i.Core Technologies, Inc. offers wholesale dialup and prepaid services without demanding setup fees or long term contracts.

by Jeff Goldman [November 27, 2002]

A couple of years ago, Amrit Dhillon was in the process of putting together a content management service for corporate customers—but his timing was unfortunate. "The dot-com bust was in full swing, and companies were falling left and right," he said. "Our funding was withdrawn at the last minute, when we were just about a week away from launch."

Forced to regroup, Dhillon met with a number of friends in the industry to look for a concept that would work in the new climate. "I had to think about what kind of business model would suit the market, because that was a very bad time to start any kind of Internet business," he said. "It was a challenge to come up with a business model that would prosper in those market conditions."

ISPpath No. 101 - 1001 West Broadway, Unit 315 Vancouver, BC, Canada V6H 4E4 Voice: (604) 777-1347 E-Mail: infocenter@isppath.com

The answer he came up with was the Vancouver-based i.Core Technologies, Inc., currently offering wholesale dialup, as well as PIN generation for prepaid Internet access. Dhillon founded the company early in 2001, and is now its CTO: he says his aim, from the beginning, was to follow some core principles in each of the company's ventures.

The first was to outsource as much as possible. "There are vendors out there who have excellent networks," Dhillon said. "We thought, why reinvent the wheel? I've been in the computer business since 1980, and I believe one of the reasons why lots of companies failed was because they wanted to own the infrastructure: that just doesn't make good business sense."

The second core strategy was to minimize up-front pricing. "We wanted to go with a more long term model," Dhillon said. "My personal belief is, if somebody charges me $1,000 just to set up a service, two things are possible. Either they don't have enough capital, or they have short-term goals: they're not planning five or ten years ahead. We wanted to get away from that."

Similarly, the company doesn't require long-term contracts. "You can come in any time you want, and go any time you want," Dhillon said. "We're now servicing over 160 resellers, and we've had just three or four cases where the business didn't do well and they were ready to leave-so we said, fine: just give us a one-month notice. It's worked out in their favor, and in ours."

Building blocks of services
i.Core's main service is the wholesale dialup offering, ISPpath. Working through U.S.-based partners, the company accesses UUNET's, Qwest's, StarNet's, and Aleron's networks. "It adds up to approximately 7,000 POPs in the U.S. and Canada," Dhillon said.

Customers can use ISPpath's Web-based reseller interface to create accounts on individual networks. "We're billed separately for Qwest and for UUNET," Dhillon said. 'If you're on the Qwest network, you can roam anywhere on that network without any extra charge-but you can't cross over into the UUNET network, because that's when we get billed twice, so we will obviously have to bill you twice."

Through an additional partnership, ISPpath customers can also access prepaid international service at 1,000 POPs in 65 countries. "The customers use a proprietary dialer, which contains all of the international dialup locations," Dhillon said. "That's going very well: I think the market is now realizing the benefits of prepaid."

Key to the service is its building blocks approach. "We give the customer the option of starting at a very basic level, then building it up from there," Dhillon said. "We start with a monthly charge, but when the reseller has signed up 150 accounts, then they can upgrade to tiered pricing. Then the price comes down by a dollar per account, and the monthly network usage fee is waived."

Pricing starts with a setup fee of $39.95, plus a monthly network usage fee of $29.95, and $8.95 per account. Once an ISP has reached 150 customers, they can switch to volume pricing for a $195 one-time fee, which eliminates the network usage fee and lowers the price per account to $7.95. "The whole idea is to shift our resellers into higher volume, because that's where our discounts come in," Dhillon said.

Alternatively, ISPs can purchase a SmartPack for a setup fee of $69.95, plus a monthly fee of $69.95 and $8.95 per account. The SmartPack include email and hosting in addition to dialup, and can also be upgraded to volume pricing once the ISP has acquired 150 customers. "It's a very easy way to get into the business: we bundle everything for you in one package," Dhillon said.

Build-your-own-access
i.Core's newest service is NetPins, an online PIN generation service for prepaid access. "It allows anybody to create customized PINs," Dhillon said. "You tell the system how much time you need—hundred-minute PINs or thousand-minute PINs: it doesn't matter. Then you enter the expiry: you could have a 24-hour expiry for a hotel chain to give to their guests, or a 48-hour expiry for a convention."

As with ISPpath, NetPins' accounts are created to access specific networks. "You pick the network, and you pick the realms," Dhillon said. "It's a 100 percent branded solution for anybody who wants to get into the prepaid Internet industry. And there's no front load: we don't ask for any money until a customer uses the PIN. It's a very cash flow friendly system."

The idea is to create an "Internet card" that works like a phone card—one that can be targeted at hotels, gas stations, and all franchises that currently sell phone cards. "The phone card industry is kind of waning now," Dhillon said. "They have the marketing infrastructure, they have the card manufacturing infrastructure: everything is there. All they need is a new product, some new item they can sell."

The company's third offering is VISPCenter, a proxy RADIUS service. The solution is not yet in operation, but will eventually provide outsourced RADIUS services for VISPs. In the meantime, Dhillon says, he's proud of the progress that i.Core has made in just over a year. "We've gone from zero to over 160 resellers in all the services we offer," he said. "It's a good feeling."

One of ISPpath's resellers is ICONNECT, Inc., a small Indianapolis-based VISP that services customers nationwide, but focuses on Indiana, Georgia, Oklahoma, and Ohio. According to Michael Theis, the company's CEO, ICONNECT was using a different dialup provider three years ago—with unfortunate results. "One Friday afternoon, they just disappeared off the face of the earth," he said.

After extensive research, Theis says, he chose ISPpath specifically because it promised far greater reliability. "We were actively seeking another partner that had redundant backbones," he said. "Because they have four different backbones that they use, ISPpath seemed to be a good choice."

Another selling point was ISPpath's lack of setup fees. "Some of the companies we talked to said, we'll do business with you, but you've got to give us $5,000 first," Theis said. "Well, okay, but for what? There was one company we were in negotiations with for quite a long time, but they just wouldn't back off that."

Theis says he also considered working directly with Telia or with Qwest, but it seemed to make more sense to go with a provider that gave him greater redundancy. "The bottom line is, ISPpath had both of those for backbones, plus UUNET and StarNet," Theis said. "The redundancy really attracted me."

He acknowledges there's no guarantee that ISPpath won't shut down just as his last provider did, but he says their track record has been promising. "I've been dealing with them for two years, and I haven't seen any hint of instability," Theis said. "Their system works really smoothly, and it works all the time."

— End

Online resources:
	Wholesale Dialup Directory
	Wholesale Dialup Quick Reference Chart

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