WISPs Work Together

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Date: January 22, 2006 4:37:04 AM EST
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] WISPs Work Together
Reply-To: dewayne () warpspeed com

WISPs Work Together

One of the largest WISPs in the U.S. (absolutely the largest by some  
metrics) has a system in place for working with other WISPs to extend  
all parties' coverage areas.

by Alex Goldman
ISP-Planet Managing Editor
[January 20, 2006]
<http://www.isp-planet.com/fixed_wireless/business/2006/ 
skyweb_alliance.html>
We've written about Fremont, Calif.-based NextWeb before, notably  
during the announcement late last year that the company would be  
acquired by Covad. We wrote Covad's Acquisition of NextWeb Makes Sense.

Now we're talking to NextWeb about the SkyWeb Alliance. The alliance  
has been around since 2003. Originally, explains Eric Warren,  
NextWeb's vice president of marketing and business development, the  
alliance allowed three California WISPs (NextWeb, SkyPipeline, and  
SkyRiver) to work together, and at the time, Warren was with  
SkyPipepline.

The companies joined to issue an RFP and chose Axxcelera. "SkyRiver  
decided to also used Trango, but NextWeb and SkyPipeline became  
Axxcelera shops. Redwire and West Coast Communications joined the  
alliance in 2004, and NextPhase and Gatespeed joined in 2005."

The main benefit of working together has to do with the realities of  
non line of sight (NLOS) fixed wireless broadband service. "Any  
customer might theoretically be in our coverage area but might be  
obstructed, or might be too far from the base station," says Warren.  
"With the alliance, we can often pick up a customer from the base  
station of a partner."

You need a system to work together
The alliance requires a detailed agreement on pricing and the process  
of order taking. Generally, the company providing the connectivity  
gets about 50 percent of the retail price of the connection.

But pricing's easy compared to order taking. NextWeb has its own home  
grown online order system, and likes to work with partners who have  
something similar.

"We don't give partners access to it; but they can plug into it.  
Smaller WISPs have a customer contact database and just update data  
fields as the sales process moves along: customer signed agreement on  
x day, scheduled the install on y day. The order flow is important.  
We go through the process step by step, saying which person to  
contact at the partner, and the same thing on the tech support side.  
If we own the customer relationship but the service is offered by a  
partner, we own the initial call and level 1 tech troubleshooting,  
such as does your router have power. Level 2 tech support comes from  
the partner, but our level one support has to be able to contact  
their tech support and provide a circuit ID or customer number," says  
Warren.

[snip]

Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>



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