12 ms·

Philly Wisper

137 points by heydenberk 7y ago

sgt 7y ago
Wireless has become much better and robust in recent years, but I've honestly never been exposed to a wireless solution that was completely without issues. That's why I'll always prefer cables (as in fiber). Not knowing much about Philadelphia, surely a city like that offers fiber to most houses in 2019, and it's probably not going to cost more than $50-100/month for an entry level package? I could be wrong.
- derg 7y ago
  Philly resident here, I pay no contract $79.99 for Fios gigabit. Verizon here also offers a 100mbps option (I think it's that at least) for $39.99 I believe, so this is a bit expensive.
  - covercash 7y ago
    Those prices are only for the first year, I recently learned that when my $39.99 100/100 plan jumped to $55, and the customer service rep said it will jump to $65 the third year.
dsr_ 7y ago
That sounds really nice; I wish them all the best luck. "PhillyWisper Residential service plans are designed for personal use for 8 hours a day for general internet use including streaming, web surfing, e-mail access, and all other possible online activities. Residential customers are not allowed to host public servers of any kind, use static (public) IPv4 IP addresses, or consume more bandwidth than required to support typical residential Internet activities. PhillyWisper may disconnect or limit the bandwidth for residential customers who use residential service for activities deemed atypical at PhillyWisper’s discretion.Connection speeds for Residential service plans will fluctuate based on network demand." That's not so friendly. IN fact, it's rather badly defined. No mention of IPv6.
- radcon 7y ago
  > Residential customers are not allowed to . . . consume more bandwidth than required to support typical residential Internet activities. PhillyWisper may disconnect or limit the bandwidth for residential customers who use residential service for activities deemed atypical at PhillyWisper’s discretion. This worries me much more than any privacy issues (which could easily be alleviated with a $5/mo. VPN). Are we supposed to read their minds to determine what "typical" behavior we're allowed to engage in? Or should we just live in constant fear of our internet being arbitrarily disconnected?
- wrsh07 7y ago
  This seems especially problematic given that many residential users don't know when something is taking significantly more data. Eg my sister was surprised by how much of her quota was used by her Amazon fire stick
- atourgates 7y ago
  Yeah, it depends on enforcement. I use a great rural, local WISP, and they expressly prohibit P2P download/uploading like BitTorrent, but it’s otherwise unlimited. Hopefully PhillyWisper’s service is similarly structured.
Klathmon 7y ago
Wow I can't believe I'm seeing this on HN! I worked with the co-founder Mark Steckel, and he is about as good as they get. He takes privacy and security VERY seriously (he's the only person I know that actually uses PGP!) and he's one of those guys who has forgotten more about networking than I'll ever know in my lifetime. He literally answered a call one time while on the roof of a building either setting up or tweaking service for someone! I don't live in the Philly area any more, but if you do I'd be willing to bet my reputation that you'll love the ISP if you get them.
- youdontknowtho 7y ago
  "East Kensington start-up"...I thought that was code for "crack house" or "junky graveyard". I kid, I kid. Best of luck to them. That area could really use some success stories.
  - JimiofEden 7y ago
    About 10-20 years ago, you'd be completely correct. But that area has underwent some of the craziest transformations I've seen in a long time recently. Not exactly gentrified, but certainly more accepting of literally everyone.
    - peterwwillis 7y ago
      Nobody pays a mil-plus for a building of 3-story condos on a former crack block unless it's gentrified. Northeast Philly is the new Williamsburg.
      - sman393 7y ago
        "Northeast Philly is the new Williamsburg" That's a bit of a stretch...
- zachruss92 7y ago
  I agree. Mark is knowledgeable and attentive. Given that they are a small player in a big space, they are very sensitive to customer issues and really strive to provide great service and uptime.
AstroJetson 7y ago
It would be a nice if they would put their tower(s) locations and their range circle on the site. That would at least give a running start if they can get a signal to the destination. I'd rather not need to sign up to find this information out.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- dmead 7y ago
  The tower is probably in a pretty dense area. If they start listing it people would probably freak out no?
- PhillyWisper 7y ago
