Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP) News

A Story Of Good WISP Execution

Tom Evslin has written... or rather publicized an email from a WISP that Evslin makes into a great story, about Fire Island Wireless doing what WISPs do best - providing great service to their customers.

I've featured Tom's story on Broadband Wireless Internet Access Stories, and added Fire Island Wireless to Broadband Wireless Internet Access Service Providers.

On another blog, Evslin's correspondent Craig Plunkett discusses Evslin's mention of Fire Island Wireless.

One interesting thing is that Evslin hints that  "displacing DSL" is unusual, but then goes onto explain that Verizon, especially, isn't interested in investing more into DSL, especially in rural areas and how Plunkett shamelessly exploits that opening.

Imagine how well Plunkett would do if he did market and provide features like public IP addresses? He'd probably get more business than he could handle.

While that last comment probably comes off as sounding flip and snide, "more business than one can handle" is a very real, and perilous situation for WISPs. If they can't handle getting new customers online in a timely manner, the customers get irritated and talk bad about the WISP. But, handling "surges" is expensive for WISPs. But if WISPs are to survive and thrive, they must become adept and responsive as Plunkett has become to capitalize on opportunities.

By Steve Stroh

This article is Copyright © 2007 by Steve Stroh. Excerpts and links are expressly permitted (and encouraged.)

Permit Me A Small Rant About PR-clueless WISPs

Admittedly this article is going to come across as a rant about a certain category of WISPs. So, if you're not in the mood to read a good rant, however well reasoned, well, there's always Google News.

The genesis for this rant is my ongoing efforts to compile an independent (without regard to membership in a particular organization or other selective criteria) list of Broadband Wireless Internet Access Service Providers, which includes WISPs. I monitor a number of WISP-related mailing lists and many other sources of news about BWIA Service Providers. When I find a BWIA SP or WISP that I haven't heard of, I add them to the BWIA Service Providers list. But when I go to check out many WISP's web pages, which is the online "face" of that WISP to the entire world and, of course, potential customers, investors, news personnel, potential employees, etc. ...

I'm just astonished... and appalled... that many, many WISPs whose web sites I look up simply don't bother to state on their web page where, exactly, it is that they actually provide service! The case in point as I write this is the WISP that I just looked up after seeing their (unfamiliar to me) domain name on a WISP mailing list. The only location information I can glean off that WISP's web page is the area code of their phone number, which (out of disgust) I didn't bother to look up. Heck... from this WISP's web page, I have no clue which state (or province?) this particular WISP operates in, let alone the region! Although this WISP's web page does have a coverage map, it shows counties and cities, but is so zoomed in that only someone who already knew that this WISP operated in a particular area would find the map useful.

I just find this practice to be amazing... amazingly clueless.

C'mon WISPs! I'm not asking you to make it easy on me when I look you up, but think about your potential customers who are trying to find you. Here's a quick test - if you Google "Wireless Internet" +(your county) +(your state) and search results don't show your WISP's web page in the first screen, your web page needs some real work.

At a minimum, any WISP's web site (or, for that matter, web sites for any business) should list the mailing address and/or actual business address. Unless, of course, you have something to hide... which is often a valid assumption when a business doesn't make it apparent where they're doing business from. Do you want to foster that perception?

One last rant while I'm in that mode. If you ever want your WISP to be mentioned in local media, 1) put a News section on your web page, and while you're doing that, put links to any stories you have been mentioned in, and 2) list full "media" contact information under the News section so that media personnel can actually contact you. For example - between the heated coverage that has recently erupted about the upcoming auction of 700 MHz, and yesterday's announcement about Clearwire and Sprint entering into a groundbreaking agreement, (good) news organizations are "hungry" for local angles related to national stories like this. Most of the time, they Google... and without some real location information on your WISP's web site, they won't find your WISP.

Less a rant and more of a well-intentioned suggestion - have you reached out to your local media on behalf of your WISP to let them know your WISP is already providing Broadband Wireless Internet Access in your local area? If not, now would be a great time to tell them about your WISP, perhaps with a teaser Subject like [purely fictional names, as far as I'm aware] "Zitherbloom County doesn't need to wait for Clearwire - Zoomungus Wireless Internet is already providing Fast Wireless Internet". Try it - you've got nothing to lose but new customers who didn't have any idea that your WISP could help them get Broadband Internet Access.

