From 256K DSL to 2M Wireless Broadband -- In 24 Hours
Posted Tue, 27 Feb 2007 18:12:02 EST by Ed Rerisi
I'm not the usual person you'll find posting on our wireless blog, but after recent success with a fixed wireless broadband installation, I just have to give credit where credit is due. We needed to open a larger office in Scottsdale and managed to get all the fun legal paperwork wrapped up pretty fast. We found ourselves ready to move into the new space with one exception: we had no broadband access. It's rare that the lawyers move faster than the telcos, but in this case, they did. Getting a T1 in the space would take at least 30 days. The leased line connecting Scottsdale to our NY offices, while ideal, would take about 45 days. Qwest, they were pretty fast, promising a 1.5M / 864K DSL line in about 3 business days. After a painful installation process with three errors on the account, it was finally installed only a day late. From a timeline perspective, this wasn't bad. The problem was that Qwest delivered 256K up and down, hardly the speed that gets analysts excited and hardly the speed they promised. Forget about that being entirely inadequate for our business.
Enter Sparkplug.
My first conversation with Sparkplug, a wireless internet service provider, was on Friday. Paperwork signed Monday. Today, Tuesday, a 2M pipe was in place. Basically, Sparkplug provided us with T1 equivalent service in one day. How's that for customer service? Sure, it required a truck roll, but they were in and out in about 3 hours. After revealing to the fine folks at Sparkplug that we are the leading analyst and advisory firm covering the wireless and mobile broadband space, I told them that we'd either be their biggest fan or their harshest critic. Today, we're a big fan with our new network up and running. Over the coming weeks, we'll report how the Motorola Canopy solution is working for us.