about 20 >> >> >with that high a number. > >A recent Tim Saunders article in BBW World alone that showed about 40+ >Wireless Network Operators w/ 1,000+ CPE (and there are a lot more that Tim >missed) > >Keep in mind, the majority of these operators no longer actively participate >in these list-servs, most of em are busy out in the field installing >customers / running their businesses =) > >Did you know that in Sedona, AZ alone (middle of no-where in Northern AZ >mountains), w/ a total population of ~15k, there are 2 Operators w/ 1,000+ >CPE? (and there's also cable and DSL competition in town too) > >Even at the end of my equipment distribution days (late 2004), I had at >least 50 customers whom I'd been working with over the years who had >purchased over 1,000 CPE from me...I know for sure that most of these guys >are still operating and in business > >If you think about it, 1,000 isn't all that much -- take a look at the >numbers > >If you've been a WISP since 2001, and you've been steadily buying CPE / >installing 20 net new customers (minus churn, etc) / month (~ 1 install / >working day / month), in over 5 years time (e.g., today in 2006), you'd have >1,200 customers > >Nowadays, w/ $150-$200 turn-key WISP CPE pricing (Motorola, Tranzeo, >Trango), it's hard to even buy CPE in anything smaller than a 20-pack > >-Charles > >P.S. -- now another interesting statistics is the "top-end" of the >license-exempt operator market -- although a lot of people nowadays have >over 1,000 CPE installed, ALMOST NONE have been able to successfully scale >beyond the 10,000 CPE level -- still trying to figure that one out... > > >--- >CWLab >Technology Architects >http://www.cwlab.com > > > >-Original Message- >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On >Behalf Of Patrick Leary >Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 3:35 PM >To: 'WISPA General List' >Subject: RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE! > > >Patrick > >-Original Message- >From: Charles Wu [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] >Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 1:34 PM >To: 'WISPA General List' >Subject: RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE! > >Some interesting statistics -- 30% of the WISPs who attended our last WiNOG >"claimed" on their surveys they had been in the wireless business for more >than 5 years and had more than 1k wireless CPE deployed in the field > >Less than 10% of them claimed to be "pure-play" license-exempt fixed >wireless providers > >This is why we call them Wi- "NOGs" instead of "ISPs" nowadays > >Don't forget, a lot of rural telcos / CLECs / ILECs (e.g., the "enemy") have >gotten into license-exempt fixed wireless... > >-Charles > >P.S. - I heard a rumor that the current UL market leader, Motorola Canopy >sold close to $100 million in gear last year alone > >--- >CWLab >Technology Architects >http://www.cwlab.com > > > >-Original Message-
RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Thanks for the analysis Charles ;) You are right that most of the UL is in the U.S. I do not have the exact split of how much UL was in the U.S., but you are probably pretty close except on the split between PMP and backhaul in the U.S. The PMP part is probably around 85% of the U.S. number. You are right about our having some folks going back years. Maybe the longest example would Jason's Midcoast in Maine. Midcoast goes back at least to 1997. In addition to those, we have a pretty good crop of more recent operators that have moved upstream, so to speak. A prototypical example of one like that is Marty Dougherty's Roadstar Internet in Loudon County, VA. He transitioned upward twice from where he started in terms of vendor choice. We also have a healthy number of CLECs, especially post-DSL deregulation. To be fair though, there is also a number of smaller guys we have lost, mostly to purpose-built 802.11 such as old, honorable, but smaller stalwarts like Allen Marsalis's Shrevenet and Eje's business (who has transitioned more into a model where he sells products to other WISPs). Finally, selling through a two-tier distribution model means we sometimes lose some visibility, so it is not always easy to map out sales 100%. That said, we have to say, as would Moto, that not all CPE sales go to any type of WISP (or WiNOG), but rather go as PMP backhaul nodes for mesh deployments and a goodly number of CPE are now also shipping for public safety deployments. We now have several dozen cities under our belts and in none of those are we the edge access technology (except on the public safety side); we are the PMP backhaul. Good dialogue going here though. Patrick Leary AVP Marketing Alvarion, Inc. o: 650.314.2628 c: 760.580.0080 Vonage: 650.641.1243 -Original Message- From: Charles Wu [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 2:45 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Probably close to true, though I believe a bit on the high side. We probably sold around $80M in UL last year out of our $195M total since our UL/licensed split has historically hovered about 60% licensed/ 40% UL. Not bad in the face of massive behemoth like Motorola. So -- you sold $80M in UL last year What percentage of the was in the US? Let's gestimate that 50% of your UL sales were in North America (which, IMO, might be a bit low, since Internationally, 5 GHz and 900 MHz is kinda @#$@ up) So we're at $40M total Not knowing you're exact numbers, lets say there's an even split between all product lines (e.g., Backhaul, 900 Mhz, 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz) So 75% is PtMP Now we're at $30M Now, AP/CPE ratio -- not sure about Alvarion, but I remember from my equipment distribution days that we used to sell something like a 1:20 ratio -- Lets assume an average AP / infrastructure price of $2.5k, and an average CPE price of $500 - so using those numbers...about 20% of your sales revenue is APs, and 80% of your revenue is CPE 80% of $30M = $24M $24M / 500 = 48,000 CPE shipped into the US in 2005 alone How many Alvarion WISPs are there today still buying your product? If the number is 1,000 than that's an average of 480 CPE installed / WISP this year (or ~2 CPE installation / day) If 2,000, then that's an average of 240 CPE installed / WISP this year (or ~1 CPE installation / day) Over a 5 year time period (I would bet that many of your customers have been operating