By: Dave Sifry

Dave Sifry — Tue, 18 Jun 2002 22:20:14 +0000

It really came down to this: We couldn’t figure out a way to make money
doing the joltage/boingo thing, i.e. get people to set up hotspots and
then do revenue shares with the hotspot operators. Essentially, there
are two big problems with the model:
1) AUPs. Most inexpensive wireless broadband access have some pretty
restrictive Acceptable Use Policies, and they usually include a “no
sharing your bandwidth” provision. Of course, the way around this is to
work out deals with the cable co’s and ILECs so that we give a revenue
share back to them as well. Unforunately, the slices of the pie keep
getting slimmer and slimmer, even if you assume that you can work a deal
with the local monopoly^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H broadband provider.
2) Customer Service. Know the cornerstone reason why AOL was so
profitable for so many years? Because they perfected the art of
eliminating customer service calls. This is the bane of so many
thin-margin businesses (see point 1 above). One call to your 800 number
can blow your profit on that customer for the month, or even the year.
Now factor into the equation that you don’t control AP placement,
coverage, equipment, or internet uplink, and the customer service issues
start to look VERY unattractive. Think about what happens when someone
is paying you $19.95/month, getting great access via their neighbor’s
DSL connection, and then their neighbor decides to move. All of a
sudden you have a dissatisfied customer, and absolutely no way to
control or predict when these situations will arise. Have it happen
enough times and your reputation is totally shot.
So, we decided to change our model. We still believe in secure
authenticated roaming, and we still believe in community networking, all
we did was remove the subscriber fee and revenue share part of the
model. This way, people can set up nodes, and can easily particiapte in
a worldwide network of free community nodes as well.
If you want to be a commercial WISP, great, more power to ya, we’re glad
to sell you the infrastructure and management software that will turn
you into a WISP. If you want to deply secure 802.11 networks across
your enterprise, you can take proven technology and authenticate against
your chosen single-sign-on system, be it RADIUS, LDAP, NDS, Active
Directory, or whatever, and the APs enforce policy, like bandwidth
shaping and per-user firewalling based on that policy as well.
I hope that further clarifies what we at Sputnik did, and where we
stand in relation to all the great community network initiatives out
there.
Dave

By: Jay R. Ashworth

Jay R. Ashworth — Mon, 10 Jun 2002 16:54:22 +0000

And the Unique Selling Proposition to potential sites goes away… and the fire goes out.
Tell me why I’m wrong.

Comments on: New Sputnik Community Gateway 1.1 released!

By: Dave Sifry

By: Jay R. Ashworth