Take Aim at the SMB Market and Actually Hit the Target

The small- and medium-sized business market has taken on an almost fabled stature for those wanting to tap it. We’ve all heard the pitch: Around 100 million SMBs are out there waiting for a service provider like you to sell them everything from managed services to SIP trunking in order to make their lives easier and your coffers fuller.

But SMBs have proved to be tough customers; price-sensitive and risk-averse, they have been resisting doggedly hockey-stick adoption rates for much of anything except the applications that directly affect their core businesses. Again, it’s the old mantra that most channel partners but few Tier 1s follow: Understand the mom-and-pop store’s business needs, get the sale.

That’s where broadband wireless comes in. Those core applications are proving to be hungry, hungry hippos for broadband, and the wired plant just can’t keep up without asking SMBs to pay the kind of money they typically don’t have for a decent Internet connection. A regional service provider deploying a wireless network footprint to serve this market not only fills a gaping need (remember the mantra?) for more – and affordable – bandwidth, but it also puts itself in the position of being able to bundle applications like VoIP in order to create a stickier sale. And smaller providers, unlike the LECs, economically can do the consultative work necessary to penetrate these accounts.

It helps that this is a market that’s enjoying the happy confluence of massive media attention (Wi-Fi and the iPhone, for instance, are driving awareness that it’s okay to do things wirelessly) and mature, reliable portfolios with options for just about every scenario plus management suites.

Fiber may light some buildings, and some SMBs are just fine with T1s, cable or DSL. But for the wide swath of SMBs for whom this is not true, broadband wireless might be just what they’re looking for.

Related Article:

Sparkplug Taps SMBs with Broadband Wireless

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