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Ross Wehner - Denver Post Staff Writer
September 30, 2005
The estimated 3,000 wireless Internet service
providers in the United States, known as WISPs,
are becoming less wispy every day.
The mom-and-pop companies, which often have only
a half-dozen radio towers and even fewer employees,
have until recently lived only in the shadows
of the large phone and cable broadband providers.
They subsisted by transmitting high-speed Internet
across prairies, mountain valleys and rural hinterlands
where neither cable nor DSL Internet lines reached.
But now WISPs are holding their ground - and possibly
even gaining market share - as cable giants such
as Comcast and phone companies such as Qwest push
broadband into what were, until recently, WISP-only
areas.
Of the 37.9 million high-speed Internet lines
in the U.S. at the end of 2004, 21.4 million were
cable, 13.8 million were DSL and 2.7 million were
either satellite or land-based wireless, according
to the Federal Communications Commission. During
that year, wireless grew at 50 percent, cable
grew at 30 percent and DSL at 20 percent.
The competition has not hurt Mesa Networks of
Frederick, which recently ranked as the 12th-largest
WISP in the nation. The company's clientele, now
about 4,500 homes and small businesses between
Longmont and Fort Collins, is growing 40 percent
per year, according to company founder Todd Bergstrom.
Mesa offers 1.5 megabits-per-second Internet speed
for $44 per month, including taxes, plus $49 for
installation and equipment. That is about the
same price and speed as Qwest, and a bit cheaper
(though slower) than Comcast.
Like many WISPs, Mesa is also growing through
acquisition of smaller rivals. The company purchased
Peak Internet of Woodland Park in June and is
pondering three other acquisitions.
Other WISPs, like Littleton- based WavMax Broadband,
are elbowing their way into urban areas by beaming
data "pipelines" into office buildings.
One of WavMax's clients, Cresta Insurance Co.
of Englewood, uses a WavMax connection as a backup
to a high-speed T1 line leased from Qwest. The
WavMax has worked three times over the last three
years when the T1 failed.
"We knew our neighbors were down, but we
were OK," said Cresta vice president Bill
Mescher, who said wireless is often cheaper and
more effective than using another T1 line as a
backup. Now Cresta has begun sending daily traffic
over its WavMax connection.
WavMax's big plan, for which it is presently raising
$10 million, is to build a "SkyFiber"
ring around Denver, Colorado Springs and other
cities.
The Denver ring, to be completed later this year,
will connect directly to office buildings and
provide an alternative to the fiber lines leased
by Qwest and other companies.
WavMax has recently acquired five companies, giving
it 85 towers from southern Arizona to northern
Colorado. Now WavMax is pondering acquisitions
in western Colorado, Utah, Nevada and California.
"We want to provide the railroad," said
WavMax CEO John Taylor, who hopes to lease his
"last-mile" building connections to
corporate telecom providers like MCI, Sprint,
SBC and Verizon. "We are already talking
with all the major companies."
Traditional T1 lines lease from $400 to $600 per
month. Taylor sells the same speed for $299 and
says he still makes a hefty profit. But WavMax's
competitive edge may not last long. Qwest and
most other large telecom providers are testing
Wi-Max, the next-generation wireless technology
that could blanket huge portions of the country
with speeds of 10 megabits per second or more.
Manufacturers of wireless-related equipment, like
Lafayette-based AP Connections, are cashing in
on the wireless boom. The company's product helps
wireless broadband companies roll out their next
big offering: Internet phone service.
One of AP Connection's WISP clients, Internet
Colorado of Gunnison, has already rolled out Internet
phone service up and down the Gunnison basin as
far as Crested Butte. Now Internet Colorado is
preparing to enter Grand Junction, where it will
compete with Qwest and the local cable company.
Internet Colorado founder Jason Swenson talked
on his mobile wireless handset as he walked to
a Gunnison barbershop.
"When customers have a problem and they call
the big companies, they are on hold for 45 minutes,"
he said. "We hear that all the time. That's
one of our biggest selling points: We answer the
phone."
One of Internet Colorado's clients is Crested
Butte Printing, which began using the wireless
connection three years ago to handle files as
large as 500 megabits. Qwest installed DSL down
their street recently, but the company is sticking
with wireless.
"It's been working great," said company
manager Chris Hanna. "Everything is rocking."
That kind of success has also encouraged Prairie
iNet, a WISP based in Des Moines, Iowa, which
is moving from rural areas into the edges of cites
like Des Moines, Champaign, Ill., and even Chicago.
"We've gone through an evolution," said
Prairie iNet CEO Neil Mulholland, who lives in
Denver but commutes every week to Iowa.
"We're migrating into the edge of urban America."
For additional information contact:
Neil J.
Mulholland, Prairie iNet, 515/440-0848, ext.
106
Staff writer Ross Wehner can be reached at 303-820-1503
or rwehner@denverpost.com
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