DropBox Settings

We've had a bunch of folks trash their own Internet connection recently using DropBox.

DropBox will use ALL of the available bandwidth at your site.  This can cause trouble with web browsing, Netflix, e-mail, etc.  It can also cause trouble for your neighbors by using all of the available bandwidth in your area.  If you are pushing or pulling a pile of data, please take a min to manage your bandwidth.

Remember, the settings are in kiloBYTES per second, not kilobits.  It matters. The Internet connection you save might be your own.

Survey Results & Revised Pricing

We’ve now compiled the results from the survey and wanted to circle back around and let you know what we learned.

First off, 83% of our members do not support a bandwidth cap.

Secondly, 82% of our members would rather have a flat rate, best effort service than a tiered service.

Finally, though the company as a whole is eking out a modest profit, when we separated the profits from our software development and hosting business from the Internet Service Provider (ISP) side of the business, we found that the ISP is incurring substantial losses each and every month.

With these three items in mind, we’ve looked at our existing offerings and adjusted our prices to be more inline with our costs and our competition.

Throughout this process we have kept our customer’s preferences in mind.  We plan to continue to operate the network with no bandwidth caps and flat rate pricing.  Service will continue to be offered on a best effort basis.  That means you’ll get the best speeds and latencies that we can offer at your location.  No artificial caps and no tiered services.

We will, however, continue to use our egregious user software to manage network traffic for the benefit of the most possible users.

We are, however, going to be separating our services based on how they are delivered.  We feel it is fundamentally unfair to charge someone with a WiFi only connection the same rate as someone with a 1 Gbps fiber link.

All prices below are based on publicly posted prices retrieved from the respective company websites on November 5, 2012.  In an attempt to compare apples to apples, these prices do not include fall-off rates, bundled services or promotions.  We have also included modem rental in both ours and our competition's prices.  These are by no means a comprehensive listing of our competitor’s prices and services.  Customers who wish to know more about our competitors products and pricing should contact them directly.

We hope that you’ll understand why we have had to make these changes.  We really have held prices down over the past 5 years as much as has been possible.  In the past 4 years network traffic has grown by over 1,000%, while our pricing has only increased 30%.  Our members are using more and more Netflix, Hulu & YouTube.  Expanding capacity to meet this demand has been, and continues to be, very expensive.

Basic Service – WiFi Only

Our basic service currently serves customers without equipment.  These customers connect to our WiFi network receive a very convenient, but less reliable service.  Speeds can range from 12 Mbps down to 128Kbps depending on how close the customer is to the nearest node, network congestion, local interference and other factors.  We’ve decided to keep this service as inexpensive as possible.  Prices for our basic service will go from $28.98 to $37.98.

	Wicked Broadband	Phone Company	Cable Company
Basic	WiFi Only Download: Up to 12Mb Upload: Up to 12Mb Depends on Wireless Conditions & Line of Site Price: $37.98 No Caps	U-verse Pro Speeds: Up to 3Mbps Upload: Up to 1Mbps Price: $38.00 250 GB Cap	Bronze Download: Up to 5Mbps Upload: Up to 1Mbps Price: $37.95 5 GB Cap

Advanced Service – Managed Equipment

Our advanced service includes professional grade equipment and/or a dish or panel antenna on the outside of the home.  This service is substantially more reliable than our basic service.  In some areas where customers are connected directly to a tower they are getting speeds of up to 20 Mbps.  We are going to keep the prices for this service in line with the mid-tier services provided by the cable and phone company.  Prices for our advanced service will change from $35.98 to $47.98. 

	Wicked Broadband	Phone Company	Cable Company
Advanced	Managed Equipment Download: Up to 20Mbps Upload: Up to 20Mbps Depends on Wireless Conditions & Line of Site Price: $47.98 No Caps	U-verse Max Download: Up to 12Mbps Upload: Up to 1.5Mbps Price: $48.00 250 GB Cap	Silver Download: Up to 18Mbps Upload: Up to 2Mbps Price: $47.95 50 GB Cap

Rural Service – Managed Equipment

We are also going to unify our rural service with our advanced service.  This will change our rural rates from $44.98 to $47.98.

