Smaller ISPs

Could be like the dotbombs all over again, this time with internet access.

Remember FreeDSL.com and other similars? Sure, they were free but still.

Not sure what the outcome will be. Maybe municipality broadband but isn't something stopping that?

Most are run by idiots reselling the service for $2 more than what they are paying. No technical ability...face local ISP's are like self serve video kiosks...worthless.

and if they do actually have any hard ware, ud prolly see them on ebay

But once they get a large enough customer base, wouldn't they just act and be like the larger companies?

I have switched to a small isp that i found by pure chance and it work great and. They do not have banner ads or pop-ups and they only load 1 cookie on my pc and offer great dial-up service that i have not seen in many years from the big boys.And that isp is called WWW.isp.com
they price themselves at 8.95 per month for reg dial-up and 12.95 for high speed which i found was as fast as my old verizon dsl. I chose them not for the price but for the privacy they offer by not loading me up with useless trash and malware. Thank you ISP.COM!!!

I actually work for a small ISP (well, ISP/CLEC). The majority of our customers go through our network, but yeah, we do resell some Covad (mostly in areas we plan to expand our network to eventually).

We're actually growing pretty steadily (no leaps and bounds, but pretty controlled, sustainable growth). Currently, we're prepping to start deploying VoIP. It's going to be pretty cool (Beta trials already done, prepping for market trials).

Customers tend to like the personal touch... that and the fact that they can get a human on the phone in a matter of seconds and that human actually speaks english.

And yeah, we used to really suck a few years ago, a product of expanding WAY faster than we were ready for, but that's since been dealt with.

It's not when, it is IF. Startups are very iffy I am sure.

Yeah, I don't see why they can't steal from or cheat their customers and stockholders.

I cant tell you how many times I've heard this story. According to everyone else all independent ISP's were supposed to be out of business in 1997, then 98, wait - 99, no its 00... You get the point....

Here is a prime example (from here even): »Heard it all before....

Ironic its from about 1 year ago, lol.

Sure, we've been forced out of the consumer market by cable and the ILECs, but we are entrenched in the small to medium sized business market, and are doing just fine, tyvm.

None of the larger ISPs can give personal service or quickly add or change existing/new services on the fly like we can. A simple customer phone call to us solves their problem 99% of the time - because we know what we are doing - shocker.

Recently in my dealings with the telcos and other businesses for that matter I have found that their sales reps and tech people really don't give a sh*t. Well we do, and you would be surprised the number of calls we receive from people who just got off the phone with megatelco and cant believe how they have been treated. Also we don't sell things to people they don't need. If someone calls up saying they want 768/768 DSL, and they only use it for light surfing and email, we tell them to start with something slower then upgrade if they need it. A little honesty goes a long way.

The bottom line is decent sized independent ISP's that offer good service will be around for a long, long time.

- GTIDSL

said by AnonProxy:

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Most are run by idiots reselling the service for $2 more than what they are paying. No technical ability...face local ISP's are like self serve video kiosks...worthless.

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Well, It's good to know that I am an idiot:o. Do You really think its fair that all of us "local" ISP's are stereotypically classified?. While I realize that You used the word "most", that would include quite a few ISP's. Since I am so dumb, I should probably close up tomorrow, and turn off my service?, That way my customers can all go to megatelco.com and get the crappy service they truly deserve. Even though they are resellers, that $2 a month is putting food on someones table. While I am enraged at Your comment, This is NOT a flame!, I am simply try to clear the air. You are entitled to Your opinion, but I think that there is more than one person that thinks the way I do?;)

Slighly off topic

On that note, if the phone co. that we go through adds DSL to their services I would hop to them in a heartbeat, because they've been cheap, reliable, and their focus is on the customer. Of course, they have no plans to because they're interested in cheap, reliable local and long distance for rural and suburban customers.

Oh, it's Sage Telecom. C'mon Sage, give me DSL! I'll give you money!

I work at a local ISP and things are a little tight right now it seems. But we have fixed wireless which in some cases beats DSL, and gives us a better profit. Right now we resell SBC's service, but once we got a large enough database in DSL other options would open to us. We still have a firm number of dial-up's though....

Pray for us fellow Americans :]

Yes I would say close your doors, you have no understanding of the model.

quote:

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If someone calls up saying they want 768/768 DSL, and they only use it for light surfing and email, we tell them to start with something slower then upgrade if they need it. A little honesty goes a long way.

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I had this exact thing happen to me. A new client called and asked for a 1.5M/768k, once I realized that all he needed was a 768k/128k and explained it to him, he was flabbergasted! The first thing he said was, "You just made a customer for life!"

A little honesty does go a long way.

Our goal is to find a small number of clients and make them feel special. None of our clients are numbers, they are human beings who need our skills.

Furthermore, I cannot think of a single customer outage that was ISP related in the last 3 years. ALL of them have been on the Telco Side and were resolved in very short order once we contacted them.

We like to say....

Good.... Fast.... Cheap.... Pick two.

said by AnonProxy:

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Yes I would say close your doors, you have no understanding of the model.