since 2001) -- that's a total of 2,000 WISPs w/ over 1,000 CPE installed Now, remember, you're Alvarion, and some of your customers have been installing these things since 1998... -Charles --- CWLab Technology Architects http://www.cwlab.com -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Patrick Leary Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 3:44 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Charles said - "P.S. - I heard a rumor that the current UL market leader, Motorola Canopy sold close to $100 million in gear last year alone" In the total combined market we still lead, but for sure the real test comes when all major TEMs field their own 802.16e-2005. Patrick Leary AVP Marketing Alvarion, Inc. o: 650.314.2628 c: 760.580.0080 Vonage: 650.641.1243 -Original Message- From: Charles Wu [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 1:34 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Some interesting statistics -- 30% of the WISPs who attended our last WiNOG "claimed" on their surveys they had been in the wireless business for more than 5 years and had more than 1k wireless CPE deployed in the field Less than 10% of them claimed to be "pure-play" license-exempt fixed wireless providers This is why we call them Wi- "NOGs" instead of "ISPs" nowadays Don't forg
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
The point is we have a well known, if not largely credible source, who has just released a report that says we (Fixed Wireless Broadband Providers) are serving the broadband needs of approximately 8% of US home users. We obviously have been completely ignored in other reports and surveys so for once it is nice to see us represented in some statistically important degree. I am not really that concerned about the exact number of customers. It is just nice to see us making the report in some meaningful way. Scriv David E. Smith wrote: John Scrivner wrote: Check this out from the Pew report. It appears that fixed wireless is much bigger than what even I thought. According to this report 8% of all broadband connections in the US are delivered via fixed broadband wireless. Ouch. That study looks to be horribly methodologically flawed. (It's at http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Broadband_trends2006.pdf if you're interested.) Their survey required the responders to know what they were talking about -- if you have DSL, but a wireless router/access point, and you're not all that technically competent, you may well say your laptop has "wireless" Internet access when that's not quite what they intended. Here's the question they asked: Does the computer you use at home connect to the internet through a dial-up telephone line, or do you have some other type of connection, such as a DSL-enabled phone line, a cable TV modem, a wireless connection, or a T-1 or fiber optic connection? That question gives me a headache, and I'd like to think I do know what I'm talking about most of the time. Note that their survey only had about 1500 Internet-using responders, which is jst barely enough to be considered a statistically valid sample for a population of a couple hundred million. (Their methodology is a bit vague on whether they're sampling all Americans, or just adults, or...) Don't get me wrong; it's an exciting quote. I just hope everyone takes it with the proper perspective, and realizes that it's probably "high" by some unknowable order of magnitude. David Smith MVN.net -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
All, Unfortunately as Peter pointed out in a previous conversation about this most broadband consumers do not even know what they have for a connection. We won't even talk about the difference between the technologies used. As quoted from the report; Although speed matters for broadband users, few know exactly what connection speed they have at home; 17% said they knew their home connection speed, while 81% acknowledged ignorance. Recently announced, AT& T has stepped up their advertising campaign. http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/-att-reaches-out-potential-customers-with-flurry-ads-/2006/05/25/1660118.htm Regards, Dawn DiPietro Jack Unger wrote: Hopefully, the 8% (6,000,000) figure includes ONLY end-users who use wireless broadband to get to/from their home and NOT the end-users who have a copper/fiber-based (cable/telco) broadband connection to their home and then use a Wi-Fi router/access point that provides the "final 50-ft" connection wirelessly. There's so much sloppy and innacurate "journalism" these days that I need reassurance that the article means what it appears to be saying. If there are 6,000,000 end-users and if there are 5000 WISPs then each WISP would, on average, have 1,200 subscribers. I'm not sure that this passes the "sniff" test. jack John Scrivner wrote: Check this out from the Pew report. It appears that fixed wireless is much bigger than what even I thought. According to this report 8% of all broadband connections in the US are delivered via fixed broadband wireless. That means you guys! Woo Hoo! Scriv --- --- -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Profit is irrelevant for an early stage growth company. -Matt Peter R. wrote: Because number of subs is the measuring stick. Revenue is more important; but profit is the most important. Not many can speak to profit, so they measure in subs. - Peter Matt Liotta wrote: Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the quality of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly whose ARPU is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is only $1.2M per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for very little revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an Atlanta-based CLEC that in recent time went public. Today they have about 17,000 customers, but their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 customers, an ARPU of $761 would be worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a different way, with 17,000 customers an ARPU of $100 would only be $20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in now. A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of customers. -Matt -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Because number of subs is the measuring stick. Revenue is more important; but profit is the most important. Not many can speak to profit, so they measure in