On the isp-wireless mailing list, Daniel Mullen posted this provocative statement:
This is getting mention on another list and it is interesting here - build it or your customer will!
(end Mullen posting)
Which says:
Wireless Shadyside is a free wireless [I]nternet network for the Shadyside retail district [in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania]. The network is donated by Shadyside Inn Suites in honor of late co-founder R. Jeffery Plesset. The network covers Walnut Street from Aiken Avenue to S. Negley Avenue. Wireless Shadyside consists of 17 mesh networking nodes connected to one 3.0/768k DSL connection and one 6.0/768 Cable Modem connection.
Wireless Shadyside's FAQ mentions that they're using Meraki Networks mesh networking nodes.
Mullen really gets it - exactly right. Customers now have the capability of building Broadband Wireless Internet Access networks, and as Wireless Shadyside illustrates, they're doing so.
But some WISPs don't get it. A follow-on post was dismissive, with a statement that began "I don't think I'm going to worry about my customers replacing our services with..." Perhaps that WISP has no reason to worry about this particular network using that particular configuration right now, but if you extrapolate just a bit...
- Although Wireless Shadyside is offering Broadband Wireless Internet Access service for free at the moment, they're just a few clicks away from converting the network to a pay model - it's just a configuration change on the Meraki monitoring/control web page, and a brief reload of the nodes. Voila - they're now a revenue-producing WISP. They don't even have to get into the messy business of billing - Meraki takes care of all that.
- There's nothing to stop Meraki from offering increasingly sophisticated systems that are equally low cost, easy to install, manage, and use as their current products.
- As to the use of "residential grade circuits" used as the source of broadband, that is easily changed when necessary. Covad, for example, provides business-grade DSL circuits at reasonable prices for business, and the reports I've heard are that they are easy, pleasant, and efficient to deal with.
Too often, in the day-to-day grind of keeping a Broadband Wireless Internet Access network operational, WISPs can forget about their customer's motivations and desires. Customers simply want to be connected to the Internet - fast, and reasonably reliable. How they get there or what entity connects them is usually an afterthought at best. If they can get a good-enough Internet connection for free or low cost, they typically won't care who's providing it - Wireless Shadyside, a WISP like Acme Wireless Internet (fictional name, as far as I'm aware), the City of Pittsburgh Wi-Fi cloud (fictional, as far as I'm aware), or a large entity like Clearwire or Sprint / Nextel.
Technology moves fast, and WISPs are no more immune to "disruptive technologies" like user-installable wireless mesh networks than the incumbent telecom companies that WISPs are disrupting.
By Steve Stroh
This article is Copyright © 2007 by Steve Stroh. Excerpts and links are expressly permitted (and encouraged.)
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