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| This is a great effort, but WISPs do need to be careful. As the nation debates how best to deploy broadband to every citizen, WISPs do need to publicize their existence and coverage. However, their tower locations are sensitive proprietary information -- especially in these times, when the Federal government makes it so difficult for WISPs to operate and makes it so easy for incumbents to engage in anticompetitive practices.
Publish accurate data about a WISP's tower locations, and large corporations such as the telcos and cable companies will indeed use it to target anticompetitive practices, such as service priced below cost. And unfortunately, there are some WISPs (not many, but there are bad apples in every barrel) who will intentionally interfere with others' signals in an attempt to gain competitive advantage. (I have had two do this to me over the 16+ years I've been in business as a WISP.) So, we prefer the "radius around the Zip Code" method of mapping to the precise mapping of access points. It provides a very good picture of how much coverage there is. And since there are all kinds of imponderables (trees, tall buildings, hills, etc.) that can affect coverage, it's about as accurate as giving exact tower locations. | |
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 ·US Cellular
| The zip code method is increasingly inaccurate as the zip code size increases and terrain has more obstacles.
We have a WISP in our county very close to the center of our zip code, but many of us our closer to a different zip code so the zip code method doesn't help us .
Anyone can figure out where your site is with a little work - trying to hide a point source transmitter's location is not going to work.
I've had Verizon give me this argument about cell tower location, but it's a specious argument. I just wanted to point my antenna correctly in mountainous terrain. If I was a competitor I'd just drive around until I had three measurements and triangulate.
Flat land maybe, mountainous terrain no. | |
 radiowebstBrian Webster
join:2009-02-02
Cooperstown, NY | My take on the topic of competition is this. If your market is large enough you will always have the threat of competition from various sources. They will more than likely have some clueless marketing department that would just look at raw numbers for households or population counts and say it meets their criteria to build. If you are lucky and they have a smart marketing department, they will also look to see who already has built in this market. If the numbers are already marginal they may pass knowing that there will be little to no chance of making profit based on the fact there will only be so many possible customers and then they will be split among competition.
If you have your network and business out there for all to see the competition's marketing department may see it as well and possibly abandon building a marginal market. Now they could always be stubborn and build anyway creating grief for you. Thing is, if they are apt to do this, advertising your network coverage would not make any difference anyway. As far as the days of people building wireless just to interfere, I think with the economy the way it is, that is much less likely to happen. With the newer wireless gear you can work around most of those situations.
I guess what I am trying to say is hiding your network in fear of competition also hurts your own business because your potential customers don't know you are there either. | |
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