Focused on helping the smaller guys grow and gain independence, InstantISP offers nationwide access and other essential services to ISPs with as few as ten customers.

by Jeff Goldman [March 5, 2003]

Texas American Communications Network, or TACNI, was founded in 1995 as a retail ISP. Tom O'Neil, the company's CEO, says his frustrations in trying to fulfill his own dialup needs led to the creation of the TACNI subsidiary, InstantISP. "It was so difficult to get reasonably priced wholesale POPs that we eventually got into that business ourselves," he said.

O'Neil says the company stopped marketing its retail business last year in order to ensure that it wouldn't compete with its ISP customers. Instead, Texas American Communications now focuses on its two key subsidiaries-InstantISP, which offers wholesale dialup, and ColocateUSA, which provides colocation services.

InstantISP Voice: (888) 249-4081 sales@instantisp.net

InstantISP offers smaller ISPs access to the GlobalPOPs network. Because GlobalPOPs is only offered through distributors, smaller ISPs need to work with a provider like InstantISP in order to gain access to the network. "Basically, what we do is we bring their footprint to the guys that aren't ready for GlobalPOPs," O'Neil said.

O'Neil suggests that InstantISP's focus on the smaller ISP is what makes it stand out. "What we bring to the table is unique because we're geared to take someone from no users and very little infrastructure all the way to independence—and we encourage that," he said. "We don't do the billing or the tech support. We provide the things that aren't easily available: RADIUS servers, round robin DNS, those types of things."

Working towards independence
Many customers, O'Neil adds, have grown significantly in the time they've been with InstantISP. "They've worked their way to the point where they've got their own RADIUS and their own mail, but they still don't have an in-house tech staff," O'Neil said. "At that point, they essentially become a wholesale customer with managed services: We run the RADIUS and mail for them, but they are truly standalone."

InstantISP offers a number of other services in addition to wholesale dialup. "We have configurable spam filters, virus filtering, and various web mail packages," O'Neil said. "We provide web site space for their own web site if they want it, as well as end user web site space. We've often found ourselves picking up just the end user web sites for people in other ISP programs, because they can't get that anywhere else."

In most cases, O'Neil says, it's easy for potential customers to understand the value proposition of his offering. "It's an educational sell," he said. "I just talk to them about their choices, their direction, and where they want to be. Then it's just a question of whether they fit our profile—whether they want to actually run their own ISP, and not just be a reseller for somebody else."

Pricing for full-service wholesale dialup starts at $8.00 per user for up to 100 users. For 101–500 users, it's $7.50, and for 501–1,000 users, it's $7.00 per user. For ISPs with more than 1,000 users, pricing is negotiated on an individual basis. For just pass-through RADIUS, it's $6.00 per user for 1–500 or $5.50 per user for 501–1000.

Owning your customers
One ISP customer that left another provider to switch to InstantISP is Treasure Lake Internet Services, a Pennsylvania-based ISP with just under 1,000 customers. Richard Province, who runs the ISP, says it's focused on offering dialup access. "We provide dialup in an area that doesn't have a broadband solution at this time, so we have a very active user base," he said.

Province switched to InstantISP because it encouraged its customers' independence. "We wanted to have control over the customer base," he said. "With Tom, we were able to set up our own servers, do pass-through RADIUS on the dialup—he gave us the ability to do the things we wanted to do in-house, and outsource the things that we wanted to outsource."

With his previous provider, Province says, he found himself in a reseller arrangement before he realized it was happening. "At the end of the day, they weren't really our customers," he said. "As much as we spent to acquire them, I just wasn't interested in handing them over to someone else. This way, we're protecting them."

InstantISP's fully branded solution was a key selling point. "A lot of the VISP programs out there will give you our own name servers and your own mail servers, but when it actually comes down to the realm that the customer's using, it's usually a generic one," Province said. "With this network, they install your own realm—which just makes it a more private branded product."

Ultimately, though, Province says O'Neil has proved to be InstantISP's best asset. "He was just informative and straightforward," he said. "Some of these guys, when you call for prices, it's like pulling teeth: They just want you to sign the contract and talk about it later. Tom's a very straightforward guy: He's easy to deal with, and he's very knowledgeable. I feel comfortable having him running the back end."

— End

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	[July 11, 2001]	ISP-Planet Survey: MSSPs

Online resource:
	Wholesale Dialup Directory