CEDX

Philadelphic Phoenix's bones are where the action is

The news of an investor rescue of the Philly network is welcome, but the devil is in the details.  The investors are picking up an important distribution infrastructure that they can use to build a business on.  The duopoly has set bandwidth prices high enough, and the scarcity of wired broadband is such that if you take that distribution infrastructure and use it to deliver ethernet handoffs, you can make some serious coin.  Especially if you can deliver better than DSL performance and bundle some perks that the incumbents charge extra for.
The free no-support wi-fi is a no brainer to pickup the rights of way and siting agreements. It allows the politicos to save face and not impede the deal.   There's no way to make decent money reselling somebody else's infrastructure, unless you have a massive account base to aggregate those slim margins over.  You have to reduce your monthly nut by owning your own backbone to your internet peering point.  Flipping the asset and giving away wi-fi while aggressively selling wired bandwidth to class B and C office buildings and multi-tenant units gives this plan a good shot at being viable.  Real estate is everything in this game.

I'm also happy to see an investor seeing promise, even in a failed network.  I hope they'd be even more interested in a profitable wireless broadband provider, wink wink, nudge, nudge!

Party Lines still exist, at least on Fire Island

On Fire Island, we compete with Verizon's DSL product and a couple other wireless providers for the internet access market.  We like to think we're growing because we provide a better service, and treat our customers nicer.  Ultimately though, most commodity purchase decisions come down to economics.  If you are within DSL range, VZ is the cheaper alternative so far, and that's just the way it is right now. 

However, part of the fun in this business is enjoying the idiosyncrasies of Fire Island and its denizens.  We're bringing on a new customer in Ocean Beach who is well within DSL range who has the weirdest rationale for joining that I've heard in the five years we've been doing this. He actually has a party line telephone that he doesn't want to give up.  To get DSL, he'd have to switch.  When this guy picks up his phone, an operator has to connect the call for him.  I didn't even think that they existed any more!   There must be some kind of regulatory requirement that forces VZ to keep these lines active, which, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised about, given the state of telecom regulation in this country.  I actually feel kind of bad for VZ that they have to support this anachronism, but hey, we're happy to get a new customer.  And no, it's not the "Petticoat Junction" magneto type phone, but I wouldn't be suprised if it's a rotary dial.