  You don't actually need to sign up to tell if you are in range. Just check out the "Available now" section in the zip code drop down on the sign-up form.
  - covercash 7y ago
    19118 is listed as “later” but what does that realistically mean? Too many trees towering over rooftops in Chestnut Hill to provide coverage to most residents?
  - AstroJetson 7y ago
    Ok, that wasn't intuitive from the form, it looked like you wanted a ton of info before I got to the zipcode. Maybe a hint on that page to look. Thanks!
ibdf 7y ago
I look forward to see this business growing as it gives an alternative other than comcast and verizon which both have poor customer service. However, in Philly, 25 Mbps for $50 is expensive. In comparison I have been paying $70 a month for 100mbps with Verizon. Perhaps price will go down as customer base increases. I would also like to know more about the reliability of the service in bad weather.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- war1025 7y ago
  I'm assuming it's using a similar technology as my mom's internet uses (hers has an antenna pointing at the local water tower). I can't think of a time that she's had weather related outages.
- myvoiceismypass 7y ago
  I have this service, in Philly, and weather is never an issue for me. I’ve had a total of maybe 3-4 brief (less than 5 minutes) outages in my year of service.
youdontknowtho 7y ago
Philly tried to have a community mesh net years ago. It really didn't work out. Hopefully this fares better.
- Famicoman 7y ago
  There have been at least 3 attempts. The current one is still lacking much of a community.
pard68 7y ago
I pay 90/month for 150. Seems like a major compromise
compliance_data 7y ago
I have been a customer for 3 years and have been ecstatic with their service. I think there have been maybe 2 outages in 3 years, and within minutes Mark e-mailed everyone detailing what happened, why, what he was doing to fix it, and when he expected to have maintenance finished. Observed speeds are typically higher than SLAs and as long as Mark is in business I don't plan to use anyone else. When he came to install equipment I got the opportunity to go up on my roof and "help" (I know v little about networking) but it made for a really fun afternoon.
- jefflombardjr 7y ago
  What's the latency and speed like beyond the advertised speeds? That would be my biggest hold back and was why I didn't sign up for Clear a couple years back.
  - jasonm89 7y ago
    Clear was a horrible ISP.
  - compliance_data 7y ago
    For speed I regularly clock ~80 mbps down ~25 mbps up. This is pretty consistent (had a "slow" night on Sunday of ~60mbps when I checked). Latency I haven't really paid much attention: I usually only check when it feels like something is wrong as a sanity check.
greggyb 7y ago
I love to see this, but it's a hard sell. Philly is one of the lucky cities with reasonable competition already, one of which is Verizon's Fios - decently built out through the city. A lot of new construction homes have both Comcast* and Fios pre-wired into the home, so installation is trivial and competition is, delightfully, fierce. 25M wireless connections at $50 are a hard sell against 1G fiber at $80. I don't mean to be a debbie-downer about this, because I think promoting connectivity is a huge boon to society. * Fun fact, the new Comcast building looks like a middle finger facing west - literally flipping off the rest of the country. Seems appropriate.
- vips7L 7y ago
  I get 75/75 from fios for $50.
- derg 7y ago
  from some angles (directly north or south) it looks like a vape rig to me.
- imglorp 7y ago
  Obviously better private, if possible, but a couple of counter points. First, Comcast/Verizon is a duopoly with two of the poorest customer satisfaction companies in the country. Ie last place [0]. They do what they want, they charge for things like rural broadband and pocket the fee but don't provide it, they (alleged?) sell your data and browsing habits, they mess with your traffic [2] ... a miserable, expensive experience all around. BTW I pay Vrz $80/mo for 150mbps only, no bundle, and it was major grief to get this. Second, Municipal broadband is blocked here [1]. Comcast HQ in Philly is a big force. 0. http://fortune.com/2017/05/25/cable-tv-comcast-verizon/ http://fortune.com/2017/05/25/cable-tv-comcast-verizon/ 1. https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks/#pennsylvania https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc... 2. https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/7izns8/are_you_aware_comcast_is_injecting_400_lines_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/7izns8/are_you_...
  - greggyb 7y ago
