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The Ultimate Power of Deregulation

As the regulation of the phone company is eliminated in the U.S., a glimpse of what it's like to run an ISP in Central America could be a taste of the future.

[March 27, 2006]

During a discussion on the ISP-Wireless list of Verizon's latest crimes, Viva Libre (live free) warned list members that conditions are even worse for competition in places like Central America where the phone company is not regulated.

Hi listeroos,

While I am not a USA WISP like the rest of you, I will chime in on behalf of Central American WISPs :)

If you think Verizon etc. is bad, don't come here! I worked with Verizonfor years running a regional ISP on the East Coast—back to when they were Bell of Pennsylvania, then Bell Atlantic, and finally Verizon. Wehad the usual problems that most ISPs have when dealing with the ILEC—poor customer service, a huge sticky morass of tariffs and rules, and longdelays between orders and installs on high-speed circuits.

In the third world, it's even worse. In countries like Honduras where there is a government-authorized monopoly (which thankfully is changing here), you often can't even get high-speed circuits! You get excuses—our network is full, so-and-so is on vacation, we're not accepting ordersright now, etc. And the circuits you do manage to get installed fail frequently, and with no recourse. And support? Good luck—they are only open until 3:30 pm, and on weekdays only. Forget about night and weekend support! And the cost of a single E1 (2.0 Mbps) is extreme by USA standards—a 100 km E1 will cost you about $2,000 a month, and YOU have to supply the ILEC with the termination equipment for their CO!

This topic is timely for us because we today switched our network to be completely independent of the ILEC. We built an 80 Mbps wireless network stretching over 100 miles from our network to the landing point for the undersea fiber to the USA (ARCOS-1). Our wireless network now handles all our data traffic. Our only dependence on the ILEC is for our SS7 traffic (we're also a competitive telephone company), and even there we run our own fiber to carry that traffic to the ILEC's CO.

In the general sense, it is the advantage of ISPs—not just WISPs—to control all infrastructure. If you depend on a competitor for a critical part of your own network, you are just asking for problems IMHO.

[KC agreed that you have to own your own network] "That is why we went through the cost, time, and effort required to build our own towers."

[WM asked] "I am assuming you ran licensed RF from the landing station to tour POP. That would be best given the environment. Nice to hear from someone in this business, that is south of the border. I am heading that direction myself."

[Viva Libre responded] "Our original plan was to use licensed RF, but the process to get licensed RF here is lengthy (read: it takes years). We are still in the process of applying for licensed spectrum. We used unlicensed 5.8 GHz gear for our link, although here you still need a 'Data Transmission License' even for 5.8 GHz—but that we already have. Our longest single link is 111 km, and it runs five nines at much greater than DS3 bandwidth. Granted, we used big antennas :)"

[BB asked] "What gear are you using for this hop?"

[Viva Libre replied] "Orthogon Spectra radios, RadioWaves parabolic antennas in a spatial diversity setup."

—End