Flush from its recent EarthLink customer win, Propel announces that it has modified its ASP-style dialup acceleration service so that large ISPs can host their own instead of using Propel's infrastructure.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Associate Editor [April 4, 2003]

San Jose, Calif.-based Propel, which produces a dialup accelerator of the same name, got a big boost recently when it landed EarthLink as a customer.

Dialup accelerators were common during the boom, but the market was tarnished by operators who gave away free software (or sometimes even sold software) that served ads, installed spyware, or simply did not work.

Even today, Propel sees a clear need to say, on its website, "Propel is not spyware."

But the endorsement of EarthLink will give Propel's product—and the dialup accelerator industry—a significant boost, in much the way that EarthLink's adoption of popup blocking as a service has increased demand for popup blocking services across the nation and around the world.

Said Paul Tocatlian, Propel director of sales, "we've signed more than fifty partners, and, if you include major affiliates, we have relationships with over 1,000 ISPs." For an ISP channel program that began in October 2002, that's quite a success.

However, the company found that when negotiating with large ISPs (such as EarthLink), the fact that the Propel service is delivered as a hosted product, on the application service provider (ASP) model, was an obstacle. Large ISPs wanted to host and run the product themselves.

The company is now offering software that can be installed on basic Intel hardware (with Linux, RedHat 7.3). "The idea is that the product is rack and forget," said Adriaan Theron, Propel vice president of sales and marketing worldwide. "You mount as many servers as you need and can use load balancing or round robin DNS, as appropriate."

The hardware that Propel requires, which it estimates will retail for $2000, is:

• a dual CPU Intel Xeon 2.0 GHz server
• 2 IDE disks of 36GB capacity running at 7,200 RPM
• 2GB of RAM
• dual 10/100 Ethernet NICs
• RedHat Linux, Personal Edition 7.3

Pricing and availability
The product is available now. Pricing depends on how many customers the ISP will provide Propel to. Although pricing starts at $2 per user per month, volume discounts are available.

"We want to be sensitive to how ISPs price their service," explained Tocatlian. "Some ISPs are priced as premium services, with features bundled in, while others are priced at the low end." Tocatlian said that those priced at the low end can set up a separate, premium service, with Propel allowing ISPs to charge more. On the other hand, ISPs that are already priced at the high end will probably bundle Propel for all their customers.

The ISP Mercury.Net, of Midland, Mich., recommends Propel to all residential subscribers using the Microsoft Windows operating system. The company charges $17.95 for flat rate dialup service.

Access Montana, of Ronan, Mont., is a subsidiary of Ronan Telephone Company (RTC), a family owned, community based ILEC serving two small communities on the Flathead Indian Reservation in Western Montana. The company employs several value-added services. It uses Postini for anti-spam and anti-virus services and iPass for roaming services. The company's regular unlimited dialup plan costs $17.95 per month; it charges $24.95 per month for dialup with Propel acceleration.

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