Of the webinars and talks I have given, How to Compete is the most popular.

After several emails this year about competing against AT&T and Spectrum, I thought I would do this webinar again.

This will be a 2-part seminar – 45 minutes each. (Hard stop provided by Uberconference at 45 minutes).

So I will be going over some tactics and exercises and you will have the chance to come back for an interactive session.

The first part is on April 19th at Noon Eastern. Part 2 is April 26th at Noon Eastern time. Both sessions are one low price $29.95!

If your team needs some tips on how to beat the big boys, this is the call to be on! REGISTER NOW!

FISPA has gotten out of the business of group buying. When I was interim director, it was a mess. Here’s the messy parts:

1) Some members do not pay bills on time. This results in disconnect notices that AT&T and FISPA have to chase down.

2) Some members were just plain rude. Swearing at me on the phone.

3) Billing disputes – yes AT&T sucks at billing (it is said that it is designed as a profit center) – but YOU KNOW THAT and have to accept that if you are going to buy from them. PERIOD. End of story. But members don’t want to accept that – nor do they want to take responsibility for their bills and billing disputes. Two members have over $150K in billing disputes. One member has excessive billing disputes with every carrier!

4) The board is volunteer and not very responsive.

I didn’t think that FISPA should be spending money and resources on billing disputes. In fact, on the bigger messes, I wanted to shut the member off – and invoke the contract that they had with FISPA. I was overruled.

The former ExDir had started billing end users for the ISP and then cutting a check to the ISP. So FISPA became the ISP and did billing and collections.

All of this burns up time and real money as the 1099 workers bill by the hour. So if a TEM specialist comes in to clean up a mess, FISPA pays for it in real dollars. If someone has to spend time fixing these disputes, they have to get paid by FISPA.

Why should FISPA members pay to clean up the mess for bad actor members?

Bottom line: the way the programs are run are just plain unprofitable.

Just to bill the DSL surcharge takes 8-10 hours of work.

The AT&T program alone is a collection of legacy products: BellSouth DSL, T1, Metro Ethernet – on top of the APEX program items like MIS/ADI, ASE, Broadband. It is a big hair ball.

The cable programs are labor intensive. For Spectrum, FISPA has to beg for an electronic copy of the bill from Spectrum each month, manually enter it in QB, email the bills, then chase collection. Meanwhile, FISPA floats the bill they paid to Spectrum.

I get that FISPA stopped taking credit cards, but even that was a mess as the credit card info changed often for members. And auto-pay by ACH was not cheap with BoA!

On to the ISP Business Model:

For years I have said either go Layer 1 to own the network or go to Layer 7 to own the customer like a any SaaS or MSP player would.

A good number of members have built out some network – wireless, fiber or both. That’s the way to have better control.

Not everyone wants to become a network operator. I understand that. But understand that your vendor is your competitor and they suck at being your vendor – and just deal with that fact. [That is where most of the headache comes from: not accepting that the ILEC doesn’t want to be your supplier.]

Now FISPA’s President has made some crazy statements. He recently stated that the most successful members have built their own network. Um, some of them have. Note that most members don’t even own 50% of their network. Every member still do a large percentage of relying on the ILEC — even one FISPA’s largest members. It is disingenuous to say otherwise. HIS business model is different; doesn’t mean he has the only right business model though.

I know it looks like FISPA kicked the little guy in the balls. (I know you cuz many of you told me in colorful terms.) And many of you skipped the meeting in Feb.

Well there are board seats available. And you could run for the board and change things. You could but you won’t. You will take your ball and go home and hate on FISPA. It is a member owned and run organization by volunteers. If you want it to be better, you have to lend a hand and put in the effort.

Are you a wireless ISP with a new tower opening soon?

Are you an AT&T Partner Exchange member sitting on marketing funds and a lit building list?

If you don’t want to buy the book and read it, I will be presenting a webinar that will provide you with a marketing plan for your new tower or lit building.

WED., MARCH 6 @ NOON EASTERN TIME

REGISTER NOW!

OPTIONS

webinar only $15.00 USD webinar & ebook $20.00 USD webinar & review $199.00 USD

There are 3 options: just the webinar for $15; the webinar and the ebook for $20; and the webinar and a review of your plan for $199. On this I will work with you so that you are ready to put your marketing to work.

From Mary Meeker in 2018:

“Internet user growth was 7% in 2017. With more than half the world online, there are fewer people left to connect. The amount of time they spent online is still increasing. U.S. adults spent 5.9 hours per day on digital media in 2017, up from 5.6 hours the year before. Some 3.3 of those hours were spent on mobile, which is responsible for overall growth in digital media consumption.”

What does this mean? Growth in Internet users will be slow – UNLESS you are hitting green fields.

What else? It is a game of take-away. If you want an Internet user, you have to take them away from the Duopoly.

Have you considered mobile payments?

Is your website mobile enabled? Is your website current?

Can you leverage Privacy?

Can you leverage Security?

Are you leveraging AI or chatbots?

Freelancers predicted to become the U.S. workforce majority within a decade, with nearly 50% of millennial workers already freelancing. How does that affect your own work force? Or your community?

Technology is democratizing the work force. But not everyone is tech savvy, so MSPs will have a lot of work to do. Not everyone knows how to run a business – and when you freelance you are running a business in wich the product is YOU! That will create more problems than it will solve. We will race to zero on pay for 1099s, who will be working harder for less money and no benefits.

1) Towns And Cities Keep Ditching Comcast To Build Their Own Broadband Networks via TechDirt. There is opportunity for public/private. BTW, Charter and New York State are in a lawsuit since NYS is throwing Charter out! The New York State Public Service Commission (PSC) voted to revoke its approval for Charter’s merger with TWC.

2) Doug Dawson writes about Dumb Pipes and the ISP business.

3) Five Signs That the US Cable Industry Is Fracturing

PRODUCT NEWS

4) D-Link announces a 5G router that’s “40 times faster than average broadband”

5) SimpliSafe partnered with an ILEC on Security and Monitoring