subs. - Peter Matt Liotta wrote: Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the quality of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly whose ARPU is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is only $1.2M per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for very little revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an Atlanta-based CLEC that in recent time went public. Today they have about 17,000 customers, but their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 customers, an ARPU of $761 would be worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a different way, with 17,000 customers an ARPU of $100 would only be $20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in now. A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of customers. -Matt -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Oh I know. Most of these guys have never posted. Many are local telcos, many are local utilities, some are rural cellular folks. Some are just fairly well-run start-ups. As I have cautioned many of times before, listers need to remember that they represent a small percentage of operators out there and they are not always even representative of the larger group of BWA operators. ...and folks over 10k CPE in the U.S.? You are right damn few and even fewer with a single, integrated network being fully managed. For example, Prairie Inet's network is a conglomeration of discontiguous networks, as is MobilePro's, U.S. Wireless Online, and the rest of aggregators. In the U.S., for us Midwest Wireless (bought by Alltel) is right about there, AMA*Techtel is over 5k. Verizon's CLEC arm is well over 3k. And there are a few more around 5k. I also believe Chuck's Beehive has a Canopy network with about 10k CPE. - Patrick -Original Message- From: Charles Wu [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 2:31 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE! >30% of what number Charles? At the last show, 500+ attended representing about 350ish operators Of these, about 40% responded Unfortunately, we have a confidentiality agreement with our survey respondents, so I cannot list names >How many WISPs said they have over 1,000 CPE. I can only think of about 20 with that high a number. A recent Tim Saunders article in BBW World alone that showed about 40+ Wireless Network Operators w/ 1,000+ CPE (and there are a lot more that Tim missed) Keep in mind, the majority of these operators no longer actively participate in these list-servs, most of em are busy out in the field installing customers / running their businesses =) Did you know that in Sedona, AZ alone (middle of no-where in Northern AZ mountains), w/ a total population of ~15k, there are 2 Operators w/ 1,000+ CPE? (and there's also cable and DSL competition in town too) Even at the end of my equipment distribution days (late 2004), I had at least 50 customers whom I'd been working with over the years who had purchased over 1,000 CPE from me...I know for sure that most of these guys are still operating and in business If you think about it, 1,000 isn't all that much -- take a look at the numbers If you've been a WISP since 2001, and you've been steadily buying CPE / installing 20 net new customers (minus churn, etc) / month (~ 1 install / working day / month), in over 5 years time (e.g., today in 2006), you'd have 1,200 customers Nowadays, w/ $150-$200 turn-key WISP CPE pricing (Motorola, Tranzeo, Trango), it's hard to even buy CPE in anything smaller than a 20-pack -Charles P.S. -- now another interesting statistics is the "top-end" of the license-exempt operator market -- although a lot of people nowadays have over 1,000 CPE installed, ALMOST NONE have been able to successfully scale beyond the 10,000 CPE level -- still trying to figure that one out... --- CWLab Technology Architects http://www.cwlab.com -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Patrick Leary Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 3:35 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Patrick -Original Message- From: Charles Wu [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 1:34 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Some interesting statistics -- 30% of the WISPs who attended our last WiNOG "claimed" on their surveys they had been in the wireless business for more than 5 years and had more than 1k wireless CPE deployed in the field Less than 10% of them claimed to be "pure-play" license-exempt fixed wireless providers This is why we call them Wi- "NOGs" instead of "ISPs" nowadays Don't forget, a lot of rural telcos / CLECs / ILECs (e.g., the "enemy") have gotten into license-exempt fixed wireless... -Charles P.S. - I heard a rumor that the current UL market leader, Motorola Canopy sold close to $100 million in gear last year alone --- CWLab Technology Architects http://www.cwlab.com -Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jack Unger Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 1:46 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Hopefully, the 8% (6,000,000) figure includes ONLY end-users who use wireless broadband to get to/from their home and NOT the end-users who have a copper/fiber-based (cable/telco) broadband connection to their home and then use a Wi-Fi router/access point that provides the "final 50-ft" connection wirelessly. There's so much sloppy and innacurate "journalism" these days that I need reassurance that the a
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Not sure why the number of customers is even important when the quality of customers can vary so wildly. I run into WISPs regularly whose ARPU is barely above $100. At 1000 customers an ARPU of $100 is only $1.2M per year. That's a lot of radios and a lot of customers for very little revenue. Compare this to CBeyond, which is an Atlanta-based CLEC that in recent time went public. Today they have about 17,000 customers, but their ARPU is $761. With just 1000 customers, an ARPU of $761 would be worth $9.1M. Or to look at it a different way, with 17,000 customers an ARPU of $100 would only be $20.4M compared with the $155.2M they pull in now. A WISP would be wise to raise their ARPU as opposed to the number of customers. -Matt Charles Wu wrote: 30% of what number Charles? At the last show, 500+ attended representing about 350ish operators Of these, about 40% responded Unfortunately, we have a confidentiality