By Steve Stroh

This article is Copyright © 2007 by Steve Stroh

A Visit To Tranzeo Wireless Technologies, Part 2

Part 2: Tranzeo's Plans For The Future

In Part 1 of this story, I discussed my wife Tina's and my tour of Tranzeo Wireless Technologies' impressive factory in Pitt Meadows, British Columbia, Canada near Vancouver in March 2007.

In Part 2, the conclusion of this story, we sat down with Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Tony Kott and Vice President of Product Development Damian Wallace to discuss Tranzeo's plans for the future.

One of the first things we discussed was how people's use of Broadband Internet Access has evolved from being convenient and fun to, what is to them, now a necessity. Unlike a typical manufacturer who is "decoupled" from the actual end-users of their product, Tranzeo is able to observe Internet user behavior directly because they own and operate a Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP) in nearby Whisler / Maple Ridge which they use as a testbed for new products. Tranzeo makes three key observations about use of Broadband Internet Access:

1. Users get really irritated when their Internet access goes down because they use it for, what is to them, important functions, so WISPs need to design and build their networks to be highly reliable.
2. "Best effort" grade of service is no longer adequate - WISP networks must have sufficient Quality Of Service (QOS) to support Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) very reliably - it's simply expected by the user.
3. Key applications that Broadband Internet Access users expect to work reliably are web browsing, email, Skype, and recently, entertainment. That's what they want to use their Internet connection for, even with the attendant large file transfers. To them, that's what Broadband Internet Access is all about.

One example of product development from their observations of their WISP is that Tranzeo noted that 60% of the traffic was upstream from the users from the use of Skype and video. As a result, Tranzeo developed a radio with full-duplex capability - transmitting and receiving simultaneously.

Tranzeo also gets input about its products by exhibiting at a number of trade shows... but not necessarily just the usual wireless and Internet conferences in the US. Some recent trade shows Tranzeo has exhibited at are CEBIT (the major European Internet and Information Technology [IT] tradeshow), in Germany, GITEX in Dubai, Expocomm in Mexico, and Computex in Taiwan. Exhibiting at major international trade shows such as this makes it apparent that Tranzeo's sights are set much higher than just supplying the WISP industry with great, cost-effective products.

When we discussed industry trends, the discussion quickly turned to WiMAX. Tranzeo sees WiMAX as a major technological shift for the WISP industry from proprietary and 802.11/Wi-Fi-based technology. Advantages of WiMAX include:

• Faster speeds - easily tens of Mbps;
• Full interoperability between different vendor's products - a key advantage for WISPs
• Longer ranges - tens of miles (designed for such ranges, not "fighting it" as is the case with 802.11/Wi-Fi-based systems)
• Near/Non-Line-Of-Sight capabilities
• Less-expensive systems because of higher production volumes, standardization, and direct competition

On the basis of that last point - "less expensive systems", Tranzeo plans to make a major push into the WiMAX market, including OEM sales which is a new line of business. Tranzeo feels it has a key advantage in the WiMAX market in having both design and highly cost-effective manufacturing located in North America because it can be "real-time responsive" to what they expect to be explosive demand for WiMAX Customer Premise Equipment (CPE).

Tranzeo feels that the US 700 MHz band that will be fully available for use beginning in 2009 will "go WiMAX". Tranzeo is close to in-house manufacturing of its 900 MHz systems which, which will then lead to its own 700 MHz technology.

But Tranzeo is hardly waiting around for 700 MHz WiMAX to develop. Tranzeo is busy developing a 3.5 GHz product for non-US markets, including Canada, and is cautiously optimistic about the proposed US 3.65 GHz (3650 MHz) band, and the resulting demand for systems from their core market of Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs).