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OK!, I am turning off everything as we speak!:D. What do I do next?. Is it possible that You could tell what the model is?. I really want to be successful in the ISP business and my guess is that You have a complete understanding of how it all works. Perhaps You could enlighten us all on a successful business model. That way I (Or other ISP's that may read this;) ) won't make the same mistake twice. Quality advice is hard to come by. Especially in this business.:)

Are you saying you would use them as an ISP? Or are you saying that you would use a local ISP who Internet services over the Telco's infrastructure?

It seems that there are a lot of people who shop exclusively at Home Depot, and then complain when the local friendly hardware store goes out of business.

But history has shown us that there are enough folks who find value in shopping at a locally owned small business. That way we can stay alive and continue to serve them.

I love to chat with people who complain about the unbridled greed of Corporate America, yet they have an AOL account and shop mostly at Home Depot and Wal Mart.

Maybe he could teach AOL how to offer service as well.

Maybe even teach them to answer the phone.

I so admire smart*** people

I would use them as an ISP. They are a CLEC utilizing Southwestern Bell and SBC/Ameritech's lines from Texas up through the midwest...

So if I could add a basic DSL package to my phone package it would be cool....

For residential phone service they offer 2 tiers. That's it. If they were to add DSL the same way I would be okay with that. 2 tiers maybe, mix and match with the phone tiers, and no frills. No portal, webhosting, newsgroups, MAYBE email at the most.

That's my $0.02 anyway

I would say Mr Anonproxy has a pretty poor idea of the "model". When looking at dialup, he is correct that most ISPs are effectively reselling ports from someone else's network. However in some cases the ports are the same ones that Earthlink uses. So the question is do you want your tech support from an Indian pretending to be an American or an actual american. Additionally while they are reselling the service, in most cases $2 above their cost is still cheaper than most of the "big guys".

As to DSL services, most small ISPs purchase the loop portion from the ILEC, but it is terminated at their location and goes out their internet connection. This typically creates less hops than what you would get by subscribing to the LECs DSL. Furthermore, most LECs end up purchasing their internet connections from other carriers anyway. (SBC is typically connected through Sprint). Most small ISPs would love to offer service at the same prices as the "big boys", however since the DSL loops they purchase are unfairly (in terms of "allowing competition" as the LECs claim they are doing) priced above what the complete product they are selling to customers. This means that in order for the small ISP to be able to run they need to charge more than the LECs.

Since DSL is terminated on their own network they can offer things like static IPs and allow for hosting at prices much lower than the LECs. If they were simply "reselling" service they couldn't do that. Anonproxy's statement would mean that Sprint, AT and T and all the other companies providing T-1s are "reselling" the local LECs service since 90% of the T-1s use the LEC for the local loop. (The same way small ISPs are able to offer DSL.) Now in some cases the small ISPs are not technically competent and those companies will die sooner rather than later, but not all small ISPs are incompetent.

Finally the 3rd type of small ISP is the WISP who doesn't use the LEC for the last mile. They create their own network, typically in an area where the LEC has determined it's not financially viable to offer service.

quote:

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Most are run by idiots reselling the service for $2 more than what they are paying. No technical ability...face local ISP's are like self serve video kiosks...worthless.

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This coming from a person who uses one of the 2 or 3 worst ISP's in the business! An ISP that has never made a profit on broadband. One of the Few ISP's who sells Verizon DSL that is actually costing the TELCO money.

Another nice feature of VOL... If you do decide to switch to another ISP you need to cancel your service, wait a week or so, then re-order the service from the new ISP. If you were with an independent and they were bad, you can switch with only a few moments of downtime. You have chosen an ISP who, in order to reduce customer churn has chosen to made it painful for the customer to change rather than just delivering exceptional serivce to retain the customer.

I'm just another one of those idiots running their own successful ISP.

Let me give you a description of our kiosk like ISP.

We have our own space that we rent from one of the best wired buildings in Seattle. It's our own space, we built it out. We have a key card to get into the building (that is patrolled by security 7x24). This same key card will only allow me access to the floors that involve my ISP. And on my floor I only have access to the part of the floor where my data center resides, and then I need a key to get into the room where the equipment resides.

We are the only ones with access, it is not a colo or a shared space. We have our own air conditioning unit. We have our own UPS which is backed up by the building generator in case of power outages. In 6 years, we have never had a customer outage because of a problem in our data center.

We have 3 different backbones over 3 different infrastructures, ethernet over fiber, ethernet over copper, and a DS3. All take different paths to different meet me rooms to different carriers.

All of our critical equipment has dual power supplies plugged into UPS's that are in turn plugged into different phases of power running through different power risers in the building. This means that when the building needs to shut down the North riser or the South riser for maintenance, we're still up.

My mail server has not been rebooted in 221 days. dns1 has not been rebooted in 330 days and dns2 has not been rebooted in 553 days! By the way, dns1 and dns2 are in completely different network blocks to avoid BGP storms. (Something Microsoft didn't learn until they suffered a 2 day outage due to a BGP storm)

My favorite quote from one of many customers who have switched from VOL to us. I never dreamed it could be this good!

