Sparkplug CEO Dishes on Wireless Broadband Expansion, Differentiation

Sparkplug Inc. just might be the new-ish kid on the block you’ve yet to meet. And that seems odd, considering the Chicago-headquartered wireless broadband provider has the backing of several former Craig McCaw executives. In fact, chairman Steve Hooper has served as CEO of every McCaw company except for Nextel and Clearwire, and led NextLink before it became XO Communications. Several of Sparkplug’s investors, including Ignition Partners, also hail from the McCaw world.

The four-year-old Sparkplug operates in five major markets, competing with Towerstream Corp. and Airband Communications in some of those areas. Sparkplug CEO Bill Malloy spoke with xchange in June about his company’s market approach, its services for other carriers and what sets it apart from its rivals. This is the edited transcript.

XC: Sparkplug has been around since 2004, but became the larger entity it is now after buying Telespectra and Prairie iNet in 2006. The company also digested Verde Communications out of Las Vegas about a year ago. Yet, it seems few have heard of your company. Why?

Malloy: Good question. I guess one of the reasons is we kind of operated under the radar to build out our markets, acquire businesses and acquire customers. And I think one of the reasons is because the business is highly localized – Chicago, Des Moines, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Nashville. Quite frankly, we haven’t been one to go broad in terms of getting everybody to know about Sparkplug; it’s been highly targeted to the customers and the carriers we serve.

XC: Your investors are pretty well-known. What do they see in Sparkplug?

Malloy: The real opportunity they see in Sparkplug is this interesting development over the last several years that we predicted some time ago, but that’s finally coming to bear: high-speed access and data transport for the business as well as for the other carriers; and backhaul for wireless carriers. And what our investors like about Sparkplug is the ability to serve that very handily, both in the speed to deploy, the ability to manage an IP-based network that has Ethernet delivery, and to do it cost-effectively for customers. We provide them a great alternative that often can be 30-50 percent less than their wired or fiber alternative.

And when you look at the numbers, just in the small-to-medium-sized business space alone, IP services are growing anywhere 40 percent year on year – they’re driving the need for the services that Sparkplug provides. Our investors see it as an early growth opportunity not unlike what we saw in the cellular business in the early ‘80s, mid ‘80s.

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