    Call them up and ask for their online offer of 3-year $79.99 for their "1G" (I always forget that theirs is actually a bit below). This is live today: https://postimg.cc/G446YpBQ https://postimg.cc/G446YpBQ I see it when browsing to their Fios site: https://www.verizon.com/home/fios-fastest-internet/ https://www.verizon.com/home/fios-fastest-internet/ You may have to cancel and re-order - I did. I'm not sure whether you consider it a hassle or not. For me, it meant hanging out at home for a two hour window (always grab the morning ones so someone else's delay doesn't become your late appointment). This is easy, as I work from home, but it's also not hard to find time on a weekend (for me). I highly recommend calling up and asking them. You can set your disconnection day and your appointment on the same day. You mail back your old equipment in a box they send you.
dwighttk 7y ago
What are they using? I had Clear using WiMax for a few years and it was good enough until they shut down. I was tired of all the cable shenanigans.
- ak217 7y ago
  I had Clear WiMax in a big metro for a few years and it was awful. Miserly speeds, lots of interference and congestion. Modern wireless ISPs use a mesh of point-to-point directional radios operating on WiFi frequencies (see https://mikrotik.com/products/group/wireless-systems https://mikrotik.com/products/group/wireless-systems and https://www.ui.com/products/#airfiber https://www.ui.com/products/#airfiber for some popular products). These radios are much higher performance than WiMax (10 Gbit links are possible over short distances, 1 Gbit is normal over several miles) and suffer less interference because of directional antennas. WISPs have been staging a quiet revolution across areas that don't see much competition. In San Francisco, known for atrocious bureaucracy preventing ISP competition, traditional fiber providers have been struggling to expand service for decades. Meanwhile, a local WISP called MonkeyBrains has quietly covered almost all of San Francisco and much of Oakland and Berkeley in their mesh, and is continuing to expand.
  - dwighttk 7y ago
    yeah, I was in Durham, NC and was pretty close to the tower. I don't think there was much congestion.
myvoiceismypass 7y ago
I’ve had this for a year now & I love it. My speeds are typically twice what is advertised. FWIW, I used to have att gigabit for comparison.
PhillyWisper 7y ago
Wow! Never expected we would end up on HN. Happy to answer any questions. Mark ps: Some press and a review. https://www.phillymag.com/news/2019/04/29/wisper-internet-service-philadelphia/ https://www.phillymag.com/news/2019/04/29/wisper-internet-se... https://dangerouslyawesome.com/2016/05/what-its-like-to-have-an-internet-provider-that-actually-cares/ https://dangerouslyawesome.com/2016/05/what-its-like-to-have...
- JimiofEden 7y ago
  Any plans to service the areas outside of Philly? (I moved out 3-4 years ago, but am starting to miss it quite a bit.) Either way, by even introducing competition like this, you're doing something fantastic. Kudos!
  - PhillyWisper 7y ago
    Thanks! We're focused on covering much more of Philadelphia before we start looking to expand elsewhere.
- elliekelly 7y ago
  Has Comcast given you any trouble yet? Like their lobbyist suddenly taking an interest in housing code that permits antennas or anything of that sort?
- EliRivers 7y ago
  Do you have any concerns about the incumbents trying to cut you out of the market? Perhaps by lobbying to get your business shut out, or perhaps through some kind of smear campaign? Or something else - I wouldn't put anything past some of these existing suppliers. Do you see any action on their part against you?
  - PhillyWisper 7y ago
    No. We're too little to be a financial concern to them. Also, anything they might do would be a bad PR move for them. Then again, I'm sure we'd get more business from the Streisand effect. :-)
0x54D5 7y ago
I work out of Indyhall. Philly's most popular coworking space. I'm using Philly Whisper right now. We only use it because Comcast couldn't keep our connection working. We're literally on Market street two blocks from Independence Hall. Within 5 blocks is the Philadelphia Mint. Numerous Federal courts, etc. And we still can't get a reliable connection. Philly Whisper still goes down occasionally. We've had it go down twice in the past 60 days. They are super responsive but at the end of the day the internet going down for hours is still money lost. I have FIOS at home and I've only ever seen it go down at night and it's because of a router update. Disclaimer: I used to work for Comcast. Would not recommend.
i_am_proteus 7y ago
> we’ll just need clear line of sight from your roof to our towers I don't know what the real estate market is like in the parts of Phila. they're operating in, but in an area with lots of new construction, this could be an interesting issue when a proposed new structure would block existing customers.
- Jolter 7y ago
