here’s really nothing like facilities-based ISP owns its
being in control - mail, DNS, and authentication
especially when you’re in servers, switches, circuits, and
business for yourself. But for other infrastructure. As demand
facilities-based ISP owners that grew, the ISP owner had to
dream can slip away as the daily purchase new circuits to keep up.
grind of technical challenges, This was a double-edged sword
rising operating costs, contract because as demand for dial-up
minimums, and customer support declined, many ISPs have been
woes takes its toll. stuck with termination
We hear about this pain daily liabilities on circuits they were
from prospective ISPs that have no longer using.
not yet leveraged a partnership
A wholesale ISP or virtual ISP
with a quality Wholesale ISP. provider aggregates the volume of
However, after a well-executed hundreds ISPs. Each ISP offers
import of subscriber data, ISPs Internet Services under their own
make more money while working company name and sets their own
fewer hours. Fixed costs are prices, support policies, and
eliminated. Lost sleep and manages their own branding. It
demanding technical challenges makes sense to partner with a
become a thing of the past.
company, such as visp.net
The Difference Between (http://www.visp.net), that is
Do-It-Yourself and a Wholesale highly specialized in providing
ISP Partnership
back-office software and services
Many ISP owners got into the for ISPs.
facilities-based ISP business
For the facilities-based ISP
model during the mid-1990s before owner, moving their back-office
virtual ISP technology and services to a wholesale ISP means
server-based ISP software became that they can now pay for
a reliable solution. A services on a per-subscriber
basis with margin on each ISP world. You’ve got just the
account. They’ve effectively right amount of subscribers and
eliminated fixed costs and circuits. You’re finally in the
replaced them with variable costs black and begin to show a profit.
that provide a more sustainable Life is good. But just when you
business model in the highly start making money, along comes
dynamic Internet access that one additional subscriber
market. and you either send the
The shift to a wholesale ISP subscriber to the competition or
can be a significant upgrade of sign a contract for yet another
services because you are expensive circuit. On the other
leveraging the hand, you might have latent
multimillion-dollar R & D capacity on existing dialup or
investment of your ISP DSL circuits. Either way, profit
wholesaler. The result: greater goes out the window. By
subscriber retention, and a partnering with a wholesale ISP,
service that’s more attractive to owners pay only for services that
prospective customers.
they need and use. Nothing
Knowing When It’s Time to more.
Change
2. If you only have one
While working with hundreds of qualified system administrator
ISPs over the past decade who your head is in the sand. The
have reached this crossroad, I’ve disastrous possibilities are
identified a few “Red Flags” that real. We’ve worked with ISPs
signal it’s time to partner with who’ve lost their administrators
an ISP wholesaler.
to death, accidents and…even
Here Are My Top 5 Signs:
Microsoft. You might not want to
1. Unused circuits are sucking think about it, but it’s a cold,
your profit margin dry. It’s the hard reality. A qualified ISP
Catch-22 of the facilities-based wholesaler has the resources to
maintain redundant stories of ISPs who’ve had a
administration. Unexpected server go down, and lost droves
catastrophes are met with a team of customers. Often, these ISPs
of professionals while you enjoy never recover. In this business,
your vacation or rest peacefully an ounce of prevention is worth a
in your bed. pound of cure. However, designing
3. Billing and administrative and maintaining your own highly
stresses make you want to pull reliable systems is very
your hair out. New ISP services expensive and requires
require new management significant administrative skill.
interfaces. Just when you get By moving to a wholesale ISP,
adjusted to one, subscribers such as visp.net, ISPs leverage
start hammering on you about some existing engineering expertise
new service. It can become and layers of redundant
overwhelming. A good wholesale architecture. Every
ISP vendor offers a highly mission-critical server is RAIDed
integrated solution that reduces and mirrored to an identical RAID
stress. ISP in-a-box ® management backup system. Typical uptime
software from visp.net, for exceeds the carrier-class gold
example, provides ISPs and their standard of five nines or
staff with a consistent interface 99.999%. That’s one less thing to
for administration, billing, and keep you up at night.
management of all common ISP
5. There’s no future in simply
services, plus an interface that maintaining or even losing
allows subscribers to easily subscribers. Growing your ISP
manage their own services without isn’t as easy as it used to be.
bothering you.
Competition is everywhere. You’ve
4. If a mission-critical got to be better, and potential
server blew up today you’d be in customers need to know about you.
a world of hurt. You’ve heard As a local ISP you have
significant advantage over border-color: #FFFFFF;
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else, when do you have time to border-right: #BAC9FF 1px solid;
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with the quality of service
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About the Author:
Founder of http://VISP.Net, Todd Grannis has helped hundreds of ISPs reach more subscribers, improve their services and significantly reduce management and support overhead. To discover how to put ISP in-a-box ® wholesale ISP technology to work for you with easy-to-use billing software, extensive account management tools, powerful subscriber web portals, and robust spam and virus filtering go to: http://www.visp.net
Article Tags: isp, isps, services