	Wicked Broadband	Phone Company	Cable Company
Rural Service	Managed Equipment Download: Up to 20Mbps Upload: Up to 20Mbps Depends on Wireless Conditions & Line of Site Price: $47.98 No Caps	N/A	Waverunner Download: Up to 2 Mbps Upload: Up to ¼ Mbps Depends on Wireless Conditions & Line of Site Price: $49.95 50 GB

Business Service – Managed Equipment & Monitoring

Our business service is delivered either on fiber-optic cable or on directional panel antennas.  Business customer connections are monitored 24/7 and businesses receive expedited services during business hours.  Many business customers get 20, 30 or even 50 Mbps of real throughput on their wireless links.  Added to this are upload speeds that dwarf the speeds of other service providers.  With this in mind, we are going to change our business service pricing from $49.98/Mbps to $59.98/Mbps of guaranteed throughput.  As always, for each Mbps of guaranteed throughput, we will provide an additional 9 Mbps of best effort service.  That means a businesses 2 Mbps link can burst to 20Mbps when conditions allow, which is most of the time.

In this case we were unable to locate printed versions of our competitor’s prices, which tells you a lot about their business practices.  The prices below were provided by sales representatives.

	Wicked Broadband	Phone Company	Cable Company
Business Services	Business 1 Download:   Guaranteed: 1Mbps   Burst: Up to 10Mbps Upload:   Guaranteed: 1Mbps   Burst: Up to 10Mbps Price: $59.98 Requires 1 Yr Agreement	Didn’t respond in time for print.  Says something…..	Business Service Download: Up to 8 Mbps Upload: Up to 1Mbps Price: $49.95 Requires 3 Yr Agreement
	Business 2 Download:   Guaranteed: 2Mbps   Burst: Up to 20Mbps Upload:   Guaranteed: 2Mbps   Burst: Up to 20Mbps Price: $119.96 Requires 1 Yr Agreement	Didn’t respond in time for print.  Says something…..	Business Service Download: Up to 16 Mbps Upload: Up to 2 Mbps Price: $79.95 Requires 3 Yr Agreement

Fiber Service

On Jan 1 we are going to be launching a competition between various neighborhoods to become the first Wicked Broadband Fiberhood in Lawrence.  Much like Google’s approach in Kansas City, neighbors will be able to pre-register for service in their neighborhood.  Areas with the highest subscription will be built out first, with the goal of bringing the first neighborhoods online by March 1.

Our fiber service will demark in the home using two physical mediums.  100 Mbps and 1 Gpbs.  Initial installation will be the same price for each service, $200 with a 1 year commitment, or $750 with no commitment.

100 Mbps Fiber

If the customer chooses to have service delivered on 100 Mbps medium, we will be charging $70/Mo.

	Wicked Broadband	Phone Company	Cable Company
Fiber 100	Single Mode FTTH Download: Up to 100Mbps Upload: Up to 100Mbps Price: $70 No Caps Installation: $200 with 1 Year Agreement $750 with No Contract	N/A	N/A

1 Gbps Fiber

If the customer chooses to have service delivered on 1 Gbps medium, we will be charging $150/Mo.

	Wicked Broadband	Phone Company	Cable Company
Gigabit	Single Mode FTTH Download: Up to 1Gbps Upload: Up to 1Gbps Price: $150 No Caps Installation: $200 with 1 Year Agreement $750 with No Contract	N/A	N/A

New pricing will take effect on December 1, 2012. 

We hope that you’ll understand why we have had to make these changes.  We really have held prices down over the past 5 years as much as has been possible.  In the past 4 years network traffic has grown by over 1,000%, while our pricing has only increased 30%.  Our members are using more and more Netflix, Hulu & YouTube.  Expanding capacity to meet this demand has been, and continues to be, very expensive.