In its non-WiMAX products, Tranzeo (planned, at the date of the interview) to be testing a new feature for its products that would add the "new" (to the US) 5.4 GHz band which required Tranzeo to add Dynamic Frequency Selection (DFS) and Automatic Transmit Power Control (ATPC), and likely shipping such products within a few months. When I asked about mobile systems (a favorite product category of mine), Wallace responded that Tranzeo offers the TR-600 "industrial" radio that is "hardened" to withstand extended temperatures and vibration, as well as being powered from 12 volts Direct Current (DC), and thus well-suited for vehicular applications. I was impressed - vehicular Broadband Wireless Internet Access is a rapidly-growing application, and if Tranzeo can combine its Sensoria Mesh Networking expertise with "hardened" hardware, it may well be able to break into a lucrative niche and compete with Motorola and Cisco for mobile systems.

Discussion of adding DFS/ATPC capability brought up the topic of Tranzeo's recent acquisition of Sensoria. Sensoria made, and Tranzeo has continued, Mesh Networking Broadband Wireless Internet Access systems. Tranzeo feels that the acquisition was highly synergetic - Tranzeo got highly-capable software/firmware capability that it previously lacked, and Tranzeo is able to apply its capabilities in highly-cost-effective hardware manufacturing to the former Sensoria product line.

The Sensoria team, now "Tranzeo USA", has already begun to supply software/firmware to Tranzeo's products, and Tranzeo expects its software/firmware to evolve to be on a par, or exceed, the capabilities of other router software commonly used in the WISP industry such as (legacy) Karlnet, Mikrotik, and StarOS, especially considering Sensoria's already mature Mesh Networking capabilities that the other three are only beginning to develop. Taking the Sensoria products forward, Tranzeo expect to achieve good sales given that Tranzeo/Sensoria mesh will sell for approximately $1000, and similar units from Mesh Networking industry-leader Tropos sell for approximately $3600.

Acquiring Sensoria not only expanded Tranzeo's technological capability, but it expanded Tranzeo's markets. Sensoria sold its products to Metropolitan Wi-Fi Networks, hotels, education, warehouses, auctions (fast setup), camps, and many others where Tranzeo did not yet have much of a presence. Sensoria's established markets "meshed" well with Tranzeo's existing plans to press into markets such as security, SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) telemetry systems used for such things as pipeline and water distribution networks, enterprise, education, government, and Wi-Fi HotSpots. Coming from the WISP industry, with the attendant intense demands for technically sophisticated and highly-reliable products at very competitive prices, Tranzeo feels it is well-equipped to enter into these new markets, especially in partnership with capable "channel partners", for example, security (alarm) service companies.

Postscript
I wish to thank Tony Kott for his invitation to visit Tranzeo and Damian Wallace for making time to offer his technological and business insights so unsparingly. Both were very gracious and surprisingly candid in their answers. The delay between our visit and the release of this article was due to personal circumstances on my part, but I feel that the observations made are still quite timely.

In the months since our visit, a quick look at Tranzeo's Press Releases conveys continuous progress in many of the areas discussed, such as the release of WiMAX products, and strong growth. I continue to be impressed with Tranzeo, both as a key vendor to the very dynamic WISP / Broadband Wireless Internet Access industry, but also as a strong, but currently underestimated vendor of wireless technology to the new markets which Tranzeo intends to enter. I think they will do very, very well.

By Steve Stroh

This article is Copyright © 2007 by Steve Stroh

A Visit To Tranzeo Wireless Technologies, Part 1

Part 1: Tour Of The Tranzeo Factory

My wife Tina and I were privileged to visit Tranzeo Wireless Technologies, Inc. in March, 2007. Our visit was at the invitation of Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Tony Kott. Tranzeo is located in Pitt Meadows, British Columbia, Canada, near Vancouver.

Tranzeo is a primary supplier to the Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP) industry, with products specifically designed, marketed, and supported for the WISP industry, especially the WISP industry's "agressive" cost points (low prices).

I had been curious about Tranzeo for some time, specifically, how Tranzeo could offer such a high-quality product, at low prices, and ostensibly manufacture and support it with North American cost overhead.

