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describe the wireless Internet service industry |
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Written by djhurt1
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Tuesday, 13 February 2007 |
"I'm writing a paper describing semi-briefly the wireless Internet service industry. Would some of you provide a brief 1-2 paragraph description to get my mind rolling here? Many of you have much more in-sight than I do so I value your input."
harmetp:
The wisp industry appears to be mostly small and medium size businesses bringing broadband services to areas where the larger telecoms & cable companies don't feel they can make sufficient profit to pay for their infrastructure (dsl/cable). There are some large wisp's in operation, but most are well under 1000 customers. The business model appears to be driven by a desire to go into unserved/inadequately served areas running at very low overhead in order to be profitable at low per customer charges. Generally successful wisps are very responsive to the customer's needs and problems.
Equipment is constantly changing - improving and getting cheaper. Big changes include having the radio hardware move from inside to mounted outside near or integral with the antenna, improved output power levels, and improved radio performance. Many wisps go with proprietary systems developed by Motorola, Alvarion and others. These systems are specifically designed for outdoor wisp operation and overcome many of the problems with running 802.11a/b/g systems. This equipment only communicates with itself and all the wisp hardware must be purchased from the same manufacturer. Other wisps run standards based equipment (802.11a/b/g) that is currently produced by several manufacturers and is all generally compatible. There are problems running 802.11a/b/g in an outdoor environment, but the significantly lower cost and multiple equipment manufacturers often outweigh the disadvantages.
In general this is a good example of small business at it's best - finding a way to provide a service where larger companies can not and make it generally profitable.
Does this sound close?
Pat
Ps: OR... wisps are a bunch of network wantabes that got fired or let go from real companies and were forced into rural America where their reputations had not followed them. And some just liked all the hacker movies and had wives that wanted high speed internet and liked seeing their well insured husbands climb tall slippery towers in a thunderstorm. - excerpt from ATT internal documents
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