  This happens regularly for regular cell towers. Even major operators can get hit. It can usually be solved within days even if not advertised in advance, but that's for those major operators who can afford to put up a lot of towers or micros.
amelius 7y ago
> we’ll just need clear line of sight from your roof to our towers. Wouldn't it make sense to also implement mesh networking locally, so you wouldn't need a line-of-sight connection to every subscriber?
- mikey_p 7y ago
  I've used a similar provider, Stephouse in Portland, OR and they would routinely install repeaters throughout the city to help cover deadspots, areas shaded by tall buildings, hills, etc. I assume the same would be available in Philly with the advantage that Philly is quite flat by comparison.
  - amelius 7y ago
    Do these repeaters also require line-of-sight to the consumer, or do they use a different means of communication? (Also this sounds a lot like an ordinary provider and not like the independence as claimed on the website. A mesh networking solution would achieve independence through peer-to-peer connectivity.)
    - grahamburger 7y ago
      Mesh networks at this scale are pretty complicated and messy. Also they tend to be pretty low capacity. It's an order of magnitude (or maybe two) more difficult to build and manage a high-capacity robust mesh network than to build a pure line of sight hub-and-spoke style network. (I've done both.)
stuart78 7y ago
At first this struck me as expensive, in the sense that per Gbps, I get a much better price from Comcast. And then I remembered all of the externalities that come along with that price: data caps, potential monitoring, bad customer support and whatever else I'm forgetting. How much is avoiding those actually worth to me? Probably pretty close to the price difference, actually, and if those things are really important to me I should be willing to walk the walk and pay for them. I won't, because I don't live in Philadelphia, but I hope to have real viable alternatives where I do live.
- apeace 7y ago
  Don't forget to read their customer agreement: > Residential customers are not allowed to . . . consume more bandwidth than required to support typical residential Internet activities. PhillyWisper may disconnect or limit the bandwidth for residential customers who use residential service for activities deemed atypical at PhillyWisper’s discretion. That sounds to me like exactly what Comcast does. Torrent too many files of open data? No internet for you.
  - Wheaties466 7y ago
    ISPs have to put this in there to protect themselves. Most small ISPs don't care what you do or how much bandwidth you consume unless you are degrading the performance of their other customers. Source: I used to work at a small WISP similar to philly wisper.
    - apeace 7y ago
      Sorry I caught this so late, but no, ISPs do not have to use language like this to protect themselves. They can also provide the bandwidth the customer is paying for 100% of the time (or give the customer's money back), like my company does: https://www.pilotfiber.com/legal https://www.pilotfiber.com/legal
sjs382 7y ago
I think that a lot of major cities have something like this... It just tends to not be advertised broadly. For instance, New Orleans (not exactly a tech hub) has at least 2 companies like this[0] and I've only accidentally found out about them. I wish I could try one of these, but I'm outside of their coverage area. "WISP <city>" seems to be the search term if you're looking for something like this in your city. [0] http://southwan.com/coverage/ http://southwan.com/coverage/ & http://skycom1.com/about-us/ http://skycom1.com/about-us/ & https://www.nolabroadband.com/our-services/residential/ https://www.nolabroadband.com/our-services/residential/
- grahamburger 7y ago
  A few other ways to find WISPs in the U.S.: http://www.wispa.org/Directories/Find-a-WISP http://www.wispa.org/Directories/Find-a-WISP https://broadbandnow.com/ https://broadbandnow.com/ BroadbandNow uses data reported by ISPs to the FCC. Disclaimer: I do have a relationship with BroadbandNow, they sponsor a website that I run.
grahamburger 7y ago
Very cool! Always great to see fellow WISP folks on HN! For those curious about the industry: there are something like 500 wireless ISPs (WISPs) in the U.S. and many more outside of the U.S. http://www.wispa.org http://www.wispa.org is the de-facto standard organization in the U.S. and runs a few conferences throughout the year. The largest WISP in the U.S. today is Rise Broadband (https://www.risebroadband.com/ https://www.risebroadband.com/) - most are considerably smaller. I worked at Rise for about 10 years and have spent basically my whole career working for Wireless ISPs in the U.S.
jzig 7y ago
I would give anything for this in Baltimore.