agreement with our survey respondents, so I cannot list names How many WISPs said they have over 1,000 CPE. I can only think of about 20 with that high a number. A recent Tim Saunders article in BBW World alone that showed about 40+ Wireless Network Operators w/ 1,000+ CPE (and there are a lot more that Tim missed) Keep in mind, the majority of these operators no longer actively participate in these list-servs, most of em are busy out in the field installing customers / running their businesses =) Did you know that in Sedona, AZ alone (middle of no-where in Northern AZ mountains), w/ a total population of ~15k, there are 2 Operators w/ 1,000+ CPE? (and there's also cable and DSL competition in town too) Even at the end of my equipment distribution days (late 2004), I had at least 50 customers whom I'd been working with over the years who had purchased over 1,000 CPE from me...I know for sure that most of these guys are still operating and in business If you think about it, 1,000 isn't all that much -- take a look at the numbers If you've been a WISP since 2001, and you've been steadily buying CPE / installing 20 net new customers (minus churn, etc) / month (~ 1 install / working day / month), in over 5 years time (e.g., today in 2006), you'd have 1,200 customers Nowadays, w/ $150-$200 turn-key WISP CPE pricing (Motorola, Tranzeo, Trango), it's hard to even buy CPE in anything smaller than a 20-pack -Charles P.S. -- now another interesting statistics is the "top-end" of the license-exempt operator market -- although a lot of people nowadays have over 1,000 CPE installed, ALMOST NONE have been able to successfully scale beyond the 10,000 CPE level -- still trying to figure that one out... --- CWLab Technology Architects http://www.cwlab.com -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Patrick Leary Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 3:35 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Patrick -Original Message- From: Charles Wu [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 1:34 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Some interesting statistics -- 30% of the WISPs who attended our last WiNOG "claimed" on their surveys they had been in the wireless business for more than 5 years and had more than 1k wireless CPE deployed in the field Less than 10% of them claimed to be "pure-play" license-exempt fixed wireless providers This is why we call them Wi- "NOGs" instead of "ISPs" nowadays Don't forget, a lot of rural telcos / CLECs / ILECs (e.g., the "enemy") have gotten into license-exempt fixed wireless... -Charles P.S. - I heard a rumor that the current UL market leader, Motorola Canopy sold close to $100 million in gear last year alone --- CWLab Technology Architects http://www.cwlab.com -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jack Unger Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 1:46 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Hopefully, the 8% (6,000,000) figure includes ONLY end-users who use wireless broadband to get to/from their home and NOT the end-users who have a copper/fiber-based (cable/telco) broadband connection to their home and then use a Wi-Fi router/access point that provides the "final 50-ft" connection wirelessly. There's so much sloppy and innacurate "journalism" these days that I need reassurance that the article means what it appears to be saying. If there are 6,000,000 end-users and if there are 5000 WISPs then each WISP would, on average, have 1,200 subscribers. I'm not sure that this passes the "sniff" test. jack John Scrivner wrote: Check this out from the Pew report. It appears that f
RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Probably close to true, though I believe a bit on the high side. We probably sold around $80M in UL last year out of our $195M total since our UL/licensed split has historically hovered about 60% licensed/ 40% UL. Not bad in the face of massive behemoth like Motorola. So -- you sold $80M in UL last year What percentage of the was in the US? Let's gestimate that 50% of your UL sales were in North America (which, IMO, might be a bit low, since Internationally, 5 GHz and 900 MHz is kinda @#$@ up) So we're at $40M total Not knowing you're exact numbers, lets say there's an even split between all product lines (e.g., Backhaul, 900 Mhz, 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz) So 75% is PtMP Now we're at $30M Now, AP/CPE ratio -- not sure about Alvarion, but I remember from my equipment distribution days that we used to sell something like a 1:20 ratio -- Lets assume an average AP / infrastructure price of $2.5k, and an average CPE price of $500 - so using those numbers...about 20% of your sales revenue is APs, and 80% of your revenue is CPE 80% of $30M = $24M $24M / 500 = 48,000 CPE shipped into the US in 2005 alone How many Alvarion WISPs are there today still buying your product? If the number is 1,000 than that's an average of 480 CPE installed / WISP this year (or ~2 CPE installation / day) If 2,000, then that's an average of 240 CPE installed / WISP this year (or ~1 CPE installation / day) Over a 5 year time period (I would bet that many of your customers have been operating since 2001) -- that's a total of 2,000 WISPs w/ over 1,000 CPE installed Now, remember, you're Alvarion, and some of your customers have been installing these things since 1998... -Charles --- CWLab Technology Architects http://www.cwlab.com -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Patrick Leary Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 3:44 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Charles said - "P.S. - I heard a rumor that the current UL market leader, Motorola Canopy sold close to $100 million in gear last year alone" In the total combined market we still lead, but for sure the real test comes when all major TEMs field their own 802.16e-2005. Patrick Leary AVP Marketing Alvarion, Inc. o: 650.314.2628 c: 760.580.0080 Vonage: 650.641.1243 -Original Message- From: Charles Wu [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 1:34 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Some interesting statistics -- 30% of the WISPs who attended our last WiNOG "claimed" on their surveys they had been in the wireless business for more than 5 years and had more than 1k wireless CPE deployed in the field Less than 10% of them claimed to be "pure-play" license-exempt