GregK
| There is another way...
Greg Kelly of TelJet here. I've read the comments about the negative side of wholesale/retail WISP models and don't disagree that poaching takes place. It isn't limited to WISPs either; it happens with T-1 and DS-3 accounts as well. It has to do with the motivation of the parties involved, not the technology. The wholesale/retail models referred to in the prior posts also had a silent partner in the mix somewhere; the ILEC. The ILEC takes their revenue cut for the backhaul portion and the wholesale/retail partners split whats left; not a profitable formula.
However, in our case there is good reason for the wholesale/retail model to work. We've removed the ILEC from the picture and we get the backhaul revenue instead. We have built a 10GB fiber network that passes through 18 towns in Vermont, including Brandon. We make our money selling 100mb and above circuits on the fiber network, not by 'renting' the wireless infrastructure. The wireless infrastructure is simply a vehicle to drive traffic to our fiber network. What would keep us from entering the retail side and poaching the customer? Simple; we won't make any more money after paying all the additional overhead, so why bother? We'd rather have a happy wholesale customer, than a pissed off ex-customer. More beach time for us!
We want WISPs to have grow like crazy with lots of customers because that means they're consuming more bandwidth on our fiber network. We offer WISPs benefits not available over ILEC circuits; 100mb drops to pre-secured antenna sites, backhaul to their POP, traffic aggregation, cumulative billing, access to inexpensive Internet bandwidth and maybe, most important, lower capital outlay. We're trying something different; we think it will work. |
