Like I said 1 to 100 failures. Usually we drop them from a roof, or run
one over.. Often times they still work, but often they don't Its a piece
of plastic housing with a single board inside. You can get a replacement
case for $15 as I recall. Nice to have a few around for demo to
customers. They build them for $25 probably, open one up - there's
nothing in there. An Altera FPGA - well, other programmable gate array..
basically 'make your hardware' on a chip technology. Check out HDLs if
you are interested - its how I designed our first DSL modem. Moto isn't
stupid. Its a good design. The hardware just jumped up a bit in
complexity recently - but the price jump was nuts. Moto stays in this
business becasue they are making lots and lots of money. Its not a lost
leader.
As far as hacking them go.. well, Rich Comroe might tell us.. Hey Rich -
can we get an HDL for the Moto? :-) oh yea, I can see this list cracking
open the HDL.. :-) its such a paradigm change... it isn't really like
programming, well.. as much as programming is like jazz dancing, I suppose.
But crapola boys, we have on the smartest guys in the Motorola Land -
one of their top technology leaders as a member of list here. Ask him,
I'm not anywhere close to the design other than tearing the chips appart
out of curiousity. He's not sales man, Rich, didn't we first meet when
you were VP of Engineering @ Moto? I could be wrong it was yonks ago.
Brian Rohrbacher wrote:
Well, I'm not a Canopy user, but am close to making the leap. (would
have done it long time ago if gear was a reasonable price)
Whoever buys the gear. Group name or Joe Blow.
Attention Canopy users how are warranty issues handled? If I buy gear
on ebay can I send it into Moto for warranty? Or is it void because I
didn't buy from authorized reseller?
Brian
Travis Johnson wrote:
And, the other issue is the purchase will be made in the "group"
name, so how do you handle warranty issues?
Travis
Microserv
Charles Wu wrote:
<snip>
You would think it would work that way, but Volume Buying ends up
eating the organization and the organization becomes caught up in
being a volume club.
</snip>
We all know that there's more to a WISP than just putting up an AP and
getting a T1 line
Having run both a WISP and a distribution company, I can personally
attest
to the fact that there's more to distribution (which is what your
proposing)
than breaking up a 500 pack amongst WISP
Have you considered all the risks / implications that the buying group
faces? For starters, there's the question of payment -- given that the
buying group has no / limited credit, chances are that any vendor will
require cash up front for the purchase
So, for example, say Motorola Canopy is the product WISPA chooses
Then WISPA / Buying Group needs to come up w/ $100k to purchase that
500
pack (at say, $200 / unit for simplicity's sake)
Then, WISPA / Buying Group needs to come up w/ a warehouse to store
stuff
Then, WISPA / Buying Group needs to come up w/ a shipper/logistics
guy to
repackage / ship stuff
On top of that, chances are, 50% of the WISPs who committed to
purchasing
the packs will renege and/or delay their deliveries due to unforseen
things
that always happen in deployments (e.g., lightning, customers don't
sign
on, interference from competitor, DSL coming to town)
So now, WISPA / Buying Group needs to hire a sales guy to sell
excess units
Now, you've added overhead (and you need to add an administrative fee /
margin to compensate)
In the meantime, either
1. Motorola to announce a 50% price reduction in their Canopy line,
and all
WISPA members now wanting the new lower price (therefore causing a huge
loss)
2. Trango (or some other company) to come out w/ the new "flavor of the
month" and no one wanting the inventory anymore, sticking WISPA w/
$100k
worth of boat anchors
-Charles
-------------------------------------------
CWLab
Technology Architects
http://www.cwlab.com
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