GetOnTheAir Gets Around

Way back at the dawn of the wireless era here at ISP Planet—about 16 months ago—we profiled a guy named John Savage who was just starting a wireless-only ISP business in Asheboro NC. Today we revisit GOTAir.

by Gerry Blackwell [June 14, 2001]

GetOnTheAir Inc., aka GOTAir, was one of the first pure-play WISPs we'd run across.

Savage's story drew a lot of interest. GOTAir was a grassroots kind of thing and it looked like it might be a good model for other small-town/rural WISPs. We had enquiries about it from as far away as Africa.

Well, GOTAir is still going strong, but what's interesting about its development since we last spoke to Savage is that the company is no longer purely a WISP.

In fact, the lion's share of its business now—$900,000 of $1.2 million last year—is Wi-Fi systems integration work for a variety of business clients, including other ISPs.

Parallel minds
As we suggested in the inaugural part of this new series on the W-LAN opportunity for ISPs, the skills WISPs develop launching access networks are definitely transferable to W-LAN systems integration work. GOTAir is a perfect case in point.

Its original ISP operation remains important to the company. It now includes five POPs strung out from the original base in Asheboro, covering five small communities and serving 230 to 240 mainly business customers.

For access services, Savage uses 2.4 GHz ORiNOCO spread spectrum gear from Agere Systems, a Lucent subsidiary, and antenna arrays GOTAir designed and builds.

He'll soon be deploying 5.8 GHz (U-NII) band equipment as well for backhaul applications. In fact, Savage's company is working closely with Agere on design and eventually testing of a dual-mode pole-mounted 2.4-5.8 GHz radio that will do 2.4 GHz for access and 5.8 GHz for backhaul from the same location. GOTAir will also sell the product.

The GOTAir ISP operation is still growing too. Savage hopes to move into two slightly more urban markets, Greensboro and Highnote, later this summer. And Raleigh, the big city, is on the horizon.

But what really has him buzzed these days is the systems integration work. Customers typically find him.

"People contact us and ask, 'How do you do this, how do you make this happen?' They've been sold equipment by vendors and they've tried to make it work, but couldn't. The vendors don't want to take it back. And I feel compelled to go out and help them because their aspirations are the same as mine were."

Through the roof?
GOTAir can come in and take an ISP from zero to on the air—from doing an assessment of the RF environment and the company to actually building the network. Savage is proud of the fact that he can get a small city ISP up and running in three weeks flat.

"We give them the means, whatever it takes," he says. "We train staff on how to do tower operations and installs, how to set up and maintain the backbone. We even certify them. And we can do complete turnkey operations. If they don't have equipment, we are resellers for Agere."

Savage recently performed one of his whirlwind implementations for Prairie Fire Internet Technologies a WISP spin-off from Sioux Falls SD-based Web developer Prairie Fire Web Design, setting up a 40 mile by 40 mile network in three weeks. An earlier project involved putting the whole city of Las Vegas NV on the air.

The amount of systems integration work from ISPs will likely plateau, as the technology and related skills become more readily available, Savage believes. But there is another part of the systems integration business he expects will continue to grow.

GOTAir also does point-to-point links for businesses and what Savage calls "specialty applications."

The point-to-point work is mainly for companies that want to provide high-speed links between LANs in buildings a short distance apart. Either they can't get ILEC services or the services are prohibitively expensive. GOTAir will build and maintain the link.

Savage uses the same 2.4 (and now 5.8) GHz equipment for the point-to-point work. "We just bring it to an extreme from the normal, off-the-shelf mentality," he says. "We do some unusual things with the equipment. If you bought it off the shelf and tried to make it go the distances we're going, it's probably not going to happen."

GOTAir can run links of 30 miles, he says, rivaling the performance of LMDS and other higher-frequency spectrum.

Special kind of app
The specialty applications are W-LAN applications like the one for doctors at Randolph Hospital in Asheboro. The docs can take their laptops from office to hospital and back and maintain a high-speed wireless link. GOTAir is now looking at providing a similar campus-style network for a local community college to give students high-speed Internet access.

Hotels and country clubs have also approached him about providing roaming Internet access on their properties.

While the synergy between the original WISP business and the systems integration work is strong—same equipment, same basic skills—the specialty applications do require a little extra.

"You have to have a certain amount of creativity," Savage says. "You have to be able to engineer for this particular building site. The excitement comes from the fact that nothing is ever quite the same on any of these jobs."

One of his favorite tricks is shooting through walls. As Savage points out, the real enemy of line of sight at 2.4 GHz is moisture. Going through a forest of deciduous trees in spring is a challenge. Going through walls is relatively easy.

One customer, a local United Way, has an office in a bank building where GOTAir could not get roof rights. So it placed an antenna and radio in a utility closet in the UW offices. The radio shoots to a tower site two miles down the road. Works like a charm.

GOTAir is not a big company, and we're guessing it never will be—though you never know. Certainly Savage isn't getting rich quick helping other people do what he did—that is, set up and run a fixed wireless. But he does prove an important point.

It's perfectly feasible for an experienced WISP to leverage its wireless knowledge and skills to launch a whole new business providing systems integration services.

—End