Monday, December 9, 2024

Case Study: Home-Grown Corporate WLAN Breeds Success

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Roy Brister would have been an eager customer for some enterprising wireless
ISP eager to branch out into providing network integration services. But
three years ago in rural eastern Ontario, where Brister operates a chain
of insurance brokerage offices, The
Brister Group
, no such animal existed.

So Brister built his own 2.4 GHz wireless network to link the company’s
widely separated facilities—at a cost of close to $330,000. Now he’s
looking at the possibility of selling excess capacity to other businesses
in the area that want high-speed Internet service.

Brister’s is an interesting story for a couple of reasons.

One thing it tells you is that if a non-technical insurance guy from
the boonies can build his own wireless network from scratch, surely others
can do likewise.

Granted, Brister was lucky enough to find a technology partner in his
own backyard, APT
Prophet Technologies Inc.
, an IT systems integrator with some related
wireless experience.

But Brister was involved every step of the way. “I’m a hands-on kind
of guy,” he says, understating the case just a little. “You’ll find climbing
gear in our trunks [to get up and down radio towers]. We design it and
we do the path studies [to determine line of sight between towers].”

Remote possibilities
The other thing this story tells you is that you might have to look in
some unlikely places if you want to find fixed wireless applications that
need your network integration services. Including out in the country.

Mind you, Brister’s case may be unique. His business grew over a few
years out of his original small-town insurance brokerage. He started buying
out other brokers in nearby towns who were struggling and installing his
own successful management procedures and technology.

Three years ago, he found himself with a chain of six offices in small
towns spread over about 60 miles of countryside near Ottawa, Canada’s
capital city.

Brister’s long distance telephone bill was astronomical—it was long
distance between each pair of offices and the main mode of communication
was phone. He also had separate client and product databases running on
PCs—plus the staff to maintain and use them—in each office.

Brister’s idea was that if he could link the offices in a wide area data
network, he could get “economies of scale,” such as being able to run
just one customer database for the whole company.

And he could centralize his specialized staff and get people in the offices
doing what they did best instead of being generalists.

Brister’s first move was to ask the local phone company, Bell Canada,
for help linking the computers in his five offices. The phone compnay
came back to him with a plan that would put dedicated 56-Kbps lines into
each office. And for this Bell wanted about $6,500 a month.

It still makes Brister chortle with disgust. He told Bell thanks but
no thanks and went looking for alternatives.

Like a good neighbor
Not long afterward, he heard about a school district in remote western
Canada that was using 2.4 GHz radios from Wi-LAN
Inc.
of Calgary to link its far-flung schools and provide them with
high-speed Internet service.

His application was very similar, Brister realized. He decided to follow
this lead.

A little over two years ago he went live with his network. It took more
hops than he thought to link all the offices—14 altogether. But the
short hops, along with top-quality antennas, make for a rock-solid network
that rarely if ever goes down.

Many of the 12-Mbps Wi-LAN radios are located on municipal water towers,
which is a very cost effective solution—he pays about $200 rent a
year to the towns and has no construction or tower costs.

Brister claims that with what he knows now and current equipment prices,
he could build the network today for more like $170,000.

Ironically, with carrying costs on the capital, he admits the actual
final bill probably comes pretty close to the $6,500 a month Bell was
if you amortize over five years.

“But I’m in total control,” Brister points out. “And I don’t have to
keep sending checks to Bell or some other outfit forever.”

Plus, he gets multi-megabit throughput between offices instead of 56
Kbps. With the addition of a 1-Mbps Internet service, he has a communications
system the envy of many big-city companies.

Economic equation
In fact, despite the hefty capital investment, Brister insists the network
is paying for itself. His long distance phone bill has been reduced by
$1,500 to $2,000 a month because the company now mostly uses e-mail to
communicate.

As planned, he eliminated much of the duplication of effort in the offices
and has employees working more effectively and efficiently as a result.

“When people ask me what the system cost, I tell them, ‘It cost me nothing,'”
he says.

The network was also part of forward-planning strategy. Brister knows
that soon his insurance company suppliers are going to require he do business
with them over the Web—some already are demanding it—and that
will require significant bandwidth. With the fixed wireless network, he’s
ready.

Brister insists he doesn’t want to be in the business of reselling bandwidth,
but he may end up in it anyway. Other companies in the towns and villages
his network passes are already knocking on his door asking him for a piece
of the pipe.

He’s just beginning to experiment with giving it to them. “As long as
it doesn’t interfere with our operations,” he says. “It might help defray
some of our costs too.” No kidding.

The availability of broadband services can change the economic outlook
of a region. As Brister notes, when you have a low-cost—low rent,
low labor cost—area like his near a high-cost area like Ottawa, there
is real opportunity to lure businesses to your turf and increase the tax
base.

So the big question is, if demand for bandwidth exists now and there
is the possibility of more arising, where were—where are—the
wireless entrepreneurs?

This article was first published on 802.11 Planet, an internet.com site.

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