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04.06.07
Signs That Signal It's Time To Partner With A Wholesale ISP
 By
Todd Grannis
There's really nothing like being in control - especially when you're in business for yourself. But for facilities-based ISP owners that dream can slip away as the daily grind of technical challenges, rising operating costs, contract minimums, and customer support woes takes its toll.
We hear about this pain daily from prospective ISPs that have not yet leveraged a partnership with a quality Wholesale ISP. However, after a well-executed import of subscriber data, ISPs make more money while working fewer hours. Fixed costs are eliminated. Lost sleep and demanding technical challenges become a thing of the past.
The Difference Between Do-It-Yourself and a Wholesale ISP Partnership
Many ISP owners got into the facilities-based ISP business model during the mid-1990s before virtual ISP technology and server-based ISP software became a reliable solution. A facilities-based ISP owns its mail, DNS, and authentication servers, switches, circuits, and other infrastructure. As demand grew, the ISP owner had to purchase new circuits to keep up. This was a double-edged sword because as demand for dial-up declined, many ISPs have been stuck with termination liabilities on circuits they were no longer using.
A wholesale ISP or virtual ISP provider aggregates the volume of hundreds ISPs. Each ISP offers Internet Services under their own company name and sets their own prices, support policies, and manages their own branding. It makes sense to partner with a company, such as visp.net (http://www.visp.net), that is highly specialized in providing back-office software and services for ISPs.
For the facilities-based ISP owner, moving their back-office services to a wholesale ISP means that they can now pay for services on a per-subscriber basis with margin on each account. They've effectively eliminated fixed costs and replaced them with variable costs that provide a more sustainable business model in the highly dynamic Internet access market.
The shift to a wholesale ISP can be a significant upgrade of services because you are leveraging the multimillion-dollar R & D investment of your ISP wholesaler. The result: greater subscriber retention, and a service that's more attractive to prospective customers.
Knowing When It's Time to Change
While working with hundreds of ISPs over the past decade who have reached this crossroad, I've identified a few "Red Flags" that signal it's time to partner with an ISP wholesaler.
Here Are My Top 5 Signs:
1. Unused circuits are sucking your profit margin dry. It's the Catch-22 of the facilities-based ISP world. You've got just the right amount of subscribers and circuits. You're finally in the black and begin to show a profit. Life is good. But just when you start making money, along comes that one additional subscriber and you either send the subscriber to the competition or sign a contract for yet another expensive circuit. On the other hand, you might have latent capacity on existing dialup or DSL circuits. Either way, profit goes out the window. By partnering with a wholesale ISP, owners pay only for services that they need and use. Nothing more.
Continue reading this article.
About the Author:
Founder of VISP.Net, Todd Grannis has helped hundreds of ISPs reach more subscribers, improve their services and significantly reduce management and support overhead. To discover how to put ISP in-a-box ® wholesale ISP technology to work for you with easy-to-use billing software, extensive account management tools, powerful subscriber web portals, and robust spam and virus filtering go to: http://www.visp.net
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