We get bottles of wine, Chocolate, Cookies, and constant thank-you cards during the holidays from people who are trying to find ways to say thank-you. Customers have said, we would not still be in business if not for your ISP.

One more mega-telco story....

One evening we got 3 quick calls from different clients that their DSL was down. Because we know our clients well, we quickly deduced that they were on the same CO. Leaving nothing to chance we checked with 2 other clients who were on the same CO and found that their DSL was out as well. Armed with this knowledge I called "MEGATELCO" tech support.

MEGATELCO: MEGATELCO tech support, how may I help you?

ME: Hello, I'm calling from XYZ, we're an independent ISP and we have 5 different DSL's in the same CO who are all down. They all have a flashing link light on the WAN port of the external DSL modem, and a reboot of the DSL modem has not fixed the problem.

MEGATELCO: What error message do you get when you try to surf the web.

ME: uuuhhh... I assume that the message is "page not available". But that is irrelevant since we are not syncing up with the DSLAM. I have 5 different customers experiencing the same problem out of the same CO. I think there is a problem at the CO!

MEGATELCO: What happens if you reboot the computer?

ME: NOTHING! It's not the computer. I HAVE 5 DIFFERENT CLIENTS WHO FOR SOME MYSTERiOUS REASON CANNOT SYNC TO THE DSLAM IN THE SAME CO. I THINK THERE IS A PROBLEM IN THE CO!

MEGATELCO: OK, lets reboot your dsl modem.

ME: (much calmer now) I can see that I'm not getting through to you, I need to speak to your supervisor.

MEGATELCO: ok, hold on a sec....

MEGATELCO Super: (20 minutes later) Hello, this is Bob, you needed to speak with me?

ME: Hello, I'm calling from XYZ, we're an independent ISP and we have 5 different DSL's in the same CO who are all down. They all have a flashing link light on the WAN port of the external DSL modem, and a reboot of the DSL modem has not fixed the problem.

MEGATELCO Super: OH! That would mean that there is a problem in our CO. We'll get a ticket open right away!


ME: Thanks

Yup, that convinced me. MEGATELCO was not only a great Phone Company, but they are probably even a better ISP. Matter of fact, I am trying to see how I can spend more of my money there. Food, Clothing, Entertainment, office Supplies.

www.kiosk-like-ISP.com just isn't cuttin' it.

You know, I don't mind you having your own opinion, but next time at least try to bring something to the table.

then by all means, stay with teh comcasts, version, AOL, MSN, Symsuckio, Rogers of the world, my associates at msot fo these offices will be more than happy to keep you waiting on hold.

I love how people always compalin that the big compies dont treat them right and comapin all the time about bad service, long waits, techs take forever to fix anything, yet do they move to another ISP with better qualities? no. do they put their moeny where their mouth is? no. do they prefer to piss and moan all day in the slim glimmer of a hope that maybe someone will care? maybe, but it wont be me. Stay with the faceless co-poration, small ISP's are better off without you.

PS: I know his/her/it's comment was only meant to be flamage, since they cant even expalin what their glorious "model" for doing a perfect ISP is, but waht the hell.

Greetings,

Aren't huge marketing budgets wonderful. I say f*(k the monopolies. Everyone I know I tell them they have options.

LOL, I have been in business 2 years as a Wisp and have had ZERO churn other than a couple of clients that moved out of my servicing areas. Maybe they feel threatned to leave:o, or maybe its just cause I give them the personal customer service that the big guys can not. Nevertheless, This idiot must be doing something right cause our customers love us.

You know guys...any jack leg can put up a dail-up service. But it takes someone with some smarts, common sence, and some determination to build a network from the ground up and put it through the air and MAKE it work. Alot of us WISP's put our networks together with our OWN money. We know how much we can charge by what the market will bear. We put networks together in some locations where it would be a long distance call to connect to a DAIL-UP service.

I assure you, there is no one set model for an ISP. So get your head out of your a$$.

»www.singingriverdsl.com

Not so fast... Lookie here and smile!:D

»www.edgar-online.com/lyc ··· sym=ELNK

Ohhhh the BS is flying here....I love seeing all the Noobs talk about how great their ISP WISP's are doing.

Real simple, put up or shut up, post your service, your website and let's really take a look how all you basement junior ISP's are doing.

If I had a small ISP I would sell it asap. Unless you can deploy FTTH you will be out of business in 3 years.

It is just a matter of time before the the Bells no longer have to share. Once they get the green light to do so, they will snuff out the local guys in a week.

Many cables are looking hard at "lite" or 20 dollar packages and the bells will match this or even do a little better on the price point. They will go after dialup users this year.

After that market takes a hit I don't see enough dialup users to pay the bills.

The only way I see small ISP's surviving is in projects like Utah's UTOPIA where the FTTH system is open to all providers. One would hope every small ISP in the country was supporting Utah's effort. In my opinion it is their only way to ever survive in the future.

You did read the Earthlink article where it said they were not doing very well and hope to make it another year... Lots of WISPS here will still be standing after that!
Being big does not make you great or profitable - go WISPS!