-----Original Message----- From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On Behalf Of David E. Smith Sent: Tuesday, July 28, 2009 12:23 PM To: WISPA General List Subject: Re: [WISPA] just attended broadband stimulus seminar and WOW.....
Robert West wrote: > Why should [big companies] invest > their cash in building a market when we can do it for them and once it's > about ripe, they can just walk in and pick it? We need to do what we can to > protect our little piece of the pie somehow. A small entrepreneur sees an opportunity, builds something that lots of people want, makes some money from it, then a larger company buys it and makes said entrepreneur filthy rich (or at least better-off than he was). The customers win (they get the benefit of the new network regardless of who built it), the guy that just cashed out wins, the bigger company that buys the network wins (they presumably see profit potential or else they wouldn't buy). I thought this sort of sweat-equity-for-cash tradeoff was basically the American dream. I don't see this being a bad thing for anyone involved. David Smith MVN.net REPLY FOLLOWS: You're overlooking the fact that the larger company is unlikely to buy out the small entrepreneur. How many WISPs were bought out when AT&T and Verizon started really rolling out DSL? Not many/any? The fact is that the larger corporation will drive the entrepreneur out of business by offering loss-leader teaser rates on their broadband services until the existing entrepreneurs are squeezed out of the market. Why pay value for customers when you can steal them away through unfair competition? That unfortunately is the American reality. For the most part, I see this stimulus money as a subsidy which will enable big players to entrench themselves into new markets with no risk to the big player but a big cost to any existing/competing businesses. With that in mind, WISP need to think of ways that they can tap the government money without losing their local focus. WISPs might seriously want to consider forming cooperatives in which a group of WISPs within a geographic region enter into a joint venture to expand overall capacity. Then that joint venture can apply for stimulus money. - Larry Yunker -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wants You! Join today! http://signup.wispa.org/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WISPA Wireless List: wireless@wispa.org Subscribe/Unsubscribe: http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless Archives: http://lists.wispa.org/pipermail/wireless/
