Sparkplug Taps SMBs with Broadband Wireless

Sparkplug has found the same to be true in architecture firms. “If you look inside of the applications they use, we’re talking about large amounts of data and files being used and sent around,” Brimhall added.

The more traditional verticals, such as financial services or health care, are also targets. “We kind of knew that was there all along, but when you think about the groups that interact, they need to have solid, fat connections back and forth for radiology files and so on, and they also need the full diversity wireless provides because they can't afford to be down,” Brimhall said.

And finally, there are those companies that need more broadband, now. “We talk about the network effect, and broadband needs outstrip the capability of the connection,” said Malloy. “We had a customer that needed to upgrade quickly; they are a supplier and they just got a new customer that would be pushing information to them within the week that would outstrip the capabilities of their network. Imagine if they couldn't handle that?”

Service providers like Sparkplug need only to build one network, then branch off service to different SMB locations.

Source: Motorola Inc.

Similarly, there’s the ad hoc opportunity. For example, Sparkplug provided a 100mbps Internet connection to the Riviera Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas within a week and a half to support the “Teragrid” annual supercomputing event. It also found itself providing businesses with quick-turnaround connections in the wake of the Des Moines flooding earlier in the year.

“This sort of request does happen frequently,” Malloy said. “We had a large concert venue in Chicago that three hours before a big event lost landline service, and every one of their systems runs off the broadband connection, such as ticket-scanning. But inside a three-hour window we were able to deploy a broadband connection without a hitch. After the landlines were restored, they kept us in place because they need diversity.”

The other phenomenon contributing to increasing broadband demand is the hosted application explosion. Sparkplug itself offers VoIP services on a hosted basis, but said that’s the tip of the iceberg.

“From a customer’s perspective, the insurgence of many Web-based and hosted apps is allowing smaller businesses to be much more productive at what they do,” said Malloy. “It happens slowly. One day the head of accounting comes to a management meeting and says he’s got the perfect per-seat hosted accounting package. Then the marketing person says this or that hosted CRM system will help serve customers better. And human resources says it has the perfect portal for its needs. Then someone says, ‘our voice should be over broadband.’ Then let's unwire so our suppliers, etc., can wirelessly access the LAN.”

In short, there ends up being a slow buildup effect, “so you wake up one day and realize you're talking more about scaling the network and security than your core business of financial services, marketing or media,” said Brimhall. “And it all begins or ends on the strength of the dedicated access coming in. If you're running your business on a system like that and the Internet goes down, you can't work.”

As much of a demand as there is today, the future will call out even more for wireless, Motorola’s Gulden said. “Going forward, video surveillance will be a very big thing, and content distribution will be enormous. There are new technologies on the fringe, and new spectrum is opening up for the police and fire, and the consumer markets. It's a powerful vehicle. We are driving towards seamless networks that empower future rich content and applications.”

He added that providers don't just have to be good at commercial access. “The apps are business- and community-oriented,” he noted. “Providers will be doing everything metro. Wireless gives them access to not just 100,000 small enterprises, but also 100,000 residential subscribers, and of course the occasional use apps.”

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