Comment Broadband Wireless is Growing Quitely (Score 2, Informative) 169
The problem with Sprint is that they are a large company that tries to solve problems by spending large amounts of money and not using common sense. To see what is going on with the broadband wrieless industry, people should look to see what the smaller ISPs are doing with wireless technology.
I actually worked for SpeedChoice, the company that Sprint bought for its new two-way wireless technology that had been launched in Phoenix before SpeedChoice was bought out.
The first mistake Sprint made was running off the engineering team that invented the two-way wireless system. Sprint's managment team figured their PCS wireless guys knew enough about MMDS to do the same job as the existing engineering team and besides they all had MBAs and were much younger and wiser than the experienced MMDS engineers.
The second mistake was selling the service at a price point that was too low. During SpeedChoice's initial launch in Phoenix, we went after business customers that could afford $150+ per month. This was a great deal compared to a $1,000 per month for a T-1 that these customers would usually buy and this price point would cover the cost of the expensive CPE equipment and the truck roll necessary to install the equipment. But instead of serving 500 customers at $200 a month, they decided to serve 20,000 customers at $50 a month. Providing customer service to 500 customers would have been a much easier and responsive scenario than 20,000.
If you are interested in the broadband wireless industry, the companies to watch are the smaller guys that are real entrepreneurs that have very little money to work with and that are very cautious on how they spend it. They are quitely building out broadband wireless networks across America one cell at a time. This has been going on for several years, but since they are smaller companies, they don't have a PR or marketing staff to churn out press releases on the progress they are making.
As the editor of the Braodband Wireless Exchange, we have been tracking this market for a long time. There are well over 1,200 companies in this space serving over 1,400 small, medium and large cities with fixed wireless service. To prove this point, please check out our nationwide directory at http://www.bbwexchange.com/wisps/
There was also a story on Cnet recently that might be worth a read.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200-8179971.htm l? tag=mn_hd
The BWE web site is basically a giant electronic press kit for anyone who wants to learn more about the fixed wireless industry and track our progress. The site has everything an entreprenuer needs to research, plan, build and manage a wireless ISP. There are tutorials, white papers, research, magazines articles, directories of vendors, system integrators, consultants, etc. Basically everything you need to build out a wireless ISP.
It is worth a look if your neighborhood or business park cannot get access to DSL, cable modem or fiber optic access. The wireless technology is inexpensive, mature and fairly easy to implement compared to working through another carrier to build out or resell another carrier's network infrastructure. Wireless connnections let the ISP own the broadband connection all the way to the customer and they have to pay no one for the right to reach the customer. There is a tremendous benefit to this approach.
Broadband Wireless will keep growing and may eventually gain the same respect and recognition as other larger broadband competitors.
I actually worked for SpeedChoice, the company that Sprint bought for its new two-way wireless technology that had been launched in Phoenix before SpeedChoice was bought out.
The first mistake Sprint made was running off the engineering team that invented the two-way wireless system. Sprint's managment team figured their PCS wireless guys knew enough about MMDS to do the same job as the existing engineering team and besides they all had MBAs and were much younger and wiser than the experienced MMDS engineers.
The second mistake was selling the service at a price point that was too low. During SpeedChoice's initial launch in Phoenix, we went after business customers that could afford $150+ per month. This was a great deal compared to a $1,000 per month for a T-1 that these customers would usually buy and this price point would cover the cost of the expensive CPE equipment and the truck roll necessary to install the equipment. But instead of serving 500 customers at $200 a month, they decided to serve 20,000 customers at $50 a month. Providing customer service to 500 customers would have been a much easier and responsive scenario than 20,000.
If you are interested in the broadband wireless industry, the companies to watch are the smaller guys that are real entrepreneurs that have very little money to work with and that are very cautious on how they spend it. They are quitely building out broadband wireless networks across America one cell at a time. This has been going on for several years, but since they are smaller companies, they don't have a PR or marketing staff to churn out press releases on the progress they are making.
As the editor of the Braodband Wireless Exchange, we have been tracking this market for a long time. There are well over 1,200 companies in this space serving over 1,400 small, medium and large cities with fixed wireless service. To prove this point, please check out our nationwide directory at http://www.bbwexchange.com/wisps/
There was also a story on Cnet recently that might be worth a read.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200-8179971.ht
The BWE web site is basically a giant electronic press kit for anyone who wants to learn more about the fixed wireless industry and track our progress. The site has everything an entreprenuer needs to research, plan, build and manage a wireless ISP. There are tutorials, white papers, research, magazines articles, directories of vendors, system integrators, consultants, etc. Basically everything you need to build out a wireless ISP.
It is worth a look if your neighborhood or business park cannot get access to DSL, cable modem or fiber optic access. The wireless technology is inexpensive, mature and fairly easy to implement compared to working through another carrier to build out or resell another carrier's network infrastructure. Wireless connnections let the ISP own the broadband connection all the way to the customer and they have to pay no one for the right to reach the customer. There is a tremendous benefit to this approach.
Broadband Wireless will keep growing and may eventually gain the same respect and recognition as other larger broadband competitors.