We value your membership in our network and hope that we’ll have the opportunity to continue serving you in the future.

Pricing Change Survey

We have a number of growing expenses that we are going to need to meet this upcoming year.

1. Network throughput has grown by over 50% since August of this year. This has increased our backhaul costs substantially.

2. We are in the process of negotiating a new agreement with Westar energy. This new agreement will likely increase our utility power bill by over 200%. With over 300 sites attached to Westar illumination heads, this substantially increases our monthly utility bill.

3. To better serve downtown Lawrence and its surrounding area, we are now paying a monthly tower lease fee to Douglas County for the 11th & Massachusetts tower site.

4. An upstream outage at Cogent three weeks ago took the entire network offline. Though this hasn't happened often, we are going to be move toward a multi-homed network architecture. This will allow us to continue service even if one of our upstream providers is offline.

There are a variety of ways to meet these expenses, and we want to take everyone’s temperature on the various options. We will be announcing new prices and, possibly service offerings and/or bandwidth management mechanisms on December 1.

Before we make these changes we wanted to give our members a chance to have some input into the process. Please select the link below to take a brief survey.

Wicked Broadband Pricing and Policy Survey http://goo.gl/Jdw6n

New Capacity On Its Way

We've upgraded our network core and our order for more capacity to Internet is in process.

We'll be turning up 50% more capacity on Sept 27 at 12:01 AM.  The network will be offline for 10 min while we upgrade the Kansas City fiber.

Time to add some capacity......

Substantially more traffic is making it to the Internet due to the improvements and upgrades we've made this summer.

The result?  Our fiber link to KC is saturated.  We are bringing more capacity online this week.  Hold on to your monkeys.

Honor a Veteran - Vote Today!

Please remember that many members of the military sacrificed their lives for your right to vote.

Honor a veteran by voting in today's election.

Joshua Montgomery & Kris Adair

P.S. Be sure to bring a photo ID

LJWorld Article

Great article in the LJWorld about our service expansion.

Wicked Broadband

Dear Members:

Kris, Maurene, Audrey and Josh

Kris, Audrey, Maurene and I are happy to announce that we've acquired Community Wireless Communications Co. from our outside investment group.

We made this change because our previous ownership structure was preventing us from accessing the capital we need to maintain and grow our Lawrence network.

Since we made the change on March 31, 2012, we've been able to make over $125,000 in improvements to the Lawrence network.  This includes substantial improvements to our network infrastructure, the purchase of over 8 Miles of underground fiber-optic cable, improvements to our tower infrastructure, and funds for marketing our service to expand our membership.

These funds were provided by Emprise Bank under the SBA Patriot Express loan program.

Kris and I have been leading this project since 2005 when our organization consisted of a garage with a pile of donated computers, a WiFi access point and a DSL line.  We are proud to have grown the project from its simple beginnings into a city wide network that can deliver speeds unmatched by cable or DSL.

As we move forward with the project, there are going to be some changes.  The first, and most obvious, is a change to our name.  We feel that Wicked Broadband is a better description of our service.  Our expanded service is wicked fast, wicked cool and simply wicked.  It is truly faster than a flock of flying monkeys.  Its flocking fast.

As we expand our Lawrence network further, our members can expect improved network throughput, improved reliability, great local customer service and a continued dedication to serving low income households.

To get the service started right, we've launched a free WickedBroadband hot spot that stretches from 6th & Mass to 11th & Mass.  Next time you're downtown, get online and check out the new and improved service.

Over the next several months we are going to work to expand these changes to the rest of our WiFi network, our microwave network and our and Greek and Apartment networks.  At the same time, we will be installing a 1,000 Mbps fiber service in some areas of town.

We'd like to thank you for being a member of our project and for your continued support as we work to bring you the best Internet service in Kansas.

Sincerely,

Josh, Kris, Audrey & Maurene
Wicked Broadband
2321 Ponderosa Drive
Lawrence, KS 66046
Ph: (785) 371-4214
http://www.wickedbroadband.com