137 points by heydenberk 7y ago

sgt 7y ago

Wireless has become much better and robust in recent years, but I've honestly never been exposed to a wireless solution that was completely without issues. That's why I'll always prefer cables (as in fiber). Not knowing much about Philadelphia, surely a city like that offers fiber to most houses in 2019, and it's probably not going to cost more than $50-100/month for an entry level package? I could be wrong.

derg 7y ago
Philly resident here, I pay no contract $79.99 for Fios gigabit. Verizon here also offers a 100mbps option (I think it's that at least) for $39.99 I believe, so this is a bit expensive.
- covercash 7y ago
  Those prices are only for the first year, I recently learned that when my $39.99 100/100 plan jumped to $55, and the customer service rep said it will jump to $65 the third year.

dsr_ 7y ago

That sounds really nice; I wish them all the best luck. "PhillyWisper Residential service plans are designed for personal use for 8 hours a day for general internet use including streaming, web surfing, e-mail access, and all other possible online activities. Residential customers are not allowed to host public servers of any kind, use static (public) IPv4 IP addresses, or consume more bandwidth than required to support typical residential Internet activities. PhillyWisper may disconnect or limit the bandwidth for residential customers who use residential service for activities deemed atypical at PhillyWisper’s discretion.Connection speeds for Residential service plans will fluctuate based on network demand." That's not so friendly. IN fact, it's rather badly defined. No mention of IPv6.

radcon 7y ago
> Residential customers are not allowed to . . . consume more bandwidth than required to support typical residential Internet activities. PhillyWisper may disconnect or limit the bandwidth for residential customers who use residential service for activities deemed atypical at PhillyWisper’s discretion. This worries me much more than any privacy issues (which could easily be alleviated with a $5/mo. VPN). Are we supposed to read their minds to determine what "typical" behavior we're allowed to engage in? Or should we just live in constant fear of our internet being arbitrarily disconnected?
wrsh07 7y ago
This seems especially problematic given that many residential users don't know when something is taking significantly more data. Eg my sister was surprised by how much of her quota was used by her Amazon fire stick
atourgates 7y ago
Yeah, it depends on enforcement. I use a great rural, local WISP, and they expressly prohibit P2P download/uploading like BitTorrent, but it’s otherwise unlimited. Hopefully PhillyWisper’s service is similarly structured.

Klathmon 7y ago

Wow I can't believe I'm seeing this on HN! I worked with the co-founder Mark Steckel, and he is about as good as they get. He takes privacy and security VERY seriously (he's the only person I know that actually uses PGP!) and he's one of those guys who has forgotten more about networking than I'll ever know in my lifetime. He literally answered a call one time while on the roof of a building either setting up or tweaking service for someone! I don't live in the Philly area any more, but if you do I'd be willing to bet my reputation that you'll love the ISP if you get them.

youdontknowtho 7y ago
"East Kensington start-up"...I thought that was code for "crack house" or "junky graveyard". I kid, I kid. Best of luck to them. That area could really use some success stories.
- JimiofEden 7y ago
  About 10-20 years ago, you'd be completely correct. But that area has underwent some of the craziest transformations I've seen in a long time recently. Not exactly gentrified, but certainly more accepting of literally everyone.
  - peterwwillis 7y ago
    Nobody pays a mil-plus for a building of 3-story condos on a former crack block unless it's gentrified. Northeast Philly is the new Williamsburg.
    - sman393 7y ago
      "Northeast Philly is the new Williamsburg" That's a bit of a stretch...
zachruss92 7y ago
I agree. Mark is knowledgeable and attentive. Given that they are a small player in a big space, they are very sensitive to customer issues and really strive to provide great service and uptime.

