In a few hours, I depart for WISPCON II, to be held October 7th-9th at the Oak Brook Hills Resort in the Chicago area. WISPCON is Wireless Internet Service Provider Conference, and WISPCON II is being held only about six months after the inaugural WISPCON. From everything I'm observing in the industry, WISPCON is doing it the right way and biasing the event very strongly in favor of the attendess. By that I mean that WISPCON's organizer - Michale Anderson of PART-15.ORG polled the attendees of WISPCON and potential attendees of WISPCON II about what they felt could be improved, and what they wanted to see, and only then solicited speakers to specifically address those topics. The far-more-usual approach at a conference, biased towards the exhibitors and sponsors, is for topics to be self-selected by the speakers. Obviously that approach tends to be biased, resulting in sessions like "XYZ Modulation - the Optimum Technology for Cost-effective Broadband Wireless Deployment". As I said... that approach is all-too-common.
Anderson had the luxury of knowing his attendees very, very well - he's had a pipleline to them for years in the isp-wireless mailing list, of which he is an active participant and a keen observer. By the time he decided to hold WISPCON, he knew very well what kind of sessions were needed and would be well-received. One of the most successful speakers at WISPCON was a representative from the FCC's Chicago Field Enforcement Bureau who explained the basics of the FCC's Part 15 Rules to an audience that largely couldn't quite believe what they were hearing. The FCC representative told the crowd that "mixing and matching" of antennas and radios that had not been specifically certified together in specific combination was illegal under the current Part 15 rules; that there was no "professional installer" clause in the Part 15 rules (howls of protest and sputtering), and "harmful interference" had a very specific meaning within the FCC - interference to licensed systems (interference between systems operating under Part 15 rules was of no concern to the FCC.)
This, and much, much more was the kind of information that was simply invaluable to the WISPS and potential WISPs that attended WISPCON. Many WISPs returned home and nervously began calling their preferred vendors asking hard questions about certification issues for the very first time. WISPs learned about the specifics of having wireless systems installed on grain silos in the Midwest (helpful hint - grain dust is highly explosive - don't cause sparks; it's better to mount your antenna systems down a bit from the peak of the silo rather than being the highest point on the tallest objects for miles when lightning storms come rolling through.
WISPCON attendees got to rub elbows with each other, and in the spirit of a young, growing industry, as long as they weren't in direct competition with each other, they were happy to share information about what they had found that really works (you really ought to just dump those Cisco routers and get cheap 1U rack servers running MikroTik router software). Not to mention trading tips about what resellers had the best pricing and support. More than a few marginal resellers lost some major accounts during WISPCON and many good resellers returned to their office the following week to voice mail boxes overflowing with queries from potential customers.
Of course, there were the vendors. Wireless Communications Industry giant Motorola (from just down the street in Schaumburg) was squeezed into the vendor area at the last minute with a "booth" little more than a table and a banner.That humble presence mattered not in the least to this crowd (some, so focused on the WISP business, where Motorola had previously been a no-show, that they were heard to ask "So... what does Motorola do?" All they wanted to see was Motorola's new Canopy Broadband Wireless Internet Access product and the nitty gritty details - how fast (10 Mbps downstream), how far (about two miles with the integral antennas), and how much (about $600 list price, quantity one)... and modulation technique (basically, FM), business model (distributors... but we're pretty liberal with distributorships), how many can they build per quarter (umm... how many would you need?).
I "seriously joked" with WISPCON organizer Michael Anderson that within five years, WISPCON would be held in a major convention facility like the Sands Convention Center in Las Vegas or Orlando Convention Center... and filling it. I observe the same energy from this event that characterized early ISPCON conferences, which grew to be huge and easily fill such venues; lucrative enough for Hummers and Corvettes to be given away to a randomly chosen attendee. WISPCON II has more than twice the vendor space as did WISPCON, and more than double the attendance of WISPCON is expected. Despite this increase, a break area had to be sacrificed to make room for even more vendors that wanted to exhibit. Recently Anderson announced on the isp-wireless mailing list that "WISPCON-Euro" was tentatively scheduled for January or February 2003 in Paris. I'll stand my prediction, though the likeliest scenario is that it may well turn out to be too conservative.
The secret to WISPCON's current and likely future success is that, in marked contrast to the ISP industry, a WISP business is largely sustainable and can be reasonably profitable. Broadband Wireless Internet Access systems can be used to provide Broadband Internet Access in areas where it is not cost-effective to do so with wireline systems such as cable modems or Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) over phone lines.
Comments
12:16:34 AM 
|
|
