CEDX

Guest Commentary on MuniWireless

That tireless promoter of wide access to broadband, the globetrotting Esme Vos, extended a gracious invitation for me to write about the prospects for the Long Island Wi-Fi project, and I used up many bits in responding to her invite.  I tried to put the project in contrast with the work that we have been doing on Fire Island, and in the context of the competitive environment that it faces.  You can try to glean some nuggets from my brain dump at this link, or read the whole thing after the jump:

Lessons Learned from Long and Fire Islands

As our Fire Island Wireless network is closing out its 5^th and most successful season, I would like to share a few things I’ve learned as they apply to the Long Island Wi-Fi project. Even though the plug has not been pulled officially, the writing is on the wall for the Long Island Wi-Fi project, and its an obituary. Cablevision is launching its Optimum Wi-Fi network, offering complimentary access to 2 million wired subscribers over the tri-state area, not just Long Island, and that pretty much dries up any potential paying customers that e-path might have had.

Long Island Wi-Fi project update

Things are looking grim for the bi-county wi-fi project.  In this Newsday article, where I get the last word, and the followups on MuniWireless and Wifinetnews, the coup de grace may be administered by the combination of e-Path's classification of what kind of company it is, and the cost of pole rental to that classification.  Ugh.   I had no idea pole costs were so high for a non-telecom classification.  Reid Epstein also has another couple of nuggets in there that were news to me.  In the county budget for last year, $200K was allocated for the RFP, which I thought was outrageous,  but in the article, he reports a spend of a more reasonable $60K.

The whole business model there is shaky, especially with the outdoor network, and the two entrenched incumbents on the island providing fixed services, plus cellular data availability.  The network envisioned is in a no-man's land, where it won't have the performance to compete with wired offerings, or the coverage to compete with existing cellular mobility.  It was doomed from day one, and the thing that really cheeses me off is that it froze the market for individual municipalities to deploy their own nets, with them waiting two years to see if there really was a free lunch out there.  We had substantive discussions underway with a few villages, but these evaporated once this wacky plan came along. 

We are able to thrive on Fire Island because we can compete against DSL on price and performance, and we collect normal amounts of revenue for providing what has become an essential commodity in a niche market.  Now that we have a substantial existing customer base, we can use those cash flows to build higher tiers of service to take us beyond our current offerings into higher performance services, where it will be possible to support VoIP, adding another revenue stream.

Somebody should just put this dog out of its misery.

Westward Expansion in Cherry Grove

We've added an access point in Cherry Grove on the west end of the town, on top of the building known as Holly House.  The SSID is FIWISPCGWEST, and those residents west of the town dock should be able to see our service now, where we couldn't deliver a signal before.  To steal a page from Henry Powderly's book, er, blog, here's a google map showing our two APs in the Grove.

 

View Larger Map

Wi-Fi returns to Atlantique

FIWISPAP is the SSID for our new access point in Atlantique. The AP is located atop the snack bar and provides coverage to the marina, beach and surrounding houses. At some point soon, prepaid cards will be available at the snack bar.

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.

Long Island Wi-Fi project update

Evidently, there is no update.  Pete Weiss writes a review article in Long Island Business News that rounds up all the players and takes the pulse of where the project is or isn't right now.  E-path is still trying to raise money for the project, and the counties are patiently waiting to see something concrete in the test areas.  Bob Giglione took a nice picture of me for the front page, on the Huntington Harbor waterfront, where I was checking the status on two wi-fi networks I operate for the West Shore Marina and Huntington Yacht Club.  I get quoted in the piece regarding the diminishing customer acquisition prospects for the project in the face of competition.  I believe that this project can work, and I express my regrets about not bidding in comments on the LIBN blog.  I think that people have to be creative when they think about wireless networking, and build a Purple Cow, instead of just providing commodity bandwidth distributed over a unscaleable technology like wi-fi.  That's a surefire recipe for failure in the face of Cablevision rolling out its complimentary to customers public wi-fi hotspots and the cellular carriers' data plays.  You still need to pony up for wired bandwidth at home, but if you're out and about, you don't have to pay to get online in some of the more popular Long Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey downtowns if you are an Optimum Online customer.  MuniWireless and Glenn Fleishman's Wifinetnews pick up on coverage of the story.  My take on their comments after the jump.

