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TelecomWeb
By Stuart Zipper
June 10, 2008
Fixed wireless business broadband provider Sparkplug has completed a
major expansion of its service in the Chicago metropolitan area, upping
the number of businesses it reaches by 43 percent.
The company, which operates in five states (including the metropolitan
markets of Chicago, Nashville, Des Moines, Phoenix and Las Vegas) says
it's increased both the capacity and footprint of its Chicago network,
adding 19,000 businesses to its potential customer base and bringing
the total number of businesses in Sparkplug's service area to more than
63,000. As with most wireless business broadband providers, one of
Sparkplug's mantras continues to be the speed with which it can hook up
a new customer looking for symmetrical business service, compared to the
time it takes to provision service via wireline. "With Sparkplug,
businesses can be up and running in a day or two. Wired alternatives
often require months of waiting," the company says. "Sparkplug can also
increase customer bandwidth capacity on demand as business needs evolve."
Such demand, the company says, is growing.
"Our continuing growth and expansion in the Chicago market is a
reflection of the demand we're seeing for a better class of business
broadband service," comments CEO Bill Malloy. "Customers in Chicago and
all our markets across the country are asking for a solution to their
growing broadband demands that goes beyond what is available today."
TelecomWeb news break also chatted with Malloy for his take on
the wireless broadband technologies his company is using, particularly
because the company's publicity blurbs claim it "leverages WiMAX
technology" and then, in the same breath, quotes speeds such as 1 Gb/s
that are more than 20 times faster than WiMAX can deliver on a good day
at short distances. The blurb is the same as we've seen from a string of
wireless broadband providers. As it turns out, there isn't much WiMAX in
Sparkplug's networks although, to be sure, it does sometimes use hardware
that honestly is WiMAX Forum-certified.
"We're agnostic to the technology," Malloy says. "WiMAX...it's the trade
name it is. What has happened is that it's grown to be a brand name, a
trade name, the highest level of understanding of wireless."
To the unsophisticated, he continues, "it means 'now I can use wireless.'"
That being said, Sparkplug is using what Malloy is calling a "hybrid"
network, with hardware from Alvarion, DragonWave and Motorola. (Alvarion is
the only one of the three with WiMAX-certified products, according to the
WiMAX Forum Web site. Motorola, with its definitely non- WiMAX Canopy
product, is considered the market leader.)
According to Malloy, when it comes down to it, his business customers
don't really care what technology is being used to dish up the broadband
they're demanding. "What we're seeing with these customers," Malloy explains,
is that "they're serious businesses (and) their broadband needs are growing
incredibly."
He adds, "They start putting voice over it (broadband), they start adding
applications that are exchange-based or SaaS (software as a service)-based,
and the wired plant is going to reach its limit." But upgrading the wired
plant can take a long time, he continues, and "these folks need to scale
quickly. The last thing you want to do is hit a limit set by a wired
plant or where you're located."
The bandwidth a business needs "used to be a function of how many
employees" a company has, he continues. "Now, five employees can use 100
megs of symmetrical service," he says (IEEE 802.16, the wireless
metropolitan area network (MAN) standard that's been mis-named WiMAX by
the non-observant, only supports as much as 45 Mb/s).
For those unfamiliar with Sparkplug, it was born in 2006 as the result of
the merger of a trio of existing wireless broadband houses: Sparkplug in
Chicago; Prairie iNet in Des Moines, Iowa; and Telespectra in Phoenix.
Early last year, it picked up $22.5 million in venture capital, with which
it's both built out its networks with fresh builds and started buying up
compatible wireless broadband providers around the country, most notably
Las Vegas-based Verde Communications, reputedly the oldest wireless
broadband provider in southern Nevada (TelecomWeb broadband, July 24, 2007).
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