isp What makes a good ISP

[Airmack]

Working on a project & I already have some ideas, but would be helpful with more input. The subject: You are a small family ran ISP in the States. You run a hybrid plant that has traditional coax cable modems (FTTN) as well as FTTH. You also offer TV but like the rest of the industry, not many people have broadcast TV. As well as land line but same issue, who has a land line but grandma. You do not outsource calls. It is all  local to the area you operate in. You have around 60,000 subs. How do you compete with the likes of ATT, Charter/Spectrum, Starlink, Fixed wireless ( T-Mobile, VZW ) What makes a customer willing to stay local vs a conglomerate ?

 

Thank you for any input.

[Donut417]

13 minutes ago, Airmack said:

What makes a customer willing to stay local vs a conglomerate ?

Price. Customer service. Speed. 

 

Also a lot of the smaller cable providers have given up on TV service from what I have read. WOW has partnered up with Youtube TV for example. Many providers have become MVNO's, the big cable providers like Charter and Comcast use Verizon's network. Id say focus on the services people are actually likely to buy. TV is not one of those services. But Internet and Cellular are. 

 

Speed wise this provider likely will need a lot of money. Because either they are going to upgrade the rest of their network to Fiber. OR they are going to look in to deploying Docsis 4 if they want to stay relevant, or at least deploy Mid-High split to boost upload speeds. 

[Airmack]

16 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Price. Customer service. Speed. 

 

Also a lot of the smaller cable providers have given up on TV service from what I have read. WOW has partnered up with Youtube TV for example. Many providers have become MVNO's, the big cable providers like Charter and Comcast use Verizon's network. Id say focus on the services people are actually likely to buy. TV is not one of those services. But Internet and Cellular are. 

 

Speed wise this provider likely will need a lot of money. Because either they are going to upgrade the rest of their network to Fiber. OR they are going to look in to deploying Docsis 4 if they want to stay relevant, or at least deploy Mid-High split to boost upload speeds. 

Talking about high splits like you are part of the industry. WOW is bigger then this company I am talking about & I do not think WOW is doing a MVNO. This company IS streaming with its own app but they still handle the receiving, head end etc. Pushing it to a third party that manages the app and relationship with Roku, Amazon, Google for app compatibility. Lets talk about speed. FTTH is GPON & they at max offer 1gig. TBH, not many people need 1gig. I think its offered because others offer it. I know a lot of people who thing they need 1gig to play xbox but then have it connected over wifi. So what is the point to offer more then 1 gig.

[Donut417]

39 minutes ago, Airmack said:

not many people need 1gig.

Comcast is pushing 2 Gig in some areas. While people dont need the speed, many gravitate to the faster speeds. Not to mention Comcast is able to do up to 300 Mbps I think in Mid Split areas and I think Symmetrical in Docsis 4 areas (I think its up to 2 Gbps). Comcast has FTTH in select areas (XPON), but they also offer Metro Ethernet to the home in very select areas, I think thats up to 10 Gbps. 

 

AT&T can do up to 8 Gbps on its Fiber network I believe. 

 

40 minutes ago, Airmack said:

Talking about high splits like you are part of the industry.

No, just spend too much time online. Used to be DSLreports (RIP) now im over at Broadband Bulletin. Great resource on whats going on in the industry. 

43 minutes ago, Airmack said:

So what is the point to offer more then 1 gig.

Money, pools of money. This is a business, its sole purpose in life is to make shareholders filthy rich. Nothing more. Your job is to sell services that your customers want at a price they are willing to pay. Also newer WiFi generations can get close to Gig speed and maybe some times over in the right circumstances. 

 

You also have to consider business and enterprise customers. Thats where you can make bank. Those cusotmers some times do need faster than Gig speed. 

 

44 minutes ago, Airmack said:

his company IS streaming with its own app but they still handle the receiving, head end etc.

So its doing IPTV? That would make sense if they wanted to use more of the spectrum on the Coax in places it has Docsis deployed. But at the end of the day 60K customers might not give them an edge when negotiating with the local broadcasters, which is why many smaller cable operators have killed TV service, WOW, like you said is much bigger than this company, they got rid of cable TV. 

 

In my opinion if I was a smaller cable operator that did both Docsis and XPON. Id drop TV, as it likely costs a provider size too much anyway. Just focus on offering good internet and good customer service, thats how you set yourself apart from the larger boys. Possibly look in to offering cellular under an MVNO agreement. To me Internet and Cellular are probably the two biggest services a provider can do currently. I know Comcast offers home security services, but I dont know too many who use it. 

 

 

[Poinkachu]

for me whats important about ISP is :

1. Price

2. Reliability

3. Speed

4. Customer Service

 

Useless to have huge speed if the connection is flaky. I'm more to "it needs to be available when I want to use it"

Customer Service basically not needed if the connection is good. But this is a viewpoint from someone who is savvy enough about tech & networks. So it might not be the same for non-tech/network savvy peoples.

