Now Dishing Up Satellite Services

The three companies piloted a program with about 12 members of Tech Data's TechSelect and are ready to make the service available to all of the Clearwater, Fla., distributor's customers, said Annette Taber, director of TechSelect.

"This is part of Cisco's program to assist and design products for the SMB market, and we are building the proper relationships to increase profitability [with] solution providers acting as an agent. We're committed to helping solution providers transition their business to more of a managed services model," Taber said.

The bundle includes San Jose, Calif.-based Cisco's Integrated Service Routers and Hughes' Direcway satellite dishes and modem connectors. The service can reach 1,000 Kbps and is targeted at customers that may not have access to or want cable or DSL Internet service, said Marc Newman, senior director of service development at Hughes, Germantown, Md.

Solution providers can receive $150 for each customer that connects to the service, plus about 4 percent of the monthly recurring charge, which is now $100 to $130, depending on bandwidth and number of concurrent users.

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Solution providers don't have to install the dish—Hughes relies on a number of partners for that—but they can count on a few hours of professional services to connect the service to the network, Newman said.

"Our installation partners are not integrators or VARs. These are guys that know how to climb on roofs. They don't do anything with routers or LANs. As soon as they get a connection, they leave," Newman said.

One solution provider in the pilot program said the service has been a success.

"Now we have a better Internet offering for our customers in east Tennessee who only have access to dial-up. The idea is very good. The technology is good," said Tim Story, senior vice president of customer relations at Saratoga Technologies, Johnson City, Tenn.