Wireless Internet Service Business Plan
BUSINESS PLAN SUPERIOR XL INTERNET
5988 Evergreen Blvd.
Dallas, Texas 75230
Superior XL Internet is presently the only wireless company in northern Texas. With an infusion of capital, it intends on delivering its multitude of new Internet products to numerous major U.S. regions at costs lower than those offered by the majority of competitors.
- COMPANY OVERVIEW
- MISSION STATEMENT
- MANAGEMENT
- HISTORY
- PRODUCTS & SERVICES
COMPANY OVERVIEW
Superior XL Internet (a division of Planet Wireless Systems, Inc.) is a fast-growing Internet company with a specific focus on wireless broadband Internet. We have the technology to deliver bi-directional wireless Internet at speeds of up to 100 megabytes. At the same time, we intend to develop similar network with mobile capabilities. This technology has competed favorably against xDSL and Cable Internet.
We have established a market presence in the northern region of Texas, with the intent to build an international backbone of Meshed ATM Network and Wireless Repeaters. This network would set the framework to deliver Internet data, voice, and video to each perspective home without any per/minute charges. Currently Superior XL Internet is the only wireless company in northern Texas that has successfully delivered this product. We intend to maintain our exclusivity to the areas we are delivering, through strong marketing and a noninterference clause in our contract with essential strategic building throughout each county. This would prevent other companies from setting up repeaters thus making it very difficult to compete with us. This new wireless system is Superior's solution to compete with cable modems, xDSL or any foreseeable technologies in the next three years.
MISSION STATEMENT
To provide complete, quality Internet solutions to our clients by incorporating sensible and cost-effective technologies. These product will be supported by a team of customer-oriented quality staff whose overriding priority is to provide professional service to our customers resulting in complete customer satisfaction.
MANAGEMENT
CEO
Henry Albers: Graduated Notre Dame University with an M.B.A. degree. Served as General Manager for Sliver Communications, currently one of the largest telephone companies in the United States. Mr. Albers has a proven ability to penetrate new markets, maintain and grow existing markets, manage and motivate sales forces, and design sales and marketing programs for top-dollar performance. He opened and staffed three new offices which became profitable in their first years of operation. Before Sliver, Mr. Albers was the VP of sales for PRW, with posted annual revenues of $4 billion. This position was achieved after moving the Chicago center from last in sales to number one in the nation. Mr. Albers has consistently grown Superior XL Internet between 15% to 30% in sales every month since his arrival. With the exception of a few months of setback in early 1998, Mr. Albers intends to maintain the current level of sales growth well into the new millennium.
CIO
Nicholas K. Murphy: Started his entrepreneur career brokering palm trees. He achieved annual sales of over $200,000 in his first year in business when he was eighteen years old. By the time he was twenty-one, he was already in charge of a multi-million dollar real estate development project in South America. Mr. Murphy founded Superior XL Internet in 1992 as a network consulting and computer retail company. In December 1995 he started the Internet division of his business. The growth soon overtook all other aspect of Superior. Currently wireless Internet is the core of the company.
HISTORY
Since its founding in 1995, Superior XL Internet has emerged as one of the fastest-growing independent Internet providers in the region, and one of the few that is doing so profitably. It has done so by providing moving state-of-the-art telephone base 56Kb/sec service to clients on a full, money-back guarantee, and by providing reliable T-1 connections to the Internet. Superior XL's organization has successfully conceived and delivered a full range of services to a customer list that includes 52 other ISPs and large corporate clients in the state of Texas.
While most of the company's management is already in place to accomplish the growth that customers demand, Superior XL still requires a Chief Executive Officer who is capable of managing a high-growth rate to a point beyond the $100 million sales level. Additional senior level managers can complete the management team as additional branches in other cities are opened. Upon successful negotiation of Superior XL's next round financing, the company also intends to hire 15 additional employees to meet demands. These include the following:
CEO - Henry Albers
CIO - Nicholas Murphy
CFO - Sally Hemp
CTO and President - Sean Luck
VP of Sales - Open (acting, Michael Burntz)
VP of Corporate Finance and Development - Open
VP of Operations - Open
VP of Human Resources and Administration - (acting, Sally Hemp)
VP of Network Operation - Mark Woo
VP of Customer and Technical Support - Open (acting, Mark Woo)
Director of Marketing and Business Development - Marjorie Swigonski
Director of E-Commerce - Kevin Letterman
V.P. of Real Estate - Valerie Ortiz
Selected Job Responsibilities
CEO — Manages the overall direction of the business.