AstroJetson 7y ago

It would be a nice if they would put their tower(s) locations and their range circle on the site. That would at least give a running start if they can get a signal to the destination. I'd rather not need to sign up to find this information out.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
dmead 7y ago
The tower is probably in a pretty dense area. If they start listing it people would probably freak out no?
PhillyWisper 7y ago
You don't actually need to sign up to tell if you are in range. Just check out the "Available now" section in the zip code drop down on the sign-up form.
- covercash 7y ago
  19118 is listed as “later” but what does that realistically mean? Too many trees towering over rooftops in Chestnut Hill to provide coverage to most residents?
- AstroJetson 7y ago
  Ok, that wasn't intuitive from the form, it looked like you wanted a ton of info before I got to the zipcode. Maybe a hint on that page to look. Thanks!

ibdf 7y ago

I look forward to see this business growing as it gives an alternative other than comcast and verizon which both have poor customer service. However, in Philly, 25 Mbps for $50 is expensive. In comparison I have been paying $70 a month for 100mbps with Verizon. Perhaps price will go down as customer base increases. I would also like to know more about the reliability of the service in bad weather.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
war1025 7y ago
I'm assuming it's using a similar technology as my mom's internet uses (hers has an antenna pointing at the local water tower). I can't think of a time that she's had weather related outages.
myvoiceismypass 7y ago
I have this service, in Philly, and weather is never an issue for me. I’ve had a total of maybe 3-4 brief (less than 5 minutes) outages in my year of service.

youdontknowtho 7y ago

Philly tried to have a community mesh net years ago. It really didn't work out. Hopefully this fares better.

Famicoman 7y ago
There have been at least 3 attempts. The current one is still lacking much of a community.

pard68 7y ago

I pay 90/month for 150. Seems like a major compromise

compliance_data 7y ago

I have been a customer for 3 years and have been ecstatic with their service. I think there have been maybe 2 outages in 3 years, and within minutes Mark e-mailed everyone detailing what happened, why, what he was doing to fix it, and when he expected to have maintenance finished. Observed speeds are typically higher than SLAs and as long as Mark is in business I don't plan to use anyone else. When he came to install equipment I got the opportunity to go up on my roof and "help" (I know v little about networking) but it made for a really fun afternoon.

jefflombardjr 7y ago
What's the latency and speed like beyond the advertised speeds? That would be my biggest hold back and was why I didn't sign up for Clear a couple years back.
- jasonm89 7y ago
  Clear was a horrible ISP.
- compliance_data 7y ago
  For speed I regularly clock ~80 mbps down ~25 mbps up. This is pretty consistent (had a "slow" night on Sunday of ~60mbps when I checked). Latency I haven't really paid much attention: I usually only check when it feels like something is wrong as a sanity check.

greggyb 7y ago

I love to see this, but it's a hard sell. Philly is one of the lucky cities with reasonable competition already, one of which is Verizon's Fios - decently built out through the city. A lot of new construction homes have both Comcast* and Fios pre-wired into the home, so installation is trivial and competition is, delightfully, fierce. 25M wireless connections at $50 are a hard sell against 1G fiber at $80. I don't mean to be a debbie-downer about this, because I think promoting connectivity is a huge boon to society. * Fun fact, the new Comcast building looks like a middle finger facing west - literally flipping off the rest of the country. Seems appropriate.

vips7L 7y ago
I get 75/75 from fios for $50.
derg 7y ago
from some angles (directly north or south) it looks like a vape rig to me.
imglorp 7y ago
Obviously better private, if possible, but a couple of counter points. First, Comcast/Verizon is a duopoly with two of the poorest customer satisfaction companies in the country. Ie last place [0]. They do what they want, they charge for things like rural broadband and pocket the fee but don't provide it, they (alleged?) sell your data and browsing habits, they mess with your traffic [2] ... a miserable, expensive experience all around. BTW I pay Vrz $80/mo for 150mbps only, no bundle, and it was major grief to get this. Second, Municipal broadband is blocked here [1]. Comcast HQ in Philly is a big force. 0. http://fortune.com/2017/05/25/cable-tv-comcast-verizon/ http://fortune.com/2017/05/25/cable-tv-comcast-verizon/ 1. https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks/#pennsylvania https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc... 2. https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/7izns8/are_you_aware_comcast_is_injecting_400_lines_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/7izns8/are_you_...
- greggyb 7y ago
  Call them up and ask for their online offer of 3-year $79.99 for their "1G" (I always forget that theirs is actually a bit below). This is live today: https://postimg.cc/G446YpBQ https://postimg.cc/G446YpBQ I see it when browsing to their Fios site: https://www.verizon.com/home/fios-fastest-internet/ https://www.verizon.com/home/fios-fastest-internet/ You may have to cancel and re-order - I did. I'm not sure whether you consider it a hassle or not. For me, it meant hanging out at home for a two hour window (always grab the morning ones so someone else's delay doesn't become your late appointment). This is easy, as I work from home, but it's also not hard to find time on a weekend (for me). I highly recommend calling up and asking them. You can set your disconnection day and your appointment on the same day. You mail back your old equipment in a box they send you.

