Travis, I think you've misunderstood me.
I'm not saying you don't have a good company. Clearly you do. I also think
you're a bright guy.
There are likely two reasons for the size difference in out companies. The
biggest would be market size. My whole COUNTY has 10,000 people in it.
Probably less than that by now. The next county over probably has less than
50,000. I have DSL, cable, FTTH (basically GIVEN away by a PUD), and
several other wisps as competition on this very rural area.
I started my business as a copier sales and service company in '95 with no
inventory, no customers, a few tools an $3000 in the bank. It's fair to say
that I didn't exactly have an easy time of it when starting out. I started
the ISP in '97, not cause I thought it a good business, but because no one
else would do it here. In '98 I started the homebrew DSL thing, and in '99
I started the wireless.
In 2001 when we switched from mostly office equipment work to only internet,
we had a TON of debt. An ex service manager had spent a year setting up his
own company and when he left me I lost 50%(!!!) of my revenue in 1 month.
I'd just moved into a brand new big building etc. Had more space and a LOT
more of a lease payment than I needed due to the reduced business.
Two... We've grown much slower than some, but I'm very much a man of my
word. I've been careful NOT to put myself in a position of possible
bankruptsy etc. We've been late sometimes but other than the lease on that
building, I've never walked away from a single bill. Even when many I know
have filed bankruptsy in far easier situations. Maybe that makes me a fool,
but I'm a fool you know you can do honest business with.
3000 subs sounds great, till you think about companies with 30,000 or
300,000 subs. THAT's where *I* want to be. Actually, I want that
$10,000,000 cash payment for my company. grin. Look again, at the original
OWNERS of all of those cell phone companies that used to exist. Or the ones
that had the cable companies etc. Why were those sales so valuable? I
believe because of cooperation and standardization. Make it as cheap and
easy to take over your operations as it can be.
BTW, 1% per year in growth? Plus a 10% drop in costs? That's nice. Our
gross sales have increased by 15 to 16% per year for the last three years.
We're still not advertising either. And this year, so far, we're running
96% ahead of last years growth. I may be in a very small market, but I'm a
damned good operator!
laters,
marlon
----- 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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