Several things struck me upon beginning the tour of Tranzeo's facilities:

• Their facility was very large, with ample room for expansion
• All equipment was (what appeared to be, from my limited knowledge) state of the art, including high-speed pick-and-place robotic circuit board assembly units, fully automated soldering systems, and very impressive post-manufacture testing systems.
• The overall atmosphere was bright, pleasant, and relaxed; it seemed a very pleasant place to work. There were no "buzzers" indicating break time, start/stop time, etc.
• We arrived just after lunch time, and the employees were just returning to work from the daily company-supplied lunch.

These first impressions answered one immediate question about Tranzeo - unlike so many vendors of low-cost products to the WISP industry, Tranzeo is far, far more than the typical "garage shop assembler", merely assembling commodity parts. Words don't do justice as to how impressive Tranzeo's facility really is, and although we weren't allowed to take our own photographs, Tranzeo later provided us with  authorized photographs; the captions are my descriptions.

The only electronic units that Tranzeo does not make in-house are the radio cards (supplied by vendors such as Atheros) and portions of its 900 MHz radio. All other electronics - the router boards, are designed and manufactured in-house, including firmware. Tranzeo subcontracts its enclosures and antennas. Tranzeo doesn't appear to manufacture the bare circuit boards in-house (I didn't see a printed circuit board process - only circuit board assembly).

Early in our visit we were joined by Vice President of Product Development Damian Wallace, who helped explain the technology that is used to manufacture its products as well as the technology that goes into Tranzeo's products.

One of the first things I wanted to understand was Tranzeo's sudden emergence into the WISP industry several years ago. I was very impressed to learn that Tranzeo was established solely to develop products for the WISP industry. Tranzeo saw a need in the WISP industry for low-cost, high-quality Broadband Wireless Internet Access systems that wasn't being filled by products and companies that designed and sold products mostly for telecommunications carriers and merely "deigned to sell" their products to the WISP industry. Low-priced products for the WISP market were often poorly-designed, almost always poorly supported, and surprisingly often were sold with no regulatory certification.

Tranzeo doesn't seem to have "evolved" from the "garage shop assembler" type of operation, but rather was established and funded to do what we saw them doing during our visit. The only differences from when Tranzeo was founded was that of growth, scale, and excellent acceptance from its targeted market. For example, Tranzeo had previously subcontracted circuit board manufacturing, but grew frustrated over quality, delivery, and ability to rapidly update features and so decided to manufacture their own circuit boards - at a cost of several million dollars. Tranzeo has outgrown its previous facility, grown from a handful of staff to 102 at the time of our visit, and evolved from being privately funded from "friends and family" to being a publicly-owned company (TZT on the Toronto Stock Exchange).

Tranzeo builds Broadband Wireless Internet Access products that comply with the three major "wireless" regulatory agencies - US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), and Industry Canada. It supplies products to over 2400 unique customers (mostly Wireless Internet Service Providers) through 18 distributors worldwide (60% of sales), as well as direct-to-end-customer sales (40%). With a staff of 102, Tranzeo builds approximately 500 units per day on a single shift.

We started the tour seeing the circuit board assembly area. As a former electronic technician, I was very impressed with the working conditions - all work areas were very well lit and well-laid out with comfortable benches. All personnel were supplied with ergonomic furniture and tools, and fume hoods removed all traces whatsoever of fumes resulting from chemicals, soldering, etc. I was told that Tranzeo meets the (European?) regulations for lead-free electronics.

As mentioned, Tranzeo uses several impressive robotic pick-and-place automatic circuit board assembly systems. The systems operate so fast that all you can see is a blur. It's probably commonplace for such systems, but I was impressed that the circuit board assembly systems don't merely "blindly place" components, but rather employ artificial vision systems to insure that all the individual components are correct, as well as placed correctly on the board. Only Tranzeo's older systems have through-hole circuit boards; all their newer circuit boards are surface-mount.

