Sparkplug CEO Dishes on Wireless Broadband Expansion, Differentiation

XC: Who are your other competitors?

Malloy: If you look at the fixed wireless for business space, Towerstream. You have a company by the name of AirBand that is in different markets than we are – we compete with them in one locale, which is Phoenix. Once you get past the three of us, you really are hard-pressed to find anyone who has multiple markets, just focused exclusively on business.

XC: Tell me about Sparkplug’s wholesale services.

Malloy: Let’s start with, say, one of your cable readers. To the extent that one of the cable providers finds themselves at the edge of their plant and wants to supply a new territory or go directly to end user, we do that. We provide wireless data connections to the end user both on the low end – the equivalent of 2mpbs of symmetrical service – all the way to the high end of somebody needing DS3 service or higher equivalents out to a location. So it looks like network extension, and like a network extension beyond a geography or to a pocket or an area in the network where those cable companies know they’ve got demand and customers they could serve and don’t yet have the plant built to those areas.

I think on the RBOC side, probably less so. But if you go to the ILEC business, they’ll approach us with network extension or point-to-point needs they have where they’re up against the plant. They’re in the decision of, ‘Do we build, do we buy or do we buddy?’ We’ve also worked with some of them to respond to proposals to build out beyond the edge of their networks and let them use our network in conjunction with theirs.

The other one I would mention is the wireless backhaul business, which is supplying the data needs that are behind every cell site. That’s been a real key piece of our business that we continue to develop.

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