Comments inline below:
>I find these comparisons of products like Ubiquiti / Mikrotik vs. Motorola >/ WiMAX products to be somewhat unrealistic -- it seems to me that it's >like comparing something that's hypothetical and "looks good on paper" and >"hoping" that it will actually work I don't think Microtik and Ubiquiti are particularly similar - they certainly seem to have a very different philosophy and probably should be dicussed separately. I've also had some reservations about the integrated Ubiquiti units (see my earlier postings). But I have to say that those look primarily like "teething issues," likely to be largely addressed within the next year to 18 months, rather than anything fundamentally wrong with Ubiquiti's technical approach to their integrated radios. > > Here's my question; sure, on paper, the new Ubiquiti WHATEVER will give me > a Gazillion Mbps with Beamforming and everything for $10 -- but has anyone > actually made this stuff work and scaled it into a profitable business? Probably not yet. But that's coming. > > Many of the WISPs that I've talked to who gone down this path have had to > upgrade / replace / retool their networks due to the fact that these > systems don't scale > > The one WISP that I know using Ubiquiti / Mikrotik with several thousand > customers is only using them as endpoints on a Bel-Air Network Mesh > infrastructure that they spent almost $1 million building out Our largest WISP (around 1200 customers) is using Ubiquiti that way too, at present. But they are strongly requesting that, instead of fully-integrated outdoor mesh radios, we develop an outdoor network appliance running our Layer 3 mesh software and related ISP functions, into which they could plug one or more separate Ubiquiti interated radios. That actually makes a fair amount of sense - in the ISP market we clearly can't compete at Layer 2 with Ubiquiti's astonishing price-points. > > It reminds me of the Asterisk vs. Broadsoft / Metaswitch VoIP debates from > a couple of years back -- sure, Asterisk was "free" while a Broadsoft > platform had an entry cost of $250k, but I know of tons of Broadsoft > providers who support tens of thousands of customers for hosted PBX, and > the only guy I know doing it on Asterisk ended up spending over $500k > hiring a custom programming team in Russia to rebuild the system for him > from scratch (he was joking to me that in hindsight, it would've been > cheaper and a lot easier to just buy a Broadsoft) Comparing software to hardware here - apples and oranges. Ubiquiti clearly has shown the ability to bring unbelievably low cost production with decent (and improving) quality to bear on this market, and unless they really step in it, their production problems will be solved eventually. I probably would have done things a little differently - e.g. pricing the offerings so that there's a reasonable margin even if you don't completely take over the world, which their current pricing model probably requires to get to a $100MM+ / yr company - but you can't argue with their success. Tom S. > > I would like to be proven wrong here...so shoot =) > > -Charles > > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > WISPA Wants You! Join today! > http://signup.wispa.org/ > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > WISPA Wireless List: [email protected] > > Subscribe/Unsubscribe: > http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless > > Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 8.5.431 / Virus Database: 270.14.123/2594 - Release Date: 12/30/09 07:27:00 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wireless List: [email protected] Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
