If you haven’t been to WISPAPALOOZA before, be prepared to find out it’s nothing like your fathers WISPAPALOOZA. This event was so full of activities, speakers, and new information that I think WISPA kept Vegas awake, not the other way around. If you think Vegas is a vacation when WISPA is there, think again. For all of us who have been to conventions, this is more like hanging around with 1000 friends who want to help you make your business better. Even though I have to admit to watching a couple of playoff games with the Giants embarrassing the Tigers (maybe Obama can get Detroit a bailout for Justin Verlanders arm since he is a union member), it just meant staying up later to discuss even more ideas. I literally didn’t get more than 4-6 hours of sleep on this trip any night and I wasn’t even at the hotel to experience the fire alarm treatment. I finally sent a postcard to the Blackjack dealers on Thursday and told them I would try and stop by next trip.
I want to throw out a thank you for all the vendors that sponsored the different meals that were provided. The food was excellent and bountiful. It alsodestroyed any chance I had of fitting in my short pants for my vacation next month. The service was even exceptional with the hotel staff in the convention center demonstrating probably the friendliest presentation I’ve seen. RickHarnish and the WISPA staff did a great job selecting this hotel andputting on the event. Cambium could have sprung for a bit more of the roast beast at their shindig though. When I got my first helping, the chief told me it was very lean. I didn’t think he meant the availability so which meant no seconds. I’ll have to bring two platesnext time. Guess they don’t want pictures of fat guys like me climbing towers putting up the new 450s.
Volunteering for several presentations has the downside of missing several other presentations that I wanted to see. I heard good things about several of them and the videos are going to help. It would be nice to put better audio/video systems together since the value of the material and experienced presented would be well worth whatever extra cost might be necessary to make that happen. I also think they could be a revenue producer by charging for downloading the material. I’m waiting for the videos that were done to come out to see if I need to get a new barber and if my Barney Fife SecurityPowerpoint slide was a hit or miss.
Conversations on this trip ranged from funding to interference to new products. Then there was Trango who got the mistaken idea that we wanted to hear Hip-Hop music at ear-splitting volume in the main vendor room. If you think I’m joking, just look for the YouTube video of the other vendors faces while it was going on(just kidding , the video is being held back to protect the offended). It was so loud, not only couldn’t you couldn’t even talk to the person in front of you, I was reciting my recipe for Spaghetti and the consultant I was talking to thought I insulted his sister. I get it, I’m old, boring, and an engineer. I would rather listen to Boston than some guy spitting in a microphone. Melody and tone that is somewhere in sync create a please experience for me. I don’t want to hear spinning records backwards at full volume while I’m in a customer sales meeting unless I’m listening for messages from the beyond the grave (70’s reference to all the urban legends that spooky messages could be heard by spinning records backwards).Maybe it’s me but that’s kind of a distraction. Whoever thought that was a good idea clearly didn’t understand their target audience and should be a huge lesson to all of us. If you are trying to sell something, create an environment that is pleasant, not one that makes your clients ears bleed. Holding meetings at the local nightclub featuring Kaskade is not going to result in a sale if the client can’t hear you pitch your idea.
So what I get out of the show that I didn’t know? Ubiquiti showed off some new products that should increase the bottom line and talked further about products that they already announced. Things like the NanoBridge HP and Air Gateway, a low-cost clip indoor AP that attaches to the power supplies onNanobridges means I’ll be making more money on my installs. Although having less expensive client radios is a big issue, I see using them more as low-cost backhauls for my microcell models. The Air Gateway is my short term personal favorite though, as something that will enhance my short term ability to get new clients and make more money. I also learned that staying with family on business trips and trying to do Powerpoint slides at night are not compatible when your brother’s Bulldog is now your new best friend and has intestinal issues.
What was interesting was seeing that WISPs aren’t the only peopleattending WISPA. Ubiquiti going public and the Titanic like sinking of the stock means that many of my new investment friendsfinally want to know what’s happening in the industry. I’m sure it has nothing to do with the lawsuits that are now coming out of the woodwork against Ubiquiti and all the productive things that lawyers do for businesses in this country. Yes, it’s good to have a partner agreement or client contract that is solid. However, instead of suing Ubiquiti for getting counterfeited, how about suing the federal government for letting the Chinese steal every intellectual property we have and not imposing penalties. Even better, sue the Chinese government for looking the other way while corporationslike Huawei and Komatsu manufacture cloned products of everything we created. I say put rules in place that product lawyers are allowed to sue Chinese companies. That ought to bring their countries productivity to its knees. Make damages retroactive to 1980 and let’s see what happens to the manufacturing industry in the U.S. I could do this all day but my soapbox is making my feet hurt.
