visp.net offers ISPs access to over 50,000 dialup numbers nationwide, along with a complete ISP in a Box solution.

by Jeff Goldman [November 2, 2005]

visp.net was founded in 1989 as the bulletin board service Chatlink, which by 1993 had grown into the world's largest BBS chat network. In 1994, the company became an ISP. "Since Chatlink was sort of a wholesale product, it was a natural progression to evolve into wholesale services," says Todd Grannis, visp.net's President and CEO.

visp.net Voice: (541) 955-6900 sales@visp.net

When the company became a wholesaler in 1996, Grannis says, they were the first virtual ISP in the U.S. visp.net now offers access to more than 50,000 dialup numbers nationwide. "AOL, EarthLink and MSN each offer about 7,000 dialup access numbers on their networks, so visp.net's ISPs that we wholesale to are able to offer more dialup access numbers than AOL, EarthLink, and MSN combined," Grannis says.

Those 50,000 numbers are aggregated, Grannis says, from multiple redundant networks. "We were quick to get out of the POP business when we saw that, using outsourced networks with the aggregate volume that we had, using multiple ISPs and so on, we were able to get the costs down," he says.

ISP in a box
Aside from the depth of its coverage, Grannis says visp.net's strongest selling point is its ISP in a Box solution, which was recently upgraded to version 4.0. "It's one simple interface that ties together the entire management of an ISP," he says. "There's a portal page that an ISP provides to their subscribers, and from that portal page, the subscribers have access to sign up online for services."

From the portal, subscribers can also log in and manage the services they're receiving (such as e-mail, dialup, hosting, etc.), activate new services, and view and pay bills, all online. "It was designed to be as simple as possible, so pretty much any customer could figure out how to use it," says Nathan Miller, the company's CTO.

And as long as you have Java installed on your computer, Grannis says, the ISP in a Box management software is just a 2.7 MB download. "An ISP can partner with visp.net in about two minutes," he says. "The agreement is an electronic agreement, so by simply clicking 'I agree,' they have instant access to our network."

The solution, Grannis says, can be used in a wide variety of ways. "It can be a gateway for an ISP to build their own services," he says. "They can plug their own network into ISP in a Box—if they have their own DSL and dialup, they could very easily use our software for billing and for customer service, just to simplify the management of their services. They can partner with us on as much or as little as they want."

Additional services
Other available applications include webmail, which uses @Mail's Outlook Express-style webmail interface, and a proprietary spam filtering solution with Web-based management tools. "We've had some of Postini's customers come over here and say that this is much easier to use than their system—and better at filtering the spam," Miller says.

Online support is also available, with self-help walkthroughs as well as a contact button to initiate a callback from the call center. "It's all fully integrated with ISP in a Box, so when they call in to get support, if the customer just changed their e-mail setting, all of that information is instantly available to the call center," Grannis says. "It's a very fluid and seamless system."

The company's permissions technology ensures that an ISP's customers are kept on a specific network, if the ISP so chooses. "It allows the customer to access all the numbers within a particular network, and then it's up to the ISP—if the ISP chooses to switch them to another network, they're locked into that network," Grannis says. "It might seem kind of simple, but it protects the ISP from getting multiple network charges."

Pricing for visp.net's service, Grannis says, ranges from about $4.00 to $9.95 per subscriber per month, depending on how many services are selected. It's the simplicity of management, he says, that's the company's key selling point. "With ISP in a Box 4.0, the process of an ISP doing business with us is simply downloading the software, which takes just a few minutes, registering it—and that's it," he says.

A regional partner
Paul Westhelle is Associate Director of Oregon's Jefferson Public Radio, which runs an ISP called JeffNet. JeffNet used to run its own POPs, Westhelle says, but it eventually became clear that wasn't the best option. "We got to a point where the technology was changing so fast that it was very difficult to stay on top of it, so we started looking for an outsourcing partner," he says.

After checking out a number of options nationwide, Westhelle says, JeffNet ended up deciding to work with visp.net—which happened to be 45 minutes away. "We weren't looking for a local company at all," he says. "We were just looking for someone that had the capacity to allow us to have a dialup platform that was more regional for less cost, that was set up to provide tech support 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and to provide a full range of services."

And Westhelle says he's been happy with visp.net's service. "We get positive feedback now," he says. "In the old days, we used to get some negative feedback that we weren't as responsive as we should be, that the network didn't perform as well as best practices said it should. Now, we get none of those kinds of complaints, and we only get really positive feedback from our customers, which is great."

Switching to a wholesale dialup service, Westhelle says, also allowed JeffNet to reach a wider base than they were able to when they managed their own POPs. "Our public radio network serves 13 counties, so we had much more potential if we could make the service more regional—but going community by community and building POPs was not a good way for us to grow," he says. "So we were really looking for a partner that had a more regional platform—and visp.net turned out to be a very, very good partner in that respect."

— End

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Online resource:
	Wholesale Dialup Directory