Replies to post #7995 on Mobilepro Corp (fka MOBL)

[crashman]

pacattack, I think I can answer that question. Here is a simple model (and I sure don't know all the details). Lets say the network buildout costs $3 million/city and to run/upkeep it costs $400,000/year -> so thats 5 million over 5 years in costs or 1 million/year. lets say each costumer pays $30/month or $360/year -> 1 million/360=2778 customers needed for the network to pay off in 5 years. For a city with 50,000 household 3000 doesn't seem very unreasonable. With 4000 customers the network is paid in less than 3 years etc. I don't find a goal to reach 7-10% of the households an unreasonable expectation. Now, the more cities you have the lower the costs (many things can be run together for all cities).

[DesertSon]

Pac - you are really just a basher here but I have similar doubts. Sure, I think people would like to use open air wireless or when they are in the car, but are they going to pay $30-50 a month for high speed at home and then another $30 a month to be able to roam, especially when they can go to Starbucks and get it for free? Now, maybe you can convince some businesses with a roving workforce to install CPE devices at headquarters and then use the service. But in terms of retail seems like they need to convince Cox or other companies to allow people to get MOBL's wifi as an add-on for maybe a few extra bucks a month.

Also, there is a scale problem here. I mean, are they really going to drop cable or DSL they already have and then spend $70 on a CPE device just so they can have connectivity in Tempe? Now maybe if it was region-wide it would be more compelling.

Having said all that, there are a lot of companies who seem to think this is going to be profitable. So maybe they know more than the pac-man.