I updated Independent Towerstream Blog with three new sidebars (right side) today:
- Towerstream Markets
- Towerstream Competitors - Regional
- Towerstream Competitors - National
Towerstream Markets is obviously self-explanatory. Towerstream Competitors - Regional is my highly-subjective list of serious competitors to Towerstream either in current Towerstream markets (Accel Net in Seattle; Business Only Broadband in Chicago), or major urban markets that Towerstream might reasonably be expected to enter (Phoenix, served by Metrobridge; Portland, OR served by Freewire Broadband). Towerstream Competitors - National is also highly subjective, and I list only one that has something-approaching national scale on a par with Towerstream's nine markets to date.
My experience... well... sense is that every major urban area in the US, say the largest 150 urban markets, all have at least one Broadband Wireless Internet Access Service Provider serving businesses with "T1" and faster Broadband Internet Access with comparable reliability to wireline. I'll be continuously updating the "competitors" list as I discover these urban BWIA SPs.
One of my "reality checks" about whether Towerstream will "get it" about one of its newer markets - Seattle, is whether / when it will begin to service the Seattle metropolitan area's "Eastside" - the cities of Bellevue, Bothell, Kirkland, Redmond, and Woodinville, where 1) much of the "action" is for startups, medium-sized companies, and most notably 2) a distinct lack of competition for telecommunications services against Verizon (all of the Eastside except Bellevue) and Qwest (Seattle and Bellevue).
As of today, nope. Towerstream doesn't seem to serve the Eastside yet, at least checking the primary ZIP code for Redmond - 98052 through Towerstream's service locator. But Clearwire does service the Eastside, and seems to be doing a booming business picking many small businesses as customers that Verizon didn't bother to "wire" for DSL service, especially many multi-tenant business parks.
But I digress... I wanted to commend Towerstream for at least, after the ZIP code check, naming the markets they operate in. Towerstream does it right in naming their service areas (and bonus points for breaking down each service area onto its own page with a unique URL), and that's one of the reasons they're a leader in the Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) / WiMAX Service Provider industry. Most of their competitors are simply (inexplicably) loathe to "disclose" their service areas. You can "find out" whether they provide service in your area, but often these "fill out the form to see if you can get our service" are thinly-veiled ways to gather your information not just to determine whether they can in fact provide service to you, but also to create "new meat" for selling to other marketers.
The clueful BWIA SPs, like Towerstream, openly disclose what markets
they operate in. The clueless don't, and that's a major failing, in my
opinion. Airband is a good example - there's simply no way to tell from
their "elegent, but content-light" site what markets they're actually
operating in. I know that they're in something like five or six markets, but I can't find out which ones without, perhaps, some serious digging. If I can't find that most basic information... will a customer? Again, yes, almost all the "Regional Competitors" have a ZIP code qualification page, but my experience is that customers are reluctant to use those unless they have some reasonable expectation that the company they're checking out provides service in their area. Ditto for Covad Wireless and Sparkplug. I know that the former provides service to a number of markets in Southern California and, I think, San Francisco... but I can't find that info. Sparkplug claims that they provide service in something like six states, but again, provides no specifics,.
One other kudo for Towerstream's web site which sets them apart from their competition - they provide RSS feeds of their press and other corporate information. I registered (Being "Press", I'm OK with that requirement, but shadow investors or others who don't wish to disclose their interest will probably just "Fred Flinstone" the registration) and there were six RSS feeds, all of which I added to my "BWIA" RSS feeds to monitor.
But just to demonstrate that Towerstream isn't omnipotent... they're clueful enough to give CEO Jeff Thompson his own blog page, but not so clueful that Jeff's blog has (it doesn't have) an RSS feed that I can also plug into my RSS reader. Oh well... Jeff doesn't seem to have much to say with only a single posting.
By Steve Stroh
This article is Copyright © 2008 by Steve Stroh except for specifically-marked excerpts. Excerpts and links are expressly permitted (and encouraged).
This article was written and posted via Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA); Clearwire service using a NextNet Wireless / Motorola Expedience Residential Service Unit (RSU).
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