Marlon's main city is Odessa, WA. Within 65 miles is Spokane, WA that
has hundreds of thousands of people, plus all the suburbs.
It seems he is "short sighted" by not expanding into that market 6-8
years ago. Sixty miles is nothing... I have a single 73 mile shot that
has been running 100% uptime for almost 2 years.
Travis
Microserv
Mark Koskenmaki wrote:
I have to come to Marlon's defense a bit here. The idaho falls /
pocatello area has DRAMATICALLY more people than the central washington
wasteland Marlon serves.
You serve the populated areas of Bonneville, Bingham and Bannock Counties,
if I estimate your coverage. This approaches a quarter million people, at
least for the three counties, it does.
Marlon's town is about 1000 people, Lincoln and Adams County together have
less than 30K people, and his main competition is a utility which is using
it's financial might to subsidize buried fiber to every home in Grant
County.
I have seen Marlon's territory, driven through it, and seen his "operation".
It's a collection of small community markets. I would say that in spite of
being small, he probably has considerably higher market share than you do,
for the places he covers.
None of this is to disparage anyone. But you can't compare apples and
oranges like that and have it make any sense at all. I suspect you'd
struggle mightily to adapt to marlon's situation... and vice versa.
Let's not go off on each other here.. We have much better targets to aim
at.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Travis Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "WISPA General List" <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, April 27, 2007 9:19 PM
Subject: Re: [WISPA] WISP Peering
Well, I seem to be holding my own ground pretty well... and I DON'T turn
customers over to my competition... over 65 towers in operation, over
3,000 wireless subs, hundreds of DSL subs, almost 50 fiber subs (banks,
hospitals, insurance, etc.)... and NO outside investors, stock holders,
or any long-term debt whatsoever. :)
(OT: Our annual gross revenue has been within 1% of the previous year
for the past 4 years. However, I have managed to decrease our expenses
by 10% every year. While this doesn't seem like a lot, realize we are a
multi-million dollar company. There is EASY money to be made by just
cutting expenses. Things like shopping around for better CC rates,
better insurance rates, cheaper bandwidth, etc.)
Also, if you leased your equipment, you could put the new tower up for
less than $200 per month for EVERYTHING. ;)
<rant>
Call it what you will Marlon, but I believe you started your wireless
operation around 1997 (going off your website). In 1997 we started our
wireless service as well. Today we have over 3,000 connected wireless
subs and are growing at over 100 per month. We have been profitable
since our first year in business. This will be _another_ record breaking
year for us. We have a backbone uptime of 99.99% over the last 2 years
(including scheduled maintenance). Our wireless subs see a 99.9% uptime
(including maintenance, interferance issues, blown AP's, etc). We
deliver over 150Mbps of internet traffic during business hours using
three diverse providers (DS3 via Qwest fiber, OC3 via seperate Qwest
fiber, Level3 via fastethernet via seperate fiber via seperate NOC). We
provide service to 8 entire school districts (out of a possible 10 in
our entire 25,000 square mile coverage area).
</rant>
So, if I'm short sighted and you are not, why is my company 10x the size
and making 10x the profit when both of us started at the same time?
Travis
Microserv
Marlon K. Schafer wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: "Travis Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "WISPA General List" <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2007 8:16 PM
Subject: Re: [WISPA] WISP Peering
Why wouldn't you just put up your own AP's and service the same area
rather than give that customer away to the competition?
Spectrum congestion.
Cashflow
Speed.
Expanded coverage, very quickly, for no money.
I would spend $5k and put up my own tower before I turn a "potential"
customer away to the competition. I've done it many times over the
years and it has always paid off. Once one person is connected, they
tell their neighbors about it. Pretty soon an AP that was put up for
a single customer has 10 or 20 customers on it.
Um, the competitors ALREADY have networks in place!!!!!
Doesn't seem to make business sense to me. Plus when they need tech
support, how do you troubleshoot the competitors AP's? How do you do
RF link tests and packet loss tests at 10:00PM when the customer is
on the phone?
I call the competitor on his cell phone. Just like he does with me.
Your attidude, while pretty typical, is very short sighted. The more
we work together to keep the airways clean and maximize the
investments, the better all of our networks run and the faster we can
grow.
It's that silly ol' "Together we stand" thing.
I was watching a group of kids play Red Rover the other day. I had to
wonder how that game would turn out if the kids all tried to stand
there and hold their OWN ground instead of working as a team.
Travis
Microserv
Marlon K. Schafer (509) 982-2181 wrote:
----- Original Message ----- From: "George Rogato"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "WISPA General List" <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2007 6:42 PM
Subject: Re: [WISPA] WISP Peering
Marlon K. Schafer (509) 982-2181 wrote:
Two of my competitors just sat down for lunch and worked out a
network sharing agreement. It's a handshake deal at this point
though.
Basically we carved up a hilltop laying out coverage zones for
each of us, and we set a price for using each other's ap's.
Marlon
Hey I think thats a good thing you've done there Marlon, getting
along and even doing business with your competitors.
Yeah. It's something that the three of us have already been doing
for a couple of years. We sell on each other's ap's at the same
price. The only catch is that each of us has to live under the bw,
and bit cap rules of the other guys network vs. our own. But that
seems perfectly fair to me.
We also handle all tech support for the cusotmer. The customer
should NEVER contact the other isp. We have however, shown up
together at problematic customers and worked jointly to fix any
issues.
But where do you think the line would be drawn in respect to anti
competitive practices?
I'm not sure. We've not had that come up yet.
Did you have a specific situation in mind?
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