Long Island Business News Podcast - At C Level

Shortly after Labor Day this month, I was interviewed by David Reich-Hale of LIBN for their podcast series featuring Long Island CEOs.  This was right around the time of the Muni about face by the big players, and left a bunch of juicy questions to answer, vis-a-vis the prospects for Long Island Wi-Fi.  It's about a 10 minute listen, and the first time I've been able to hear myself on a professionally produced podcast. Does everybody else hate the way they sound to themselves? 

Here's why WISPs and MTU ISPs have a chance against incumbents

CEDX is the IT consulting practice that provides the bulk of revenue for me, and I have Verizon to thank for the latest chunk.  It seems that over the weekend, VZ reprovisioned some aspect of their Manhattan DSL network, and unprovisioned one of my clients in the Shmata business, cutting them off from the world and their VPN tunnel.  Forthwith is an account of my tech's troubleshooting day:

This is a short summary of the Verizon hell I went through.....

I arrived at the client around 10:30.   I verified that the DSL light was on and steady, then rebooted the DSL modem and router.  From the router I could not ping the Verizon gateway on the WAN side. 

I called tech support who told me the line was configured for PPPoE dynamic.  I told tech support that it was supposed to be static.  After being transferred around I spoke to someone at order status who told me that the line was converted from static to dynamic on 1/31/2007 (this circuit has been working as a static circuit for over a year - Craig)  .  I again said that it was working up until last Friday as static.  She offered to xfer me to sales to convert to static.  I went through tech support and got the PPPoE username and password. 

 

After speaking with the IT manager in California he OK'ed me to get a cheap Linksys and configure it as PPPoE.  I tried and PPPoE was not connecting.  I called Verizon tech support again.  This time I was told that "this is impossible" the line is configured for both static and dynamic.  One system was telling him dynamic while another system was saying the line was static.  There is no record of the static IP from the original config. ( A behemoth collapsing under its own weight. ) 

 

This last tech support person I spoke with put me on hold and setup and internal ticket to another group to straighten out the confusion.  At this point there was nothing else I could do, the DSL line will not work until Verizon gets it's internal provisioning correct. 

 

I gave the ticket number to the IT manager in California, he is the primary contact that Verizon will call.  When the DSL line is up it will likely have a different static IP address so the VPN router will need to be updated. 

 

Just a couple of "gems" from Verizon tech support. 

"You are being billed for 7MB dynamic"  I verified with the IT manager that the bill says 3MB static.

 

I asked to be escalated to a higher level of tech support. The response from the Verizon tech was that there was a premier support but I would have to pay for it!!!!  Even Microsoft is not that bad

 

There's a market in Manhattan for doing deals with building management and offering reliable, responsive ISP services that are plus T-1 speeds, either static or dynamic, and making a decent living at it.  If you're a building manager losing tenants or you have tenants that are frustrated at their internet connection options, give us a call and we can help you retain customers and build up some better ones, making your building more attractive.  631-462-0821

Newsday Details some of Long Island Wi-Fi challenges

One of the nice things about blogging is that you can expand upon some of the things that you see in print and the articles you are mentioned in.  It's also good to be included as the local expert among the company of Glenn Fleishman, Esme Vos, and Chuck Haas, noted authorities in the space.  Rich Dalton of Newsday writes an extensive piece about the prospects for the Long Island Wi-Fi project.  We had a wide-ranging conversation during his research for the piece, but the one quote that made it in there was the one about e-path facing a tough time acquiring customers.  This will be true, as there's a tiny market for outdoor wi-fi networks on the bulk of Long Island.  Outdoor networks in general are pretty low percentage shots in terms of getting your money back.  Weather is a huge factor, and so are the trees.  The density required to compensate for foliage is cost prohibitive.  I do think that e-path can be successful if they know the local landscape well and can find the seams where cable has not penetrated and follow that path toward buildout.  The performance of Verizon's DSL has been less than stellar, and customers can be grabbed from them, but reliability and performance of the network, plus getting customers with regular payment habits will be key for their success.  It will be difficult, but not impossible.  Of course, acquiring an existing provider with an established customer base, and then using the mounting assets that come with their award to expand might also be a good way to go.