The valuation of WISP user vs Cell user are a little funky. These
numbers came off the top of my head and may not be anywhere near
resembling reality. I am basing them on what I have made/lost in the
WISP business in the past 5 years, and what I have spent/seen others
spend on cell phone service for the past 10 years. Some of these numbers
are purely speculative. .
Typical wisp user revenue: $40/mo - $100/mo
Typical wireless phone user revenue: $79/mo - $199/mo
Typical install/CPE: take a $150-$200 loss on truck roll, CPE costs,
labor, etc
Typical cell phone sale/contract: make $100-$200 and give customer a
"free" car charger than costs you $0.99 in bulk. NO TRUCK ROLLS
Typical WISP customer problem: $50 truck roll + CPE replacement, cable
re-run, POE replacement, 2 hr troubleshooting, etc
Typical cell cust prob: sell them a new phone. Make $100, and make them
come in to buy it.
Typical WISP user cancellation: Pay a tech $50 to go by and uninstall
the CPE
Typical cell cancellation: CHARGE THEM $200/line to CANCEL
Typical WISP customer install with bad credit: Be a nice guy, let them
pay out the $200 install over 4 months, never collect anything but the
first $50 and get screwed on the rest
Typical cell with bad credt: Make them put down a $500 deposit, or get
on a pay-as-you-go plan where they pay $0.20/min vs $0.05/min x 2000 min/mo.
Typical WISP customer: unlimited email, unlimited downloads, unlimited
uploads, unlimited P2P, unlimited complaining if a speed test ever shows
1/bit/sec slower than advertised speed.
Typical cell user: $0.05/sms text message, $0.10/bit for downloading
crap, $0.99/ea to download ringers. Drop the call/lose the ringer, etc.
"too bad.. try it again"
Typical WISP AP: rent the tower for $0-$500/mo and put up a $1000 AP for
40 to 100 subs Tower costs of $5/mo/sub roughly.
Typical Cell tower: rent the land for $500/mo, build the tower/equipment
for $90k, support 1000+ subs Amortize $90k for 10 years at $750/mo +
interest, so the tower costs $12/mo/sub roughly.
Now, with that said, do you want to buy a WISP, or do you want to buy a
cell phone company?
pd
Blake Bowers wrote:
Kind of rough to figure out what exactly they are paying
per subscriber, the system may have a lot of
revenue from other sources, such as co-locating.
Put another cell carrier on the tower and you can add
another 200K or more to the value of the tower.
IE, if you have a cellular carrier on your tower, and
want to sell, you can expect 8 -9 -10 times yearly
revenue, or in some cases even more if you want to
sell that tower. (Yep, I'm buying!)
Even at the low end of valuation, with just 100 of
their towers having a co-locator (And that is a low
number for them) thats another 14.5 million
dollars of value to Verizon.
15 to 25 percent of the total value of the deal may be
coming from other income sources.
----- Original Message ----- From: "John Scrivner" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "WISPA General List" <wireless@wispa.org>
Sent: Monday, July 30, 2007 4:10 PM
Subject: [WISPA] What are your customers worth?
This astounds me. Read the dollar amounts and customer counts below:
Verizon agrees to buy Rural Cellular
<http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/hCfcixdgyzwWwZCibGluwtpU?format=standard>
Verizon Wireless is snapping up Rural Cellular in a deal valued at $2.67
billion. The deal will boost Verizon's subscriber numbers by more than
700,000. The Washington Post/Reuters
A bit of quick math says that they are paying over $3,000.00 per
customer for this company. Obviously WISPs are not able to command such
valuations but it is interesting to see what the bigger guys will value
top end wireless companies
Scriv
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