fixed wireless providers This is why we call them Wi- "NOGs" instead of "ISPs" nowadays Don't forget, a lot of rural telcos / CLECs / ILECs (e.g., the "enemy") have gotten into license-exempt fixed wireless... -Charles P.S. - I heard a rumor that the current UL market leader, Motorola Canopy sold close to $100 million in gear last year alone --- CWLab Technology Architects http://www.cwlab.com -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jack Unger Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 1:46 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Hopefully, the 8% (6,000,000) figure includes ONLY end-users who use wireless broadband to get to/from their home and NOT the end-users who have a copper/fiber-based (cable/telco) broadband connection to their home and then use a Wi-Fi router/access point that provides the "final 50-ft" connection wirelessly. There's so much sloppy and innacurate "journalism" these days that I need reassurance that the article means what it appears to be saying. If there are 6,000,000 end-users and if there are 5000 WISPs then each WISP would, on average, have 1,200 subscribers. I'm not sure that this passes the "sniff" test. jack John Scrivner wrote: > Check this out from the Pew report. It appears that fixed wireless is > much > bigger than what even I thought. According to this report 8% of all broadband > connections in the US are delivered via fixed broadband wireless. That means you > guys! Woo Hoo! > Scriv > > > -- Jack Unger ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) - President, Ask-Wi.Com, Inc. Serving the License-Free Wireless Industry Since 1993 Author of the WISP Handbook - "Deploying License-Free Wireless WANs" True Vendor-Neutral WISP Consulting-Training-Troubleshooting Our next WISP Workshop is June 21-22 in Atlanta, GA. Phone (VoIP Over Broadband Wireless) 818-227-4220 www.ask-wi.com -- WISP
RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
>30% of what number Charles? At the last show, 500+ attended representing about 350ish operators Of these, about 40% responded Unfortunately, we have a confidentiality agreement with our survey respondents, so I cannot list names >How many WISPs said they have over 1,000 CPE. I can only think of about 20 with that high a number. A recent Tim Saunders article in BBW World alone that showed about 40+ Wireless Network Operators w/ 1,000+ CPE (and there are a lot more that Tim missed) Keep in mind, the majority of these operators no longer actively participate in these list-servs, most of em are busy out in the field installing customers / running their businesses =) Did you know that in Sedona, AZ alone (middle of no-where in Northern AZ mountains), w/ a total population of ~15k, there are 2 Operators w/ 1,000+ CPE? (and there's also cable and DSL competition in town too) Even at the end of my equipment distribution days (late 2004), I had at least 50 customers whom I'd been working with over the years who had purchased over 1,000 CPE from me...I know for sure that most of these guys are still operating and in business If you think about it, 1,000 isn't all that much -- take a look at the numbers If you've been a WISP since 2001, and you've been steadily buying CPE / installing 20 net new customers (minus churn, etc) / month (~ 1 install / working day / month), in over 5 years time (e.g., today in 2006), you'd have 1,200 customers Nowadays, w/ $150-$200 turn-key WISP CPE pricing (Motorola, Tranzeo, Trango), it's hard to even buy CPE in anything smaller than a 20-pack -Charles P.S. -- now another interesting statistics is the "top-end" of the license-exempt operator market -- although a lot of people nowadays have over 1,000 CPE installed, ALMOST NONE have been able to successfully scale beyond the 10,000 CPE level -- still trying to figure that one out... --- CWLab Technology Architects http://www.cwlab.com -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Patrick Leary Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 3:35 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Patrick -Original Message- From: Charles Wu [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 1:34 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Some interesting statistics -- 30% of the WISPs who attended our last WiNOG "claimed" on their surveys they had been in the wireless business for more than 5 years and had more than 1k wireless CPE deployed in the field Less than 10% of them claimed to be "pure-play" license-exempt fixed wireless providers This is why we call them Wi- "NOGs" instead of "ISPs" nowadays Don't forget, a lot of rural telcos / CLECs / ILECs (e.g., the "enemy") have gotten into license-exempt fixed wireless... -Charles P.S. - I heard a rumor that the current UL market leader, Motorola Canopy sold close to $100 million in gear last year alone --- CWLab Technology Architects http://www.cwlab.com -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jack Unger Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 1:46 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Hopefully, the 8% (6,000,000) figure includes ONLY end-users who use wireless broadband to get to/from their home and NOT the end-users who have a copper/fiber-based (cable/telco) broadband connection to their home and then use a Wi-Fi router/access point that provides the "final 50-ft" connection wirelessly. There's so much sloppy and innacurate "journalism" these days that I need reassurance that the article means what it appears to be saying. If there are 6,000,000 end-users and if there are 5000 WISPs then each WISP would, on average, have 1,200 subscribers. I'm not sure that this passes the "sniff" test. jack John Scrivner wrote: > Check this out from the Pew report. It appears that fixed wireless is > much > bigger than what even I thought. According to this report 8% of all broadband > connections in the US are delivered via fixed broadband wireless. That means you > guys! Woo Hoo! > Scriv > > > -- Jack Unger ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) - President, Ask-Wi.Com, Inc. Serving the License-Free Wireless Industry Since 1993 Author of the WISP Handbook - "Deploying License-Free Wireless WANs" True Vendor-Neutral WISP Consulting-Training-Troubleshooting Our next WISP Workshop is June 21-22 in Atlanta, GA. Phone (VoIP Over Broadband Wireless) 818-227-4220 www.ask-wi.com -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lis
RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Charles said - "P.S. - I heard a rumor that the current UL market leader, Motorola Canopy sold close to $100 million in gear last year alone" Probably close to true, though I believe a bit on the high side. We probably sold around $80M in UL last year out of our $195M total since our UL/licensed split has historically hovered about 60% licensed/ 40% UL. Not bad in the face of massive behemoth like Motorola. In the total combined market we still lead, but for sure the real test comes when all major TEMs field their own 802.16e-2005. Patrick Leary AVP Marketing Alvarion, Inc. o: 650.314.2628 c: 760.580.0080 Vonage: 650.641.1243 -Original Message- From: Charles Wu [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 1:34 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Some interesting statistics -- 30% of the WISPs who attended our last WiNOG "claimed" on their surveys they had been in the wireless business for more than 5 years and had more than 1k wireless CPE deployed in the field Less than 10% of them claimed to be "pure-play" license-exempt fixed wireless providers This is why we call them Wi- "NOGs" instead of "ISPs" nowadays Don't forget, a lot of rural telcos / CLECs / ILECs (e.g., the "enemy") have gotten into license-exempt fixed wireless... -Charles P.S. - I heard a rumor that the current UL market leader, Motorola Canopy sold close to $100 million in gear last year alone --- CWLab Technology Architects http://www.cwlab.com -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jack Unger Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 1:46 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Hopefully, the 8% (6,000,000) figure includes ONLY end-users who use wireless broadband to get to/from their home and NOT the end-users who have a copper/fiber-based (cable/telco) broadband connection to their home and then use a Wi-Fi router/access point that provides the "final 50-ft" connection wirelessly. There's so much sloppy and innacurate "journalism" these days that I need reassurance that the article means what it appears to be saying. If there are 6,000,000 end-users and if there are 5000 WISPs then each WISP would, on average, have 1,200 subscribers. I'm not sure that this passes the "sniff" test. jack John Scrivner wrote: > Check this out from the Pew report. It appears that fixed wireless is > much > bigger than what even I thought. According to this report 8% of all broadband > connections in the US are delivered via fixed broadband wireless. That means you > guys! Woo Hoo! > Scriv > > > -- Jack Unger ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) - President, Ask-Wi.Com, Inc. Serving the License-Free Wireless Industry Since 1993 Author of the WISP Handbook - "Deploying License-Free Wireless WANs" True Vendor-Neutral WISP Consulting-Training-Troubleshooting Our next WISP Workshop is June 21-22 in Atlanta, GA. Phone (VoIP Over Broadband Wireless) 818-227-4220 www.ask-wi.com -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ This footnote confirms that this email message has been scanned by PineApp Mail-SeCure for the presence of malicious code, vandals & computer viruses. This footnote confirms that this email message has been scanned by PineApp Mail-SeCure for the presence of malicious code, vandals & computer viruses. -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
"There's so much sloppy and inaccurate "journalism" these days that I need reassurance that the article means what it appears to be saying." So true Jack. I can't remember how many letters to the editor I have written seeking to correct articles. The latest being Friday when a local Silicon Valley paper (Mountain View Voice) carried a May 26 cover story in its business section that explained how Google's city wide wireless project in its home city of Mountain View worked. It said 350 Tropos mesh nodes "...will transmit to one of three aggregation points..." What it forgot to mention is that there are about 50 Alvarion BreezeACCESS VL nodes and those are what connects to the three base stations around the city. So all the mesh connects to the BreezeACCESS VL, which is the NLOS metro wide multipoint backhaul for the project. [It can be argued that the backhaul is the critical piece since it defines how much capacity is actually available in the mesh. Also, a high capacity multipoint backhaul like BreezeACCESS VL requires much fewer total BH nodes, reducing the network CAPEX.] The funny thing is that the picture they carried shows the Google project leader presenting the network to the local community and businesses and in the background is a Power Point that has Alvarion's name on it. The slide in the image says, "...radios connects to the Internet via an Alvarion gateway that connects wirelessly to a base station." Fortunately, the Mountain View Voice, as a paper in the tech heart of the U.S., wants to get it right, so they will print my Letter to the Editor. I was especially glad to hear that since we have about 170 people working here in Mountain View! Patrick Leary AVP Marketing Alvarion, Inc. -Original Message- From: Jack Unger [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 11:46 AM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Hopefully, the 8% (6,000,000) figure includes ONLY end-users who use wireless broadband to get to/from their home and NOT the end-users who have a copper/fiber-based (cable/telco) broadband connection to their home and then use a Wi-Fi router/access point that provides the "final 50-ft" connection wirelessly. There's so much sloppy and innacurate "journalism" these days that I need reassurance that the article means what it appears to be saying. If there are 6,000,000 end-users and if there are 5000 WISPs then each WISP would, on average, have 1,200 subscribers. I'm not sure that this passes the "sniff" test. jack John Scrivner wrote: > Check this out from the Pew report. It appears that fixed wireless is much > bigger than what even I thought. According to this report 8% of all broadband > connections in the US are delivered via fixed broadband wireless. That means you > guys! Woo Hoo! > Scriv > > > -- Jack Unger ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) - President, Ask-Wi.Com, Inc. Serving the License-Free Wireless Industry Since 1993 Author of the WISP Handbook - "Deploying License-Free Wireless WANs" True Vendor-Neutral WISP Consulting-Training-Troubleshooting Our next WISP Workshop is June 21-22 in Atlanta, GA. Phone (VoIP Over Broadband Wireless) 818-227-4220 www.ask-wi.com -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ This footnote confirms that this email message has been scanned by PineApp Mail-SeCure for the presence of malicious code, vandals & computer viruses. This footnote confirms that this email message has been scanned by PineApp Mail-SeCure for the presence of malicious code, vandals & computer viruses. -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
