Dial Assurance runs its own network in 25 states, and offers nationwide coverage as well.

by Jeff Goldman [April 28, 2004]

Evan Katz founded Dial Assurance in May of 2002 in order to solve what he saw as a key problem faced by most ISPs. "There's not a lot of good wholesalers out there," he says. "One of the reasons for that is everybody's selling everybody else's stuff, and the stuff they're selling is not that good in the first place."

As a result, Katz was determined to be facilities-based from the start. "We're not reselling Level 3, or ICG, or whoever the flavor of the day is," he says. "All the stuff that we sell on-network is our own. We can also sell someone Level 3, but we tell most of our customers, 'You don't need to come to us for Level 3. Save your time, save your money, and go directly there.'"

Dial Assurance (888) 524-2551

The company's strength, Katz says, lies in the pricing and quality of its network. "If you want stuff in our area, then nobody can beat our pricing and our network architecture," he says. "For many of the legacy networks out there, their expenses to maintain those networks are much higher than ours. Our pricing is extremely aggressive."

Dial Assurance is targeted specifically at small to medium-size ISPs, not at larger providers. "The real businesses that have maintained themselves over the years were the small to medium-size ISPs," Katz says. "They stood the test of time and downturn of the economy. So these are the ISPs that I want to service, and that's who we're built for."

A growing network
The company's own network currently covers 25 states. "We get PRIs from the various CLECs around the areas that we're built to, and we bring them into our own modems," Katz says. "So we're very unusual, compared to the typical wholesaler out there who just buys, aggregates, and resells."

The Dial Assurance network was started two years ago in 12 northeastern states, and has since more than doubled in size. Katz says his eventual aim is to offer nationwide on-network coverage, as long as the interest is there. "We only build where we're asked to go with a justifiable amount of traffic," he says. "If the equation is right, with economies of scale taking place for us, we'll build there."

The company is available to help with all aspects of the service, though just about anything can be done remotely. "Once you sign up, you can do everything yourself, or we can assist you," Katz says. "If you need to change your RADIUS servers, you can do that online; you don't need to talk to us. If you want to add realms, it's automatic. And you have real time user management; you can knock users offline."

Because Dial Assurance is a smaller company, Katz says he's able to pay attention to each customer's needs. "We're almost a 'boutique' facilities-based wholesaler," he says. "We can do custom applications for people. We can do Layer 2 stuff, we can sandbox people, we can push down a dialer to them—we can do all kinds of stuff."

Pricing for the service is extremely flexible. "We have per-user pricing, we have port pricing, and we have hourly," Katz says. "We'll sell it any way you want it—everything is negotiable. "

The benefits of outsourcing
Keith Schmidt is the General Manager of In4Web, an ISP based in Monticello, New York. In4Web had been handling their own access for years, but decided about a year and half ago to look into outsourcing. "It got to be a real headache over the years," Schmidt says. "I just knew there had to be something better out there."

The fact that Dial Assurance runs its own network was a key selling point for Schmidt. "I wanted someone who had local presence," he says. "I wasn't looking for someone who was just reselling a service. This way, they have more control over their network."

Outsourcing has helped In4Web to grow its customer base, and to increase customer loyalty. "We have a lot of snowbirds that go down for Florida for the season, and we were able to gain more customers because of it, having phone numbers in Florida, and also to keep customers," he says. "They were only paying for four or five months a year, and now they're paying for twelve months a year."

On top of that, switching to Dial Assurance allowed In4Web to save money. "It was costing us a lot more to do the modems ourselves," Schmidt says. "We saved about 40 percent—we're about 40 percent more profitable now. It's given us time to focus on other things, and saved us a bunch of money as well. Going with Dial Assurance was one of the best business decisions we've ever made."

— End

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