Fixed Wireless Business

Mobilepro's Many Businesses

Long a low key company with a wide variety of businesses, Mobilepro is steadily morphing into a major broadband wireless player with several strong business lines.

by Tim Sanders President of The Final Mile [December 28, 2005]

Tim Sanders owns shares of Mobilepro stock.

A Bit of History
Bethesda, Md.-based Mobilepro is not a new company. It has been a public company (OTCBB: MOBL) for several years and grew steadily, especially on the voice and Internet dial side, early on. It has not been so visible to the broadband fixed wireless community.

However, Mobilepro's acquisition approach seems to have changed a bit over the years, a change that started with a merger with the entity that is now Mobilepro's Neoreach division.

In fact, depending upon how you count its customers, it is either in the top ten in broadband fixed wireless customers in the US or as high as number one—but more on that later.

Mobilepro is a complex, wildly diversified business, as broadband wireless firms go. In fact, broadband wireless is not its largest business segment—yet. It is in so many different telecommunications businesses that it is difficult to list them all or parse the various roles of the companies it has acquired. But we intend to try to illuminate the various segments this fascinating company is involved with.

Diversification, and growth, through acquisition
Mobilepro has grown largely through acquisition. In March 21, 2002, Neoreach went public through a "reverse merger" with then publicly traded Mobilepro Corporation. Neoreach was reincorporated in 2005 as Neoreach wireless, the technology arm of Mobilepro.

In the intervening years, it made a variety of acquisitions ranging from voice and long distance firms to CLEC and DSL operators to a major payphone operator. And now Mobilepro has significant broadband fixed wireless assets. The company is moving strongly into Metropolitan citywide networks. As we will see a bit later, the company feels its metro model is unique.

A tale of three companies
Mobilepro consists of three divisions, each anchored by a lead firm that exemplifies the values of its division. These firms (acquired since 2002) form the core of the technology division (Neoreach Wireless), the internet division (Nationwide Internet), and the voice division (CloseCall America).

The voice division consists generally of local phone and long distance companies using switched and voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) technology:

• CloseCall America provides local phone service.
• Davel Communications operates around 42,000 payphones in 45 states.
• US1 Telecommunications provides long distance service in about 40 states.
• Affinity Telecom has about 8,000 subscribers to ISP, webhosting, local and long distance, and data services.

The Internet Services division carries the brand of its flagship company, Nationwide Internet. This segment of Mobilepro focuses on acquiring ISPs, particularly dialup ISPs and multi-telecom product ISPs.

• Nationwide Internet serves customers in thirty states with dial, T-1, T-3, DSL, webhosting and, interestingly, collections services.
• The River Internet Access Company fields dialup access, broadband, and satellite products along with hosting and colocation.
• WT.net, based in Houston, provides national dialup access and ISP products.
• ShreveNet provides Texas and Louisiana customers with dial-ISP, broadband and additionally, fixed broadband wireless services.
• EXP Internet Services is based in southeast Texas. It offers dial, broadband, and VoIP products.
• August.net provides comprehensive ISP, DSL, hosting, and co-location in Texas.
• Crescent Communications Inc. is a value added network provider marketing to a medical niche.
• Clover Computer Corporation offers fixed wireless, dialup, satellite, and wireline broadband in Ohio.
• Ticon.net is a Janesville, Wisc.-based ISP.
• WebOne, Inc. sells the gamut of DSL, T-1, dialup, and hosting and web development products in Kansas City, Mo.

Possibly the highest profile segment at the moment is the technology division which consists primarily of: Neoreach Wireless, which is focused strongly on Municipal Wireless with a number of announced network deployments in progress, and focuses on ZigBee technologies.

There is a fourth division that is very important too.

Go to page two: The fourth leg of the triangle