30% of what number Charles? How many WISPs said they have over 1,000 CPE. I can only think of about 20 with that high a number. I'd like to be able to toss around a better number if it can be substantiated, even anecdotally and unscientifically like an honor survey. Patrick -Original Message- From: Charles Wu [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 1:34 PM To: 'WISPA General List' Subject: RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Some interesting statistics -- 30% of the WISPs who attended our last WiNOG "claimed" on their surveys they had been in the wireless business for more than 5 years and had more than 1k wireless CPE deployed in the field Less than 10% of them claimed to be "pure-play" license-exempt fixed wireless providers This is why we call them Wi- "NOGs" instead of "ISPs" nowadays Don't forget, a lot of rural telcos / CLECs / ILECs (e.g., the "enemy") have gotten into license-exempt fixed wireless... -Charles P.S. - I heard a rumor that the current UL market leader, Motorola Canopy sold close to $100 million in gear last year alone --- CWLab Technology Architects http://www.cwlab.com -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jack Unger Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 1:46 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Hopefully, the 8% (6,000,000) figure includes ONLY end-users who use wireless broadband to get to/from their home and NOT the end-users who have a copper/fiber-based (cable/telco) broadband connection to their home and then use a Wi-Fi router/access point that provides the "final 50-ft" connection wirelessly. There's so much sloppy and innacurate "journalism" these days that I need reassurance that the article means what it appears to be saying. If there are 6,000,000 end-users and if there are 5000 WISPs then each WISP would, on average, have 1,200 subscribers. I'm not sure that this passes the "sniff" test. jack John Scrivner wrote: > Check this out from the Pew report. It appears that fixed wireless is > much > bigger than what even I thought. According to this report 8% of all broadband > connections in the US are delivered via fixed broadband wireless. That means you > guys! Woo Hoo! > Scriv > > > -- Jack Unger ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) - President, Ask-Wi.Com, Inc. Serving the License-Free Wireless Industry Since 1993 Author of the WISP Handbook - "Deploying License-Free Wireless WANs" True Vendor-Neutral WISP Consulting-Training-Troubleshooting Our next WISP Workshop is June 21-22 in Atlanta, GA. Phone (VoIP Over Broadband Wireless) 818-227-4220 www.ask-wi.com -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ This footnote confirms that this email message has been scanned by PineApp Mail-SeCure for the presence of malicious code, vandals & computer viruses. This footnote confirms that this email message has been scanned by PineApp Mail-SeCure for the presence of malicious code, vandals & computer viruses. -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Some interesting statistics -- 30% of the WISPs who attended our last WiNOG "claimed" on their surveys they had been in the wireless business for more than 5 years and had more than 1k wireless CPE deployed in the field Less than 10% of them claimed to be "pure-play" license-exempt fixed wireless providers This is why we call them Wi- "NOGs" instead of "ISPs" nowadays Don't forget, a lot of rural telcos / CLECs / ILECs (e.g., the "enemy") have gotten into license-exempt fixed wireless... -Charles P.S. - I heard a rumor that the current UL market leader, Motorola Canopy sold close to $100 million in gear last year alone --- CWLab Technology Architects http://www.cwlab.com -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jack Unger Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 1:46 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Hopefully, the 8% (6,000,000) figure includes ONLY end-users who use wireless broadband to get to/from their home and NOT the end-users who have a copper/fiber-based (cable/telco) broadband connection to their home and then use a Wi-Fi router/access point that provides the "final 50-ft" connection wirelessly. There's so much sloppy and innacurate "journalism" these days that I need reassurance that the article means what it appears to be saying. If there are 6,000,000 end-users and if there are 5000 WISPs then each WISP would, on average, have 1,200 subscribers. I'm not sure that this passes the "sniff" test. jack John Scrivner wrote: > Check this out from the Pew report. It appears that fixed wireless is > much > bigger than what even I thought. According to this report 8% of all broadband > connections in the US are delivered via fixed broadband wireless. That means you > guys! Woo Hoo! > Scriv > > > -- Jack Unger ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) - President, Ask-Wi.Com, Inc. Serving the License-Free Wireless Industry Since 1993 Author of the WISP Handbook - "Deploying License-Free Wireless WANs" True Vendor-Neutral WISP Consulting-Training-Troubleshooting Our next WISP Workshop is June 21-22 in Atlanta, GA. Phone (VoIP Over Broadband Wireless) 818-227-4220 www.ask-wi.com -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Hopefully, the 8% (6,000,000) figure includes ONLY end-users who use wireless broadband to get to/from their home and NOT the end-users who have a copper/fiber-based (cable/telco) broadband connection to their home and then use a Wi-Fi router/access point that provides the "final 50-ft" connection wirelessly. There's so much sloppy and innacurate "journalism" these days that I need reassurance that the article means what it appears to be saying. If there are 6,000,000 end-users and if there are 5000 WISPs then each WISP would, on average, have 1,200 subscribers. I'm not sure that this passes the "sniff" test. jack John Scrivner wrote: Check this out from the Pew report. It appears that fixed wireless is much bigger than what even I thought. According to this report 8% of all broadband connections in the US are delivered via fixed broadband wireless. That means you guys! Woo Hoo! Scriv -- Jack Unger ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) - President, Ask-Wi.Com, Inc. Serving the License-Free Wireless Industry Since 1993 Author of the WISP Handbook - "Deploying License-Free Wireless WANs" True Vendor-Neutral WISP Consulting-Training-Troubleshooting Our next WISP Workshop is June 21-22 in Atlanta, GA. Phone (VoIP Over Broadband Wireless) 818-227-4220 www.ask-wi.com -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