CFO — Manages working capital, including receivables, inventory cash, and marketable securities. Perform financial forecasting, including capital budget, cash budget, proforma financial statements, external financing requirements, and financial condition requirements.
CTO — Manages direction and growth of network and technical support.
VP of Sales — Manages field sales organization, territories and quotas. Manage sales office activities including customer/product support/service.
VP of Operations — Oversees the daily operation and procedures. Manages expansion plan and coordination of equipment/supplies at the new locations.
VP of Network Operation — Oversees operation of existing networks. Ensures smooth and successful installation of new networks.
VP of Customer and Technical Support — Takes care of the support of new and existing customers. Ensures customer satisfaction.
Director of Marketing and Business Development — Manages market planning, advertising, public relations, sales promotion, merchandising, and facilitating staff services. Identifies new markets; manages corporate scope and market research. Identifies foreign markets.
Director of E-Commerce — Establishes and implements e-commerce applications for clients and company.
V.P. of Real Estate— Establishes and maintains all real estate and rooftop relationships; oversees and monitors all rooftop installation operations and procedures.
PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
Superior XL Internet plans to establish a nationwide backbone in order to provide its new Internet products at a low cost. It will do this by setting up a physical location at all nine of the National Access Points (NAP) and by building its ATM backbone directly. This model is similar to that of most backbone providers. Superior XL is different in that instead of using the old routed system, it intends to use the new ATM switched network. This will provide a more scaleable network and the ability to sell Voice over IP and Virtual Private Network (VPN). These two sectors—Voice over IP and VPN—will be extremely fast growth sectors on the Internet.
Wireless Bandwidth
Bandwidth is providing customers with a direct connection to the Internet. Superior XL offers a variety of means to make that connection: Point-to-Point T-1, Frame Relay, Server Colocation, and Wireless T-1.
Wireless T-1 or Data Wave offers two-way transmission at 3 megabytes per second, which is twice the speed of a standard T-1 connection. Using standard radio waves, this technology is scalable to 100 megabits per second. It eliminates the need for telephone lines, thereby eliminating telephone company charges. Wireless technology also eliminates the need for extra equipment purchase of a CSU/DSU and router equipment. Wireless is one of the most inexpensive ways to deliver the last mile solution to the customer. Currently a customer would have to pay approximately $600 per month to the phone company in order to have a frame circuit to their office. However, with wireless, Superior XL can skip the phone company and reduce the cost of an Internet data circuit by 50%.
Currently the company is using Part 15 of FCC code to transmit the Internet data. We use both the 2.4, 5.6-5.7 GHz and the 23 GHz FCC licensed spectrum in order to transmit the data. This gives Superior a theoretical limit of 200 megs of bandwidth because it is bi-directional.
Superior XL is developing wireless technology in order to reduce the price of entry into the wireless arena. Traditionally the equipment needed for a wireless installation would cost about $3,000. By employing its own technology, the company can reduce the cost of equipment to about $600 for the equipment and $400 for installation. However, as the installation quantity grows into the SOHO (Small Office Home Office) the cost of the modem could be reduced to about $250 for the modems and $150 for installation. During this time Superior XL intends to develop a MMDS, LMDS, and 5.6-5.7GHz box in order to have the capability to increase the wireless bandwidth to 20 -100 Mbit/Sec. All new technology would comply with part 15 and 16 (ISM and NII band of FCC ruling) This would ensure the continued growth of the company for the next 10 years.
In the future, as the demand arises, Superior XL intends to purchase or lease frequency in order to increase the bandwidth of the wireless systems.
Frame Relay is a technology for high-speed data transfer over a T-1 line using shared facilities. "Bursts" in frame relay are what make it possible to share the line. A burst is a specific amount of data shot over lines from one point to another.
