It often happens that incumbents focus their activities on large urban markets. Smaller markets like suburbs and rural areas get less attention and investments. Maintenance of the network is prioritized in their bigger markets while in their smaller markets it is not necessarily up to date and maintained well. Usually the customers in areas outside urban centres simply have no other choice then to stick with the incumbent. Especially in rural but more than often also in suburban areas.

Many smaller ISPs in such areas are recognizing this problem and the opportunity that it provides. Not just opportunity to expand their business, increase number of customers and the value of the company. But also, the opportunity to help these communities get the type of connection that everyone should have in the year 2018.

Yet what can they do to really be competitive without financially shooting themselves in the knee? The answer is at hand, start working on their own infrastructure.

A pure fiber provider saw this problem and saw the opportunity as well. After deliberating on expanding their fiber network or investing into some other wireline technology, it turned out that the best solution was fixed wireless. There are several reasons for it but the main two would be time and cost. It takes very long to build a wireline network and the cost gets very intense very fast. If they started expanding their fiber network, the incumbent would notice and upgrade their network as well. Especially if they went live segment by segment of the specific area. If it took them too long, the incumbent might still invest into the area even without noticing the competition coming. The risk was too big because the opportunity was too good. So, they needed something that could be deployed fast and without much noise. Only one thing checked all the boxes – fixed wireless.

Yet then, they saw a problem. The incumbents network was not the best, not even close. Clients were not happy. But, the incumbent was the only provider with high speed package deals. Offered triple play. That is something a standard fixed wireless system cannot compete against. At first, they could not find a solution, that could compete with the incumbent’s offer. They had three choices. Either deploy one of the standard fixed wireless solutions and do what the incumbent did – promise something they cannot deliver and hope for the best. Or, go with lower speeds and no triple play offer and hope for the best. Or, dig deep into the wireless market until they find a solution that could actually deliver triple play services along with high speed internet.

They opted for the third option and found the AIR System.

Because of the capacities the AIR System can support (10Gbit+ per sector antenna) it can easy compete with the incumbent’s package deals with TV service included. They even went for double capacity and point two sector antennas into the same direction with the massive combined capacity of 20Gbit throughput. At first, there were two base stations on the eastern side of the city, but they added a third one in the west side to meet the demand. They are covering an area of approximately 85.000 potential customers. And they are growing fast.

Because of their relative inexperience with wireless technologies, they needed not only a vendor but also a partner. A partner to be with them through the initial processes, someone like Globtel Holding who values its clients and does not pass them down the support chain after the deployment.

Right now, the management and the shareholders of the ISP are more than happy with their choice. We are happy with their choice because we won a great partner and have the privilege to work with some great people. But maybe what matters most is that people in those communities are happy.

As they can finally get 100 Mbps triple play service as everyone should be able to in the year 2018.