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 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














--
  Sam Tetherow
  Sandhills Wireless

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