Is It All Over For The WISPs?

[richardmyers]

With KC Lightstream and the pretty fast rollout of the service across Hull and the surrounding villages, is there a place for the WISPs? Will they be able to survive and compete once a widespread rollout of the service is completed?

Discuss :-P

[el-ahrairah]

All depends on cost and implementation, Can the WISPs find enough bandwidth to compete? I hardly doubt it..

[Michael]

From what I have seen today in Beverley,  it  will not take KC too long to roll out the Lightstream product across Hull and Beverley.  I do not think the WISP have much time left to consolidate their positions and hold on to the small market they have.

[el-ahrairah]

Valid point Michael, I have an uncle working for kc as you know, and he said the proposed dates set out for the 15,000+ homes is going to be a lot faster then first anticipated and put out to the media.

[Scotty]

I personally think the days for wireless providers are limited, unless price and stability are improved in a way which makes them a viable alternative to fibre.

[Bindi Baji]

A lot will depend on timescales, I would guess.
The KC press release stated thst 15,000 homes and businesses would receive fibre during 2012.
On the last census, it stated there were over 104,000 households just in Hull.
As a wild guess if they dont improve on those timescales, I would say only 5-10% of households in Hull and surrounding areas will receive it during 2012 so there could still be a market to be tapped by the WISPs but they may have to up their game somewhat.

[Blueflame]

If I could get Lightstream without needing a phone line that'd be the major lure back to KC for me.

[Michael]

The WISP will all need to up their game quite considerably in the customer service and reliability stakes to compete with Kcoms Lightstream and ADSL products. As Kcom migrate to fiber it will no doubt improve the legacy products at the same time

[David]

With KC Lightstream and the pretty fast rollout of the service across Hull and the surrounding villages, is there a place for the WISPs? Will they be able to survive and compete once a widespread rollout of the service is completed?

Discuss :-P

Isn't Hull last on their list as there's no competition here, (not counting NextGenus obviously ) so the Karoo userbase is solid and won't be migrating anywhere soon, unless BT suddenly come here.

[ramtops]

With KC Lightstream and the pretty fast rollout of the service across Hull and the surrounding villages, is there a place for the WISPs? Will they be able to survive and compete once a widespread rollout of the service is completed?

Discuss :-P

We work from home, and before we moved to Hull we were in the fortunate position of having both cable and ADSL. I'd love to go back to having a proper failover solution, but when we tried NGU it was unreliable (this is an understatement). We might punt on a Sure broadband as a backup when Lightstream arrives in the backwaters of HU5.

[dylan]

What is important is speed, reliability, latency, bandwidth (allowance) and price. If somebody manages to get all of those right then they're pretty much quids in. If they do it as a WISP, WISPs will live on, if not they will die.

Our local WISPs have ran into problems for various reasons.

• The most common (it would seem) is lack of backhaul. This causes problems for customers with latency, speed and forces some WISPs to apply daft bandwidth allowances.
• Money. Doing it on the cheap. Decent networking kit and the skills to set up and run it costs cash. You get what you pay for. If a WISP doesn't have the cash to get proper equipment and proper staff then they're pretty much doomed to deliver a lacklustre service. Simples.
• Unlicensed spectrum. It's busy. Just hook up an access point, stick it on site survey mode and try to find a quiet space. It isn't easy. There is so much kit out there that any WISP using the unlicensed spectrum faces a battle to get their signal through. Often it doesn't, and the result is high pings and low throughput.

1 and 2 are going to effect any ISP. 3 however is unique to wireless providers. Will anyone overcome these? I don't know, but imagine probably not...

[joetandey]

I think we tend to forget a lot of things when having discussions such as these.

Firstly, Hull is not the only city to have wireless networks in the UK. Metronet is one example that have done remarkably well in other large cities in the UK. They cover cities such as Leeds, Birmingham and Manchester where every hardwired provider in the country can offer a service not to mention they even have data centres in Leeds etc. They have been very successful for a number of reasons.

Secondly, us WISP's in Hull tend to have a harder job on our hands than elsewhere in the UK as the majority of our customers have had such a hard time with their previous supplier that they almost look for faults when starting a service with companies such as ours. This is why so many companies in our line of work stay out of cities and concentrate on the rural areas as not only is there funding available but out there anything is better than nothing and so people are grateful for the service they receive.

Thirdly, sooner or later the government will get behind wireless as more and more tests prove that wireless can deliver sustainable long range and close range services at a fraction of the price of installing fibre without even thinking about the disruption caused. Look at China and Japan where high speed fibre broadband is the norm...it is they that are developing the wireless chips. Would they be doing this if they did not see a future in it?

Fourth, all the other forms of service still expect some type of line rental/service charge to be paid for a phoneline that is in most cases not wanted/needed. We can offer a service without those costs in a day and age when the average user just wants to save money and have a service that works. Not everyone requires 50mbs+ they just want to cut their bills back.

I think some of us WISP's will be around for a long time yet and we certainly intend to be one that is.

[Ricky]

That pretty much sums it up - well said Joe!

[dylan]

Sorry if I came across as negative Joe. I certainly don't mean to tar you all with the same brush.

I'm sure it is possible to make a WISP work. The point I was trying to make was that in order to do so, investment needs to be made on getting the right people on board with the right technologies. 

I just think that the cost of decent clever CPE that can deliver great performance is more expensive than the market will tolerate...

[Djwindas]

i would say the basics need to be sorted first like bandwidth and streaming issues.!!!!  and not like a yo yo with the speeds.