With a philosophy that the cable network moving forward should be primarily a transport mechanism, a startup in the great Northwest has been making "waves" since 2002, with its gigabit fiber and broadband services. Wave Broadband, through its brand CondoInternet, has been providing residential Gbps Internet service to condos and apartment buildings in Seattle since 2008 and recently announced the launch of a similar offering in the San Francisco Bay area. Specifically, its Wave-G symmetrical gigabit and 100 Mbps is now available to NEMA, a 750-unit property, for a promotional rate of $80 per month.
The company does offer video services as well (for a monthly fee its says amounts to the cost of programming), but also encourages customers to get OTT content.
"We see a world where it is about the broadband connection to the home or business," said Harold Zeitz, president of Wave Broadband. "We want to be facilitators and help them get their content over a fast connection .... In the future world that becomes the Internet of Things at home, people will want a company like ours focused on customer service to bring a superfast Internet connection and help them (manage) all services."
On the business side, the company offers dark fiber, but also managed network services for enterprise customers and small businesses, including phone and data storage. Wave currently owns 5,000 route fiber miles (valued at more than $2.5 billion) stretching from San Francisco north to the Canadian border.
The growth strategy has been and continues to be finding a large customer in need of fiber, building out to their location, and then selling to other customers along the line, extending where necessary. The business has been profitable with $350 million in annual revenue, which has paid for past expansions. However, demand has become such that Wave Broadband recently announced it had raised $130 million in funding to accelerate its network growth.
More than 1,500 route miles of fiber will be added in 2015, redundant fiber rings will be completed between markets in California, and gigabit Internet service will reach an additional 10,000-plus residents in Seattle. Business solutions also will be expanded, including co-location facilities and more voice solutions, such as hosted PBX.
"By the nature of the business being subscription (based), this should help accelerate revenue and profit growth," Zeitz said, noting that in Seattle, a trial is also taking place to bring gigabit service to single family homes and not just MDUs.
As for competing with older and bigger networks, in addition to providing a fast connection (Wave was named fastest ISP in the northwest by PC Magazine in 2014), the company focuses on customer service by touting, in part, that it is a local company and owned by its own employees. "These three things together are the ingredients for competing in the marketplace. We offer a better value package - not necessarily the cheapest, but faster and more reliable," Zeitz said.