dwighttk 7y ago

What are they using? I had Clear using WiMax for a few years and it was good enough until they shut down. I was tired of all the cable shenanigans.

ak217 7y ago
I had Clear WiMax in a big metro for a few years and it was awful. Miserly speeds, lots of interference and congestion. Modern wireless ISPs use a mesh of point-to-point directional radios operating on WiFi frequencies (see https://mikrotik.com/products/group/wireless-systems https://mikrotik.com/products/group/wireless-systems and https://www.ui.com/products/#airfiber https://www.ui.com/products/#airfiber for some popular products). These radios are much higher performance than WiMax (10 Gbit links are possible over short distances, 1 Gbit is normal over several miles) and suffer less interference because of directional antennas. WISPs have been staging a quiet revolution across areas that don't see much competition. In San Francisco, known for atrocious bureaucracy preventing ISP competition, traditional fiber providers have been struggling to expand service for decades. Meanwhile, a local WISP called MonkeyBrains has quietly covered almost all of San Francisco and much of Oakland and Berkeley in their mesh, and is continuing to expand.
- dwighttk 7y ago
  yeah, I was in Durham, NC and was pretty close to the tower. I don't think there was much congestion.

myvoiceismypass 7y ago

I’ve had this for a year now & I love it. My speeds are typically twice what is advertised. FWIW, I used to have att gigabit for comparison.

PhillyWisper 7y ago

Wow! Never expected we would end up on HN. Happy to answer any questions. Mark ps: Some press and a review. https://www.phillymag.com/news/2019/04/29/wisper-internet-service-philadelphia/ https://www.phillymag.com/news/2019/04/29/wisper-internet-se... https://dangerouslyawesome.com/2016/05/what-its-like-to-have-an-internet-provider-that-actually-cares/ https://dangerouslyawesome.com/2016/05/what-its-like-to-have...

JimiofEden 7y ago
Any plans to service the areas outside of Philly? (I moved out 3-4 years ago, but am starting to miss it quite a bit.) Either way, by even introducing competition like this, you're doing something fantastic. Kudos!
- PhillyWisper 7y ago
  Thanks! We're focused on covering much more of Philadelphia before we start looking to expand elsewhere.
elliekelly 7y ago
Has Comcast given you any trouble yet? Like their lobbyist suddenly taking an interest in housing code that permits antennas or anything of that sort?
EliRivers 7y ago
Do you have any concerns about the incumbents trying to cut you out of the market? Perhaps by lobbying to get your business shut out, or perhaps through some kind of smear campaign? Or something else - I wouldn't put anything past some of these existing suppliers. Do you see any action on their part against you?
- PhillyWisper 7y ago
  No. We're too little to be a financial concern to them. Also, anything they might do would be a bad PR move for them. Then again, I'm sure we'd get more business from the Streisand effect. :-)

0x54D5 7y ago

I work out of Indyhall. Philly's most popular coworking space. I'm using Philly Whisper right now. We only use it because Comcast couldn't keep our connection working. We're literally on Market street two blocks from Independence Hall. Within 5 blocks is the Philadelphia Mint. Numerous Federal courts, etc. And we still can't get a reliable connection. Philly Whisper still goes down occasionally. We've had it go down twice in the past 60 days. They are super responsive but at the end of the day the internet going down for hours is still money lost. I have FIOS at home and I've only ever seen it go down at night and it's because of a router update. Disclaimer: I used to work for Comcast. Would not recommend.

i_am_proteus 7y ago

> we’ll just need clear line of sight from your roof to our towers I don't know what the real estate market is like in the parts of Phila. they're operating in, but in an area with lots of new construction, this could be an interesting issue when a proposed new structure would block existing customers.