David - I agree with you as well... I would consider this report / poll to be bogus to the actual #s of "Fixed" Wireless subscribers. With that being said, perhaps this mistake will work in our favor :) Or against us :( JohnnyO -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of David E. Smith Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 2:27 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE! John Scrivner wrote: > Check this out from the Pew report. It appears that fixed wireless is > much > bigger than what even I thought. According to this report 8% of all broadband > connections in the US are delivered via fixed broadband wireless. Ouch. That study looks to be horribly methodologically flawed. (It's at http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Broadband_trends2006.pdf if you're interested.) Their survey required the responders to know what they were talking about -- if you have DSL, but a wireless router/access point, and you're not all that technically competent, you may well say your laptop has "wireless" Internet access when that's not quite what they intended. Here's the question they asked: > Does the computer you use at home connect to the internet through a > dial-up telephone line, or do you have some other type of connection, > such as a DSL-enabled phone line, a cable TV modem, a wireless > connection, or a T-1 or fiber optic connection? That question gives me a headache, and I'd like to think I do know what I'm talking about most of the time. Note that their survey only had about 1500 Internet-using responders, which is jst barely enough to be considered a statistically valid sample for a population of a couple hundred million. (Their methodology is a bit vague on whether they're sampling all Americans, or just adults, or...) Don't get me wrong; it's an exciting quote. I just hope everyone takes it with the proper perspective, and realizes that it's probably "high" by some unknowable order of magnitude. David Smith MVN.net -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
John Scrivner wrote: > Check this out from the Pew report. It appears that fixed wireless is much > bigger than what even I thought. According to this report 8% of all broadband > connections in the US are delivered via fixed broadband wireless. Ouch. That study looks to be horribly methodologically flawed. (It's at http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Broadband_trends2006.pdf if you're interested.) Their survey required the responders to know what they were talking about -- if you have DSL, but a wireless router/access point, and you're not all that technically competent, you may well say your laptop has "wireless" Internet access when that's not quite what they intended. Here's the question they asked: > Does the computer you use at home connect to the internet through a > dial-up telephone line, or do you have some other type of connection, > such as a DSL-enabled phone line, a cable TV modem, a wireless > connection, or a T-1 or fiber optic connection? That question gives me a headache, and I'd like to think I do know what I'm talking about most of the time. Note that their survey only had about 1500 Internet-using responders, which is jst barely enough to be considered a statistically valid sample for a population of a couple hundred million. (Their methodology is a bit vague on whether they're sampling all Americans, or just adults, or...) Don't get me wrong; it's an exciting quote. I just hope everyone takes it with the proper perspective, and realizes that it's probably "high" by some unknowable order of magnitude. David Smith MVN.net -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
Re: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
Patrick Leary wrote: You are right John, that is huge. As you and I have agreed, the old reported numbers many of us suspected were low due to A) the form 477 only used to require operators to file if they had 250 or more subs, which meant most WISPs did not have to file so their numbers were invisible and B) many WISPs still do not file. The previous conventional wisdom said that there were only about 500k-1m BWA subs. Glad to see these new numbers blow that old number out of the water. Patrick I wonder what it would be like if every wisp actually filed like they were supposed to. George -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
RE: [WISPA] This is HUGE!
You are right John, that is huge. As you and I have agreed, the old reported numbers many of us suspected were low due to A) the form 477 only used to require operators to file if they had 250 or more subs, which meant most WISPs did not have to file so their numbers were invisible and B) many WISPs still do not file. The previous conventional wisdom said that there were only about 500k-1m BWA subs. Glad to see these new numbers blow that old number out of the water. Patrick -Original Message- From: John Scrivner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 30, 2006 9:36 AM To: wireless@wispa.org Subject: [WISPA] This is HUGE! Check this out from the Pew report. It appears that fixed wireless is much bigger than what even I thought. According to this report 8% of all broadband connections in the US are delivered via fixed broadband wireless. That means you guys! Woo Hoo! Scriv This footnote confirms that this email message has been scanned by PineApp Mail-SeCure for the presence of malicious code, vandals & computer viruses. This footnote confirms that this email message has been scanned by PineApp Mail-SeCure for the presence of malicious code, vandals & computer viruses. -- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