An example of Tranzeo's attention to detail is that it manufactures its own "pigtails" - the very small coaxial cable that connects from the radio card to the external antenna connector (or assembly, such as a Radio Frequency [RF] lightning arrestor). Pigtails are maddeningly exacting - the connectors are tiny on the radio cards - tough to mount on a circuit board, but very tough to mount on a coaxial cable the size of a pencil lead. I've heard of WISP vendors that buy their pigtails from high-quality suppliers and go to the extra effort of 100% testing with RF test equipment, but Tranzeo is the first WISP vendor I've heard of that builds their own pigtails from scratch. Tranzeo paid $50,000 for the specialized machine (no hand tools) which precisely strips the coaxial cable for a pigtail - exactly the right lengths of the center conductor, center conductor insulator, outer braid, and outer jacket, with absolutely no nicks. Specially trained personnel assemble the pigtails, which then undergo "200% test" - each pigtail is individually tested, and the the pigtail is also tested as part of the fully-assembled system. Pigtail testing is performed at 2.4 GHz and 4.9 - 6.0 GHz. Wallace explained that cheap OEM pigtails are a key failure point in many products similar to Tranzeo's, and this sort of attention to detail has markedly decreased Tranzeo's in-field failure rate.

Although Tranzeo does not manufacture its radio modules, it "characterizes" them to a surprising degree. Tranzeo uses a "Veriwave HotSpot Simulator" to test 100% of the radio cards it uses in its products. This unit provides a "characterization signature" for every individual radio module, and Tranzeo retains this "signature" data indefinitely for quality control, product development, and product support (they know exactly how much power each radio module can transmit, and what its receive sensitivity was as it left the factory). Tranzeo also "flashes" each radio module to maintain absolute consistency of radio firmware so there is no variation from unit to unit. Tranzeo is an Atheros licensee, so it has "privileged" access to the inner workings of Atheros wireless modules, with the corresponding ability to "tweak" various parameters such as frequency selection.

Tranzeo is best known for its relatively low prices, but its users also appreciate that Tranzeo takes great pains to ensure that their products are reliable. The final stage of production before boxing and shipping is 100% system test where the radio is mounted in a test fixture and programmed to transmit through its entire power range (in an RF-dampening chamber), as well as measuring receive sensitivity through the antenna/pigtail/radio card chain, and of course, all the digital/network functions are tested. Each unit includes a lightning arrestor as standard equipment. One interesting example of Tranzeo's "easy setup" philosophy is that Tranzeo imprints the setup instructions onto the shipping box - "We design all of this very deliberately to NOT cause support phone calls. Installers don't really have excuses like 'we lost the manual'" quipped Wallace. Tranzeo also offers extensive training options with abbreviated training co-located with popular industry conferences as well as training at their factory. Tranzeo's training addresses the "two types" of people entering the WISP business - Entrepreneurs (know just a little, but knows a hot new business when they see it) and Geeks (know the technology, but don't know business issues). Wallace explained that over the years, Tranzeo's experience was that potential customers didn't understand three key things:

1. Network design - how do you scale your systems and networks from 20 users to 200 users and beyond.
2. The necessity of lightning protection, and how to do lighting protection properly.
3. Taking into account Line of Sight / Fresnel Zone issues to engineer a reliable network.

To summarize our visit of the Tranzeo factory, we were very impressed with Tranzeo's use of state-of-the-art electronics manufacturing equipment, a dedicated, motivated, and apparently happy workforce, that there are few or no inefficiencies in Tranzeo's production, resulting in Tranzeo's ability to offer high-quality, reliable products at agressive prices.

In Part 2: Tranzeo's Plans For The Future, I'll detail the wide-ranging discussion we had about Tranzeo's future, including some surprising new directions that Tranzeo intends to explore.

By Steve Stroh

This article is Copyright © 2007 by Steve Stroh

My Take On 700 MHz For WISPs

I was asked by a leader in the WISP industry for my views on the soon-to-be-auctioned 700 MHz band as it relates to WISPs and especially WISPs operating in rural areas.

I've written about the 700 MHz band several times, most recently in April - 700 MHz Isn't The End Of Spectrum - It's Just The Beginning and What "Save Our Spectrum" Doesn't Understand.

Short answer: I'm skeptical about WISPs being able to make use of 700 MHz; there are a lot of issues with 700 MHz that, in my opinion, generally preclude WISPs from being serious contenders in acquiring 700 MHz licenses.

