I cured myself - sort of. :^)
I stopped building out new tower sites in June 2006, other than a few
little repeaters that were pretty basic network extensions with no tower
work involved. A couple of months before that, I also stopped doing new
leases for CPE equipment. In August, I had one employee leave and we
decided not to replace him. Oh yeah, also bumped up my installation
charges from $150 to $250 for new installs.
End result - all new equipment is now bought out of cash flow. Number
of customer installs went down, but net customers continues to increase
each month. Cash flow position has never been better, and gets better
every month. My original debt and lease payments start to come off the
books in March of next year. At this point, I can drive for two hours
in every direction from my house before I get to the ends of my network,
and I'm tired of driving so I'm done expanding geographically. I will
continue to deploy picocells and fill in areas within the footprint
where we don't have capacity. I'm also planning to put in more 5ghz
equipment and continue moving higher consumption customers over to that
system. There is some work there, but it is a far cry from the long
hours and crazy buildouts of the last three years for me.
Unfortunately, instead of taking time off to savor things, I have a
consulting client with 400 towers in rural areas around the US that they
want to light up with wireless Internet. So I will be spending the next
year putting my "freed up" time into that project. That should cure my
desire to keep building out on my own system.
Kevin Suitor told me something at WISPCON III that I will never forget.
He said that this (meaning wireless broadband) was about a seven to ten
year industry. By the tenth year, it will all be commoditized and all
of the original innovators will have sold out or moved into the
corporate world. In the meantime, it will be a really fun ride and lots
of people will have amazing opportunities to make money and do neat
things.
My late father had a saying (common in these rural areas) "Make hay
while the sun is shining." The sun is shining on this industry right
now, and I'm going to do everything I can to make the most of the
opportunity. I feel that if I can play my cards right, I'll be retired
by the time I'm 40. I'll probably be ready to start on something else
by the time I'm 41, but my goal is that work will be a choice and not a
necessity by then and I can spend a lot of quality time with Monique and
Diego. Oh yeah, I'd also like to get together with Mac and Scriv and a
bunch of my wireless buddies for beers and talking about the old days a
couple times a year. Hopefully on a beach somewhere.
A person can dream, right?
Matt Larsen
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Mac Dearman wrote:
Gino,
That's a question that Larsen and I have been hunting an answer to for a
couple years. We both said we were going to sit back and collect some of our
initial investments back over a year ago. I know Larsen is still hanging
gear in every town along the 3 States he borders (get 'em son) and also
created one of the longest "production" wireless backhaul links (60+ miles)
of anybody anywhere that I am aware of. I too have built 7 new towers in the
last few months and built out about a dozen new towns and gone to all fiber.
My point is this - - - it's a vicious circle! When is enough - enough? We
get a new tower up and swear "this is the last", but from that tower there
is another community that is yet without internet connectivity and just one
more little hop will get them caught! It's a never ending story - - - looks
like we need a "wireless anonymous" group to help us break the cycle!!
If you find the cure - - send Larsen and myself a double dose.
Mac
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Gino A. Villarini
Sent: Monday, December 18, 2006 12:51 PM
To: 'WISPA General List'
Subject: RE: [WISPA] salary
The question I always ask myself is when to stop upgrading and expanding..
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