Jolter 7y ago
This happens regularly for regular cell towers. Even major operators can get hit. It can usually be solved within days even if not advertised in advance, but that's for those major operators who can afford to put up a lot of towers or micros.

amelius 7y ago

> we’ll just need clear line of sight from your roof to our towers. Wouldn't it make sense to also implement mesh networking locally, so you wouldn't need a line-of-sight connection to every subscriber?

mikey_p 7y ago
I've used a similar provider, Stephouse in Portland, OR and they would routinely install repeaters throughout the city to help cover deadspots, areas shaded by tall buildings, hills, etc. I assume the same would be available in Philly with the advantage that Philly is quite flat by comparison.
- amelius 7y ago
  Do these repeaters also require line-of-sight to the consumer, or do they use a different means of communication? (Also this sounds a lot like an ordinary provider and not like the independence as claimed on the website. A mesh networking solution would achieve independence through peer-to-peer connectivity.)
  - grahamburger 7y ago
    Mesh networks at this scale are pretty complicated and messy. Also they tend to be pretty low capacity. It's an order of magnitude (or maybe two) more difficult to build and manage a high-capacity robust mesh network than to build a pure line of sight hub-and-spoke style network. (I've done both.)

stuart78 7y ago

At first this struck me as expensive, in the sense that per Gbps, I get a much better price from Comcast. And then I remembered all of the externalities that come along with that price: data caps, potential monitoring, bad customer support and whatever else I'm forgetting. How much is avoiding those actually worth to me? Probably pretty close to the price difference, actually, and if those things are really important to me I should be willing to walk the walk and pay for them. I won't, because I don't live in Philadelphia, but I hope to have real viable alternatives where I do live.

apeace 7y ago
Don't forget to read their customer agreement: > Residential customers are not allowed to . . . consume more bandwidth than required to support typical residential Internet activities. PhillyWisper may disconnect or limit the bandwidth for residential customers who use residential service for activities deemed atypical at PhillyWisper’s discretion. That sounds to me like exactly what Comcast does. Torrent too many files of open data? No internet for you.
- Wheaties466 7y ago
  ISPs have to put this in there to protect themselves. Most small ISPs don't care what you do or how much bandwidth you consume unless you are degrading the performance of their other customers. Source: I used to work at a small WISP similar to philly wisper.
  - apeace 7y ago
    Sorry I caught this so late, but no, ISPs do not have to use language like this to protect themselves. They can also provide the bandwidth the customer is paying for 100% of the time (or give the customer's money back), like my company does: https://www.pilotfiber.com/legal https://www.pilotfiber.com/legal

sjs382 7y ago

I think that a lot of major cities have something like this... It just tends to not be advertised broadly. For instance, New Orleans (not exactly a tech hub) has at least 2 companies like this[0] and I've only accidentally found out about them. I wish I could try one of these, but I'm outside of their coverage area. "WISP <city>" seems to be the search term if you're looking for something like this in your city. [0] http://southwan.com/coverage/ http://southwan.com/coverage/ & http://skycom1.com/about-us/ http://skycom1.com/about-us/ & https://www.nolabroadband.com/our-services/residential/ https://www.nolabroadband.com/our-services/residential/

grahamburger 7y ago
A few other ways to find WISPs in the U.S.: http://www.wispa.org/Directories/Find-a-WISP http://www.wispa.org/Directories/Find-a-WISP https://broadbandnow.com/ https://broadbandnow.com/ BroadbandNow uses data reported by ISPs to the FCC. Disclaimer: I do have a relationship with BroadbandNow, they sponsor a website that I run.

grahamburger 7y ago

Very cool! Always great to see fellow WISP folks on HN! For those curious about the industry: there are something like 500 wireless ISPs (WISPs) in the U.S. and many more outside of the U.S. http://www.wispa.org http://www.wispa.org is the de-facto standard organization in the U.S. and runs a few conferences throughout the year. The largest WISP in the U.S. today is Rise Broadband (https://www.risebroadband.com/ https://www.risebroadband.com/) - most are considerably smaller. I worked at Rise for about 10 years and have spent basically my whole career working for Wireless ISPs in the U.S.

jzig 7y ago

I would give anything for this in Baltimore.