Headquartered in Florida, Atlantic.Net offers wholesale access nationwide, with a particular focus on the smallest markets of the southeastern United States.

by Jeff Goldman [January 7, 2004]

Atlantic.Net was founded in 1994 by Manoj Puranik and Jose Sanchez, both of whom were students at the University of Florida at the time. "They were fascinated by the Internet," says Teresa Beard, the company's Communications Director. "They began by building computers to raise money for the company, but the goal was always to launch an Internet service provider—which is what they did."

The company's greatest strength is the depth of its market penetration in the southeast. "We provide dialup as well as high-speed data services in markets that no one is touching but us," says Neal Hiscock, Atlantic.Net's Director of Operations. "Some of the larger Tier 1 dialup providers have moved into those markets and then pulled out because they couldn't penetrate the market base that we had."

Atlantic.Net Voice: (800) 422-2936 wholesale@atlantic.net

In untapped markets, Atlantic.Net will even build out COs if a client needs them. "We built six COs out specifically for a wholesaler who needed access in some very specific, very under-represented markets," Hiscock says. "They already had some interest in those markets, and as soon as we brought them online they were using the entire amount of infrastructure we deployed."

That kind of market penetration is concentrated in the southeast with a particular focus on Florida, where Atlantic.Net provides access to a number of other wholesale providers in addition to ISPs. The company also targets affinity providers, including cities and municipalities. "We have electric companies that are ISPs using Atlantic.Net's network," says Adnan Raja, the company's Business Development Manager.

Turnkey solutions
Raja says Atlantic.Net hasn't found that potential clients express concern about competition with the company's own retail ISP. "It actually works out very well," he says. "We have never competed with each other, and the thing is, everything we've learned from our retail, we've tried to use that same information for the wholesale."

With a broad range of services that includes marketing advice, Raja says Atlantic.Net's wholesale offering works well for its ISP customers. "Our churn is very, very low," he says. "The wholesale partners that we had eight years ago are still our wholesale partners, because we try to help them in every aspect of business, not just in terms of providing them with access."

Along with dialup access, Altantic.Net provides its ISP clients with a number of value added services to offer to their customers, including the company's proprietary SpamScope offering. "We developed it in-house for many years," Raja says. "We created the product, tested it on our retail customers, and now it's available for our Atlantic.Net wholesale partners."

To help its ISP clients offer value added services to their customers, Atlantic.Net provides them with a proprietary web-based control panel that includes webmail, SpamScope, a private-label POP number search engine, and a private-label signup page. The system also allows customers to change passwords and to check how many hours have been used in a given month.

A full and flexible offering
The company's $15 million data center offers colocation and hosting for ISPs, along with wholesale dialup. "We provide them with dedicated servers," Raja says. "That's another revenue stream for them. We work with our wholesale partners to figure out a way to provide them with a product for their customers—if our wholesale partners want it and we can provide it, we will provide it to them."

It's that kind of flexibility in response to client requests, Hiscock says, that led to the addition of colocation and hosting to the company's wholesale offerings. "No one was really focusing on hosting and colocation four years ago, but we had customers who said, 'You guys have got all this data, why don't you just let us put our stuff in,'" he says.

Pricing for the company's nationwide wholesale offering does not require any setup fees, and includes uniform access across the entire network. "A lot of providers offer 500 hours on this network and 50 hours on that one," Raja says. "We just stick with the network that we have, with the partners that we have chosen. That's the network that we make available to our wholesale partners, with no added fees."

Atlantic.Net works with a wide range of clients, from local ISPs to nationwide providers. "We're flexible; we will accommodate everybody," Raja says. "But we do ask for at least a 200-hour minimum commitment."

Service and support
Rick Marler is the President of the Florida-based ISP Lightning Access. He founded the company seven and a half years ago, working as a virtual ISP through Atlantic.Net. After the first few years, Marler's customer base grew to the point where he was able to buy his own equipment, but he still colocates his servers with Atlantic.Net, in addition to using them for nationwide dialup access.

In the beginning, Marler says, he chose Atlantic.Net simply because they were willing to deal with an ISP of his size. "Really, they were the only ISP in the state of Florida that I could find that would even talk to us," he says. "The others all had a 'big and bad' act that they put on. Atlantic.Net were the easiest ones to get along with."

Because he started with a completely virtual offering, Marler says he was able to focus heavily on advertising in the beginning. "Most virtual ISPs make the mistake of starting off small," he says. "You can't do that. You have to pour your heart into it and dump huge amounts of money into advertising, or you won't ever make it."

Now that he's colocating servers in Atlantic.Net's data center, Marler says he particularly appreciates the level of service the company provides. "I can call up any time of the night or day and get a hold of somebody," he says. "And they're never really that busy, because they hardly have down-time. Their service is really good."

— End

Related articles:
	[Nov. 3, 2003]	Accurate Billing is a Value-Added Service
	[Sept. 25, 2002]	Doing Business with Atlantic.Net
	[Nov. 27, 2000]	How to Pick A Wholesale Access Provider

Online resource:
	Wholesale Dialup Directory