1. 700 MHz is going to be auctioned - to the highest bidder. That's mandated to the FCC by Congress, and the anticipated revenues have already been factored into the US Federal Budget. That means  there won't be any "bidder's preference" to help WISPs. There are going to be deep pockets bidding for 700 MHz, most purely as a speculative investment without having to build out actual communications systems. Hey, it worked spectacularly for those that won in the previous 700 MHz auctions. While some WISPs have won spectrum auctions (mostly in very rural areas), winning a spectrum auction is only the first part of a long process (see below).
2. 700 MHz is turning out to be incredibly contentious. There are two groups competing to have the FCC change the structure of the 700 MHz auctions to aid them in building out national, quasi-public-safety systems. Then there is the issue that the commercial portions of the 700 MHz band will be spectrally "right next door" to public safety portions of 700 MHz, and as we've seen with Nextel digital voice systems at 800 MHz, public safety systems seem to be easily interfered with, so commercial (especially broadband) 700 MHz systems will be even more challenged to avoid interference to public safety 700 MHz systems. I think that this means that WISPs aren't, and can't, be a significant factor in the 700 MHz auctions.
3. If a WISP does win the bidding for some 700 MHz spectrum, their next challenge is going to be finding Broadband Wireless Internet Access systems for 700 MHz. Most WISPs require low-priced Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) for their business model to work. With 700 MHz, there won't be much equipment available any time soon, and what little becomes available will likely be expensive, and proprietary. Adapting WiMAX to 700 MHz may help with the proprietary equipment issue, eventually, but it won't be any time soon.
4. Yet another challenge to WISPs wanting to make use of 700 MHz is that they then have to actually be able to fund the construction of 700 MHz networks. Yes, 700 MHz systems can have improved range and penetration over 2.4 GHz, but building 700 MHz networks is also more of a challenge in many ways. For example, dealing with 700 MHz antennas is a much greater challenge than 2.4 GHz antennas (and even more than 900 MHz antennas) because 700 MHz antennas are physically much bigger (and therefore heavier, and harder to mount on towers and buildings, and thus expensive). It's also a challenge to "constrain" your 700 MHz system's coverage to only the geographic area that your license covers; that calls for careful, expensive system design at the edge of your coverage area.
5. In rural areas, WISPs will likely find that they have an unexpected competitor for 700 MHz spectrum - small, rural telephone companies. They have deep (enough) pockets to bid agressively for 700 MHz spectrum, and they can afford the poor economies of proprietary systems (because in rural areas... the economies of scale with wireless are far, far better than that of wireline.) Rural telephone companies may well "hedge their bets" by purchasing 700 MHz spectrum because of the possibilities that subsidies that they rely upon such as the Universal Service Fund and reciprocal (telephone call) compensation may be eliminated in the future, rendering their wireline networks totally unsustainable (financially).
6. 700 MHz is radically different than what WISPs are used to. Typically what you would win at a 700 MHz spectrum auction is a single (or paired) 6 MHz channel for a very specific area. A 700 MHz service provider has to be very careful not to "bleed over", both spectrally, and geographically, to another service provider's 700 MHz allocation. Not to mention that there is the challenge of nighttime "skip" (formally, tropospheric ducting) that occurs at VHF and UHF frequencies during the summer months.

Overall, I think that "lusting after" 700 MHz is the wrong "fight" for WISPs for more effective spectrum to serve their customers. Instead, I think that WISPA and other WISP-related organizations should be leading the fight for license-exempt access to television broadcasting "white spaces" - using television broadcast channels (that remain for that use after the transition to digital television broadcasting on February 17, 2009). Yes, WISPA is "involved" in the white spaces issue, but its efforts have been clouded (nowhere near transparent) by its mysterious participation with companies such as Microsoft and Intel.

Another "fight" that WISPs should be working on instead of 700 MHz is the proposed 3.65 - 3.70 GHz band (or, 3650). This band was proposed for, and optimized for, the specific requirements of WISPs. Some preliminary equipment is already available for "3650" because it was a minor adaptation from existing equipment that operates in the 3.5 GHz band in use nearly everywhere in the world except the US.

All of that said, this year's 700 MHz auctions are going to be very interesting to observe. There are many, many factions (some who have yet to "uncloak") that will be competing for 700 MHz spectrum.

By Steve Stroh

This article is Copyright © 2007 by Steve Stroh