Currently Superior XL is the First ISP in Texas to sign a contract with U.S. West. This allows the company to set up a frame circuit without a setup cost and a monthly savings of 15% off the standard rate. Having no setup fee with no per circuit time commitment would help tremendously the growth of the firm's wireless systems. Superior XL could set up a frame circuit into areas where it does not have enough wireless repeaters. Once it has reached billing of over $4,000/month in an area, the company would cancel all of the frame circuits in the area and replace the area with a wireless circuit.
Point-to-Point T-1 is a direct connection to the Internet. The T-1 is not shared with any other company and operates on a circuit that goes straight to Superior XL's backbone.
Superior XL has a contract with U.S. West for three years in which they will install all frame-relay circuits with no setup charge. Such installation would enable Superior XL the ability to pick up customers in remote areas in which there are no repeaters. As such, once enough customers are acquired in a specific area, where the cost of a repeater is justified we would then put in a frame relay circuit.
Server co-location means to put one or more servers directly on a LAN (local area network) system that has a direct connection to the Internet backbone. Superior XL runs multiple T-1 lines from selected companies to provide redundancy and to ensure customers get the access when they need.
Whatever the means, bandwidth is one of the most profitable sectors of Superior XL's business. On average, the profit margin in this sector is well over 600%. However, with the development of the wireless Internet, this profit margin should increase significantly.
Modem dial-up is another product offered by Superior XL Internet. Although profitable it is not as financially attractive as the bandwidth market, though dial-up does have the largest market segment and the largest potential for growth. Superior XL has expanded its dial-up market through direct sales and resale. With its current base of more than 50 resellers, Superior XL has the capacity to grow this sector of business very rapidly. Dial-up is one of the more capital-intensive segments of the Internet. The growth of this sector has been held back artificially by Superior XL in order to spend their present capital resources more efficiently.
Currently, the company has the option to enact a contract of $1,000,000 per year selling dialup with a one-time setup cost of $350,000 and an annual cost of $400,000. This and many other contracts were held off or not exercised due to capital limitations. With the influx of new capital, Superior XL is confident that it can generate an additional $2,000,000 per year in a very short time span.
Superior XL sees competition in this sector increasing and plans to eventually move the existing base to a free Internet model. They have tested custom software that force dial-up customers to view the banners and web pages of Superior XL's advertising customers. By charging an advertising rate that is half of the market rate (or one-third of Yahoo's rate), the company can generate about $12 per customer per month. This should increase the average price charged per customer about $.66.
Special Products
Superior XL Internet has consistently put its focus on product development. It is northern Texas's first wireless Internet and is researching and developing Free Internet, ADSL, ATM, and server side adult filters.
Voice Over IP
Superior XL is pursuing a special license allowing it to offer voice products to its existing customers along with a target market of customers. This will also give Superior the ability to reduce its own cost of lines. The firm's network has been designed to accommodate Telcoswitching equipment. Until it is sufficient to implement this, Superior has placed a hold on a realistic date for launch. It is the company's intention to have a limited amount of voice traffic by the start of first quarter 2000. Due to the potential of significant revenue with little added cost for bandwidth voice over IP, Superior is in the process of testing the latest Cisco's Voice over IP product.
VPN
Virtual Private Network is one of the fastest growing segments of the Internet. It gives an ISP the ability to connect two remote offices together and make it appear as if both offices are on the same network. For example an office in Dallas would be able to print a report directly to a printer in the accounting department in Los Angeles, and people in the Los Angeles office would be able to share files with other offices.
Web Hosting
As a traditional Internet Service Provider, Superior XL offers website hosting on its server and hosts the majority of the websites the company designs. On average, Superior generates about $2,000 per month per $3,000 server set up on its system. Web hosting is not the firm's focus; however, it is sold as a convenience to customers in order to give them a one-stop Internet solution.
Data Collection Center
Superior XL has recently opened a Data Collocation Center in its facilities at 5988 Evergreen Blvd. This center is environmentally controlled and offers a location for mission critical data servers to be collocated on Superior XL's redundant network. It is intended for bandwidth intensive applications.
Web Pages
Superior XL offers web page design in order to complete certain solutions. The company has the ability to generate professional web pages with e-commerce and security features. The extensive web page customer base includes many Fortune 1000 clients.