Cambium showed a presentation demonstrating an incremental increase in the Canopy product line with the 450, its capacity, and it’s NLOS capabilities. My original premise still stands that advanced RF engineering is a requirement for large area tower-centric models, and the 450 has that in spades. As production and more bands become available for the 450, I’m sure a lot of farm and forest folk are going to be happy to see NetFlix in a higher resolution their old 1960’s color TV. The 450 though, uses OFDM and that means to maximize AP efficiency, coverage areas are going to have to shrink.However, even at the extended ranges, the throughput will take Canopy into the next generation. Of course, if they cheap out on my seconds for Roast Beast again at the Cambium event, I’ll be telling how the plastic in the cases causes warts on your fingers.
In my most competitive environment where we compete against cable and DSL, we used to charge a fixed fee for installation and then charge a fee for service. In this area, we run the system more as a hot-spot billing model instead of a monthly billing model. The clients can prepay for what they needfor 1 day to 12 months. The longer they prepay, the higher the discount. I was in the middle of a presentation when I received a text stating thatCenturyLink dropped their monthly price and wasn’t charging for installation. Since I was discussing installation charges earlier with some colleagues and how important that is to cash flow, I decided that a response was need that didn’t damage our cash flow. By the time the presentation ended, I announced that our response to CenturyLink was that we were going to charge $249.95 for the installation and give 6 months of free basic internet. Since we were including AirRouters with the installation to match DSL and Cable offerings, AirGateway’s will drop my cost another $20-$25.
This particular model works at $249.95 because we keep the distance of the clients down to ½ mile or less in the vast majority of cases. This allows us to use Locos instead of Nanostations orNanoBridges. That brings the cost of the entire installation tobetween $150-$170. Since we charge $120 for 6 months of basic service, we are only subsidizing $20-$40 on service over 6 monthsover our regular service. Although the rates may differ depending on the area, the concept is to give the customer additional value without disrupting our cash flow significantly. This model is designed to capture 15% of the market in the highest competitive environment imaginable ($18-$20 cable and DSL competitors with no contract and no installation fee. I think this is the Ground Zero for CenturyLink’s competitive price testing) and we are thinking now that we might be able to get to 20% or better. Early response to this has been extremely positive from the clients who just ordered the service.
Some of you have asked me how I compete with bundled services. I don’t, it’s not my market. Let Commcast, Cox, Time-Warner or whoever keep the bundlers and the file-sharing fans. I don’t like taxes, paperwork, or government. The hot-spot idea means cash up front, no billing paperwork, and the government doesn’t get a penny (because they would just give it to CenturyLink anyway to compete against me). My market goal in this type of environment is 15% of the clients. A competitive pricing model gets you that market share as long as your service works. There is no way to be price competitive if you need a large support staff for the backend for this type of model.
The next question is how do we keep the distances to ½ mile and keep our costs down? We use houses as AP sites. Tower-centric models don’t work in urban and city environments. The technology just isn’t there for 10,000 clients off a tower in a low-noise environment within a city. As the population density increased, so does the interference and the less chance of a clean signal to the client at 5 miles. The microcell model is the only financial model I’ve been able to make work on paper and in practice. Mesh models don’t’ make financial sense as many bankrupt companies and cities have found it in a for-profit model. They are just too expensive to install and maintain. A microcell model is two magnitudes cheaper and focuses the Capex where it delivers the highest revenue per investment.
Many of you don’t like to use houses as AP sites. I get that since I’ve had issues like a customer unplugging everything and then leaving for Taiwan for a month. He sort of forgot he was an APlocation and was trying to protect his equipment. We now have site lease agreements that guarantee that a neighbor either has keys or we place everything outside so we have access and never enter unattended properties without a pre-approved chaperone.We alsonow have a battery box that can go on a roof and keep equipment running in case the power is turned off for an extended length of time. No, it’s not the most professional but it’s gets you into areas where towers may not be available or LOS is difficult because of trees. The short distance also makes NLOS more reasonable for 900MHz and 2.4GHz, even in high interference environments. If the client has increased usage, then add a breaker box outside and even a meter if it makes financial sense.
We typically give the client free internet in exchange for this co-location service and there is no shortage of people who want internet for free. For every customer we sign up this way, we expect at least 10 paying clients per antenna at a minimum of $20 per month. Theoretically we could support 30-50clients depending on how much bandwidth we need to give to be competitive. Total cost for this AP installation was about $450 not including our 2 hours of labor.