by Russ W. Intravartolo
CEO and Founder StarNet, Inc. and MegaPOP

MegaPOP is the brainchild of former Motorola executive and engineer Russ Intravartolo, now the CEO of StarNet, Inc. Intravartolo founded StarNet in early 1995 as a local retail ISP focused on delivering quality dial-up and e-mail services in Chicago. Today, StarNet has built a substantial network providing access aggregation services to ISPs throughout the U.S. and Canada from more than 1,200 PoPs.

[November 27, 2000] While 56K dial-up connectivity could be considered a commodity, there remain differentiating factors among wholesalers beyond the price tag for the access.

Sure, price is important, but how much connectivity costs is not the only factor to consider when determining which company is going to be the access provider for your Internet service. Many factors should be considered while deciding on an access solution. But it's difficult to determine which single factor is the most significant — because what may be important to you, might not be important to your wholesaler.

The fifth element
Your ISP's access needs should be defined in your business plan, from there, your ISP's marketing requirements will help identify which selection criteria is essential to your Internet service operation.

Assuming all wholesalers are equal in their ability to provide your ISP with 56K, V.90 compatible services, your decision-making criteria should include five different elements.

First, reach your demographic
To properly identify whether the geographic reach and population potential of a wholesale network is important to your ISP, you must understand your business needs first. If your service or product's demographic need is your primary objective, then understanding your supplier's capabilities to reach certain markets is important. Wholesale providers deploy different strategies when building local points-of-presence, or PoPs. Some wholesalers believe multiple PoPs or different access numbers are important during their network buildout, while other suppliers may prioritize population reach as a key deployment plan.

When a wholesaler states their network covers "92 percent of the U.S.," you need to understand what that means. Does it mean 92 percent of the land mass, or 92 percent of the population? Perhaps it's 92 percent of the states, or even 92 percent of the available area codes in the nation?

Remember, just because a wholesaler told you they covered a specific city with an access number doesn't necessarily mean that all the residents in the area will have local call access to that number. Incumbent telephone companies and competitive local exchange carriers both have different ideas of what a "local call" means — make sure you're on the same page.

Before you make a decision about a wholesale provider that claims to reach "92 percent of the U.S.," take the time to find out what that really means and if it matches your ISP's needs.

Second look at redundancy and reliability
As wholesale networks and their offerings become more and more alike, the service becomes what's known as a commodity. Since 56K dial-up access is nearly commoditized, the only differentiating factors between wholesale providers are quality and price.

Determining a wholesaler's quality of service may not be easy to do, as I'm sure none of your candidates will show you anything but their best network statistics. What matters the most is whether the network will satisfy your ISP's customers.

Wholesalers may boast about their network redundancy and WAN capabilities, but if their downtime in a PoP is unacceptable to you, then their redundant network is irrelevant. Network quality, as defined by your customers is simple — can they dial-up a local number, get authenticated, and surf the Internet?

Take the time to translate quality of service guarantees that your wholesaling candidates provide into specific questions for the wholesaler trying to pitch your ISP a national access plan.

First, find out what volume and percentage of calls come in to the PoPs and get to an available modem call report. CLECs and ILECs offer wholesalers call reports that show this exact data, so you're not asking for too much.

Go to page 2: Third, how much will this cost you?

—End