I am pleased to announce that Sparkplug has merged with Airband Communications. As of today, we are a part of Airband. Our combined company is now the largest fixed-wireless company in the U.S. for businesses, delivering a full portfolio of voice, data, and Internet services in 17 markets.

For Sparkplug customers, this means you now have access to the most scalable and affordable voice and data services in markets like Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Baltimore; Dallas; Des Moines, Iowa; Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; Fort Worth; Houston; Las Vegas; Los Angeles; Miami; Orange County, Calif.; Philadelphia; Phoenix; San Antonio; San Diego; and Washington, D.C.

With this merger, I will become CEO of the new Airband Communications. The management teams of both companies are working together on integrating our two companies. We will be committing significant resources to ensure that our customers have increased service capabilities, expanded geographic coverage and extended support.

During this transition period, Sparkplug will continue to provide your existing service without interruption, and your account management, support and service contacts will remain the same.

Our team will keep you updated as we progress with our merger integration. For now, everything remains the same and we expect to continue the excellent support you are accustomed to.

Sparkplug customers come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from small Mom and Pop shops all the way up to billion dollar corporations. What strikes me is how much our customers have in common with each other regardless of size, and with Sparkplug. Every business needs low cost, highly reliable bandwidth and voice services – that’s where Sparkplug comes in.

As I travel around the country to Sparkplug markets, I try to meet our customers, get to know them, and understand the challenges that their businesses face. It’s always interesting to learn about customers using our products for more than basic office connectivity purposes. Here are a few examples:

Fearless Radio in Chicago uses a Sparkplug broadband connection to send a live audio feed from their studios to their content distribution network co-located in the same datacenter that we use. From there, thousands of listeners tune in and hear a broadcast that began with transmission over Sparkplug’s wireless network in Chicago.

In our Phoenix market, Scottsdale Bible Church streams audio as well as video of their weekly services using Sparkplug bandwidth. By leveraging our scalable network architecture, we were able to quickly deploy a wireless metro-ethernet network connecting three of their locations together with a private network.

It’s that time of year in Scottsdale: the Barrett-Jackson auto show has returned, bringing with it enthusiastic crowds excited by the classic car auctions. Barrett-Jackson is the premier event of its kind, auctioning cars ranging from the 1950’s to 1970’s.

Like Sparkplug, Barrett-Jackson is also headquartered in Scottsdale. So it was a natural fit for our company to provide high-capacity Internet services for the show here.
Sparkplug’s fixed wireless service is ideally suited for events that are short in duration or for temporary business services that drive high demand for capacity – both data transport and Internet access.

Sparkplug excels in this space because of our fast install timeframes and bandwidth scaling. While our standard install is five business days for business broadband, for certain events – like Extreme Makeover: Home Edition — we have deployed connections in as little as four hours. Unlike Sparkplug’s wireless network, traditional providers have limits to available capacity or to access to a location.

Another great example of the wireless advantage is temporary business services. In December, Sparkplug installed a 100Mbps point-to-point transport link for Lumension, a large IT company:

Welcome back and Happy New Year! I spent some time in the last few weeks of 2009 reflecting on the changes in our industry, and thinking about the new technologies on the horizon for 2010.

One of the industry changes that Sparkplug began to seriously exploit last year was the availability of 3.65 GHz spectrum. This spectrum is “lightly regulated,” meaning that an operator must apply for a license to operate, but the fees are minimal and the use of the space is governed by the operators themselves. 3.65GHz spectrum is 50MHz wide and is segmented into the upper 25MHz and the lower 25MHz. Carriers can only operate in the lower 25MHz unless they operate the FCC’s contention based protocol. Recently one of the 3.65GHz equipment manufacturers announced the release of a contention based 3.65GHz product. With such a capability a carrier can operate legally in the full 5oMHz of 3.65GHz spectrum. We will be working with our suppliers to urge them to offer this capability sooner.

Back in October, I attended the Supercomm trade show in Chicago.

I presented on a panel with Jeff Thompson, the CEO of Towerstream. Jeff runs a business very similar to Sparkplug: we both are giving businesses a viable alternative to the fixed wired infrastructure…. An alternative not just because it’s wireless, but it’s also based on a completely different business model:

- We install services in days, not weeks

- We can upgrade bandwidth to scale with a business growth immediately (versus the classic problem of having to replace a T1 with a DS3)

I think we were both pleasantly surprised to see our audience pack the room. This serves as a testament to the high level of interest in fixed wireless services.

Jeff and I pointed out that fixed wireless is now going up market – delivering higher capacity solutions and competing directly for the traditional DS3 and OC3 business in all industries, from healthcare to retail.

We were fortunate to have Dan O’Shea, a veteran of telecom media industry, moderating the panel. Dan wrote about Supercomm.

Last week, our Phoenix employees gathered after work to attend the Phoenix Suns game, and also to socialize away from the office and enjoy some holiday festivities. What a great opportunity to socialize away from the office and enjoy some holiday festivities. The team has had a great early start to their season, and I am excited to cheer them on as a new Arizona resident. I’m also appreciative of what a great long-term customer the Phoenix Suns have been for Sparkplug.

This raises an important point. Events are hard to support in the “traditional” network world. They happen sporadically. Bandwidth usage is hard to predict, and tends to surge during the event, then disappear. Ordering a wired, high-capacity connection used to be the only alternative, which is expensive, and the lead times were lengthy.

All of which makes it tough for an event coordinator. You would have to start thinking months in advance about your network requirements, and order the line without being able to predict usage. Worst of all, you paid a premium to order a circuit that carried less than a one-year term.

Welcome to my new blog. First, I would like to introduce myself…my name is Mike Ruley, and I’m the CEO at Sparkplug Communications. As I reflect on our business and set goals for 2010, I plan to use this blog as a venue to share my personal thoughts on trends in our industry, technology advancements and other noteworthy topics that I believe in some way will impact our business or our customers.

There are still a lot of misconceptions about fixed wireless networks, which is the type of network that Sparkplug operates. It’s quite different from the “mobile” cellular network, where you are moving from tower to tower for your phone reception as you move. A fixed wireless connection is just that – a straight shot from the tower to the customer site with dedicated bandwidth all the way. The bandwidth itself is fixed, and, if the link is “licensed” (meaning the FCC has given approval for Sparkplug to operate exclusively in that frequency), it’s 100% guaranteed.