Why would you give customers a public IP? That is nuts as far as I am
concerned. Private IPs are easier to manage across multiple towers,
you can setup routing properly so that subnets are completely separate
for each AP, you can pick and choose how and where to route edge traffic
to multiple backbone providers, you can move between backbone providers
without having to re-ip all customers, customers are not exposed to
external virus traffic...
I mean I could go on and on about why carrier-NAT is awesome. I see no
reason to mess with public IPs unless forced to.
Matt Larsen
vistabeam.com
On 12/31/2013 12:17 PM, Mike Hammett wrote:
Your customers don't get a public IP?
I'll never understand why people do this.
-----
Mike Hammett
Intelligent Computing Solutions
http://www.ics-il.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*From: *"Matt Larsen - Lists" <li...@manageisp.com>
*To: *"WISPA General List" <wireless@wispa.org>
*Sent: *Tuesday, December 31, 2013 1:09:48 PM
*Subject: *Re: [WISPA] Internet Packages regarding geography
This last year, we finished "unification" of all our rate plans so
that we would have consistency across our network. At this time last
year, we had several plans that had overlap and different sets of
services as part of the plans. For example, a 2meg plan for
$49.95/month that included dialup and a public IP address sold next to
a $49.95/month 4meg plan that did not have the dialup or public IP.
Most of the customers did not use public IP addresses or dialup, and
we were starting to get 2meg customers complaining about the 4meg plan
on our website that was 2x the speed for the same price. At the same
time, we still had a lot of 384k and 640k plans with people who were
complaining about YouTube not working, but they were reluctant to
upgrade to the next package because our prices were not as competitive
on the lower end with the 1.5meg dsl bundles.
What we ended up doing was this:
1) Replace the 384k and 640k plans with 1meg and 1.5meg speeds at
the same prices
2) Bump up all existing 1meg and 2meg customers to 2meg and 3meg
speeds for the same prices
3) Eliminate public IP addresses being included with plans, made
them a separate monthly charge and adjusted customers to have a new
speed package with the public IP added to it
4) Later in the year we established a maintenance fee package
that was automatically added to each customer account, but customers
were given the choice of opting out of the plan
After doing all of this, we ended up having a much more competitive
service on the low end, fewer customer complaints about YouTube and
other sites from low end customers, and our revenue went up - mostly
because of the addition of the maintenance package. Any plan
inconsistencies between customers and areas were also resolved.
The toughest part of this plan was the pre-planning that was involved
to make it happen. We did a ton of customer data cleanup and plan
adjustment over the summer, but that was work that needed to be done
anyway because of a lot of random, nonstandard plan changes that
employees had been doing as shortcuts. We also had to take a really
strong look at oversub ratios on our access points and what the
resulting oversub ratios would be with the plan changes, since the
ratios would generally double. In doing so, we identified a bunch of
places where we needed to add capacity or just needed to move higher
bandwidth customers to other access points. There were a lot of
radio swaps and service calls involved in that process, but the end
result was better network performance and higher customer satisfaction.
We set a 4:1 bandwidth ratio as our preferred point of upgrade on
access points - meaning we can sell 40meg of customers plans on an AP
that has approximately 10meg of capacity (such as a 2.4ghz 802.11g on
10mhz channel). When the process started, we had about 27 APs that
would have been overloaded with the new plans. As of today, we have
eight APs that are over 4:1, and six of those are just barely over.
When it comes to the speeds that we offer in any particular area, we
decided to make all speeds available, as long as the oversell ratio on
the access point was not exceeded.
Going into next year, my plan is to replace all of our remaining
StarOS access points with either Airmax or Mikrotik, swap out as many
old Tranzeo radios as possible and add sectors and microcells in
places where capacity starts to get overloaded. I am not looking
forward to the pricetag on this work, but it is the right thing to do
and it will keep us competitive for the next few years.
Happy New Year everyone, and have a great 2014!
Matt Larsen
Vistabeam.com
On 12/31/2013 8:19 AM, heith petersen wrote:
I assume the same would apply if you introduce new plans to
existing customers as well? I assume customers that cannot get
that service will beat on you to make some sort of change to get
it to them, like a closer site.
*From:* Matt Hoppes <mailto:mhop...@indigowireless.com>
*Sent:* Monday, December 30, 2013 8:34 PM
*To:* WISPA General List <mailto:wireless@wispa.org>
*Cc:* WISPA General List <mailto:wireless@wispa.org>
*Subject:* Re: [WISPA] Internet Packages regarding geography
What we have done is offer the same packages across the board. If
you can't get at least the package you want we don't install you.
On Dec 30, 2013, at 21:11, "heith petersen" <wi...@mncomm.com
<mailto:wi...@mncomm.com>> wrote:
We are getting to the point in a lot of our markets that we
need to offer different speed packages. Issue being some
markets, being 900 or slightly sub-par infrastructure, we
wouldn't be able to promote these packages across the board.
Was curious if others are offering packages to different areas
that would not be possible in some? And if so, do you get any
backlash from those who cannot get those packages? Is it
appropriate to offer extended packages to users on one tower
when another tower down the road wouldn't be capable of these
packages? Its bad but we just offer a residential rate, no
matter if that customer can get 1 meg down via Canopy 900 or
close to 10 meg on a UBNT SM. I have caught a little heat in
an area where we fired up 900 about 4 years ago to a market
that had only satellite. Then we hooked up a tower in a small
town 4 miles away with UBNT M2 and news spread like wild fire.
We went from 40 900 subs to about a dozen, and a pile of
radios I don't want to deploy again. Shame on me for not
offering the extended packages at that time for those wanting
more bandwidth.
I also have the area outside my home town that Century Link
offers what they claim is 12 meg service, but it never gets
close. I am constantly adding more sectors in these areas, Im
getting to the point where I am adding UBNT to offload Canopy,
then adding more UBNT to offload the UBNT that was offloading
the Canopy, it gets to be a vicious circle. I am already $20
per month more than CL, not sure if a lot of customers would
stay if I were to charge them more for what they are getting
now. Once again shame on me. The bosses think the prices
should be the same across the board, but technically
performances cannot be matched across the board, plus Im
running ragged satisfying existing customers when I should be
looking at new areas, and start the vicious circle all over
again LOL.
thanks
heith
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