 

But of course it has to be affordable.

But yea, I'm the type that is willing to pay a lil bit more for reliability.

 

And yeah, insert also a minimum standard of speed. For me, I'd say at least enough to watch YT at 1080p or play online game without lagging out.

[Airmack]

13 minutes ago, Poinkachu said:

for me whats important about ISP is :

1. Price

2. Reliability

3. Speed

4. Customer Service

 

Useless to have huge speed if the connection is flaky. I'm more to "it needs to be available when I want to use it"

Customer Service basically not needed if the connection is good. But this is a viewpoint from someone who is savvy enough about tech & networks. So it might not be the same for non-tech/network savvy peoples.

 

But of course it has to be affordable.

But yea, I'm the type that is willing to pay a lil bit more for reliability.

 

And yeah, insert also a minimum standard of speed. For me, I'd say at least enough to watch YT at 1080p or play online game without lagging out.

Reliability. Stuff breaks even when its Carrier Grade. How as a consumer would you want to be told there is an outage in your area. How does the isp communicate that to you that makes you happy to know its being worked on?

 

56 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Comcast is pushing 2 Gig in some areas. While people dont need the speed, many gravitate to the faster speeds. Not to mention Comcast is able to do up to 300 Mbps I think in Mid Split areas and I think Symmetrical in Docsis 4 areas (I think its up to 2 Gbps). Comcast has FTTH in select areas (XPON), but they also offer Metro Ethernet to the home in very select areas, I think thats up to 10 Gbps. 

 

AT&T can do up to 8 Gbps on its Fiber network I believe. 

 

No, just spend too much time online. Used to be DSLreports (RIP) now im over at Broadband Bulletin. Great resource on whats going on in the industry. 

Money, pools of money. This is a business, its sole purpose in life is to make shareholders filthy rich. Nothing more. Your job is to sell services that your customers want at a price they are willing to pay. Also newer WiFi generations can get close to Gig speed and maybe some times over in the right circumstances. 

 

You also have to consider business and enterprise customers. Thats where you can make bank. Those cusotmers some times do need faster than Gig speed. 

 

So its doing IPTV? That would make sense if they wanted to use more of the spectrum on the Coax in places it has Docsis deployed. But at the end of the day 60K customers might not give them an edge when negotiating with the local broadcasters, which is why many smaller cable operators have killed TV service, WOW, like you said is much bigger than this company, they got rid of cable TV. 

 

In my opinion if I was a smaller cable operator that did both Docsis and XPON. Id drop TV, as it likely costs a provider size too much anyway. Just focus on offering good internet and good customer service, thats how you set yourself apart from the larger boys. Possibly look in to offering cellular under an MVNO agreement. To me Internet and Cellular are probably the two biggest services a provider can do currently. I know Comcast offers home security services, but I dont know too many who use it. 

 

 

Thanks for the tip about Broadband Bulletin. You mention wifi that can get gig speeds. This provider does offer its own mesh but its wifi 5, 6, & 6e. You know as well as most on this forum that wifi 7 gear is not cheap & supply issues. As far as negotiating. There is a thing called American Cable Association. It is made up of some 700 smaller providers in the US. They negotiate as one for its members.

[Poinkachu]

7 minutes ago, Airmack said:

Reliability. Stuff breaks even when its Carrier Grade. How as a consumer would you want to be told there is an outage in your area. How does the isp communicate that to you that makes you happy to know its being worked on?

I'm not saying it has to be 100%

I've had a DSL where the connection unusable up to 20 days a month, every month.

It wasn't even because of maintenance.

For me, no amount of discounted monthly fee can mitigate the annoyance & grief. And my work didnt even need internet that much.

 

If its about maintenance, well

If its a planned maintenance, a sort of message through email / phone message way ahead would be nice, that way I can plan how to deal with it.

 

If its an emergency maintenance, a message / email when it's being worked on will be nice, so I don't end up trying by restarting router etc, or call CS and possily deal with call waiting. At least if the emergency maintenance seems like it's gonna take a while to do.

 

Though I generally don't mind no message about it until the 4th hour of not having connection.

[Donut417]

6 hours ago, Airmack said:

As far as negotiating. There is a thing called American Cable Association. It is made up of some 700 smaller providers in the US. They negotiate as one for its members.

Again when a provider the size of WOW says fuck it and gives up, I highly doubt a provider the size you’re talking will get a good enough deal. Not to mention there could be significant cost in the future if this provider is forced in to ATSC 3.0 upgrades. The issue is currently in the hands of the FCC, who surprisingly is taking this matter very seriously. In fact the NCTA is against the transition due to potential costs. Another consideration is demographics, young people don’t care as much for linear TV. So as older people die off, the less of a customer base they will have. Plus consider the biggest competitor they have which is streaming.