March/April, 2004

TechDenver - td movers and shakers: An interview with WisperTel's CEO Barry Pier

By: Adam "Neo" Cole

In the wake of 9/11 and tech’s bursted bubble, experienced telecom professional Barry Pier was part of the large collection of skilled technology personnel that found themselves unemployed. But Pier wasn’t about to let his twenty years of industry know-how go to waste. Instead of moping, he bet the farm—cashing in on a 401k and taking on a second mortgage to plant the seeds of a telecom dream. Pier incorporated Wisper Telecommunications (WisperTel) in October 2001—officially given status Halloween night—an upstart that is now shaking the trees in bedroom communities in desperate need of faster Internet service. His mountaintop antennas beam fixed wireless signals through community gateways to your home, offering speeds of up to 8 Mbps. Almost single handedly, Pier has networked Colorado’s western outreaches, taking over unlicensed broadband to cover a 1,000 square mile area that today offers Internet service to 200,000 homes and 20,000 businesses to the communities west of Wadsworth. His company just passed 1,100 subscribers and is in its first month of positive cash flow. Pier feels he is on the brink of something explosive and sat down with TechDenver to discuss the once risky venture, his prosperous future and the wild world of telecom.

TD: You accepted a lot of risk to start this telecom venture by putting so much on the line financially? With risk factor so high, what were your initial thoughts/feelings/fears as to getting the startup off the ground?

BP: I relate it to being on the beach and then wading out into the ocean. First you get up to your knees, then up to your waist and then you’re fully in. At some point, reality settles in; you say, ‘this is it, this is the rest of your career.’ It can be very daunting. I had everything I own on this and if it failed, I would be completely bankrupt. But then you push past a threshold to the point we’re at now. Two-and-half years in the making and we now have a substantial subscriber base. Even better, we have reached a reoccurring revenue point where we can handle the ups and downs of day-to-day sales and not jeopardize our salaries.

TD: Do you find near and dear these “bedroom communities?”

BP: The one thing I saw as I looked around after 9/11 was that this whole region out here was devoid of broadband. It became obvious to me what needed to be done. And so we started laying the foundation and now reach a millennia of customers and have the network capacity today to go for at least 8,000.

TD: You serve a niche ignored by the giant telecoms. Why do you think they decided to ignore a place like Evergreen and what made you not want to look the other way?

BP: Well, the main reason the giants did not come in here is the high cost for them to upgrade their networks. I see Comcast cable conduits in our neighborhood and they have to do a lot of expensive directional drilling to deliver bandwidth. Granite is just way too expensive to breach. For Qwest, it would be a similarly expensive thing, especially with the upgrading—the copper facilities that in some neighborhoods dates backs to the 40s—would have to do.

TD: Where is WisperTel now?

BP: We’ve covered the area and gotten quite a lot of customers (over 1,100). But still, a lot of people don’t know we’re out there. We have another round of fundraising and are looking to put the money into marketing this product.

TD: On a technical note, there’s been a lot of talk about 802.16 – WiMAX. Do you have any plans to embrace this technology early on or wait until it’s proven itself?

BP: We’re looking at this technology and, in general, constantly looking at any innovation. We’re on our fourth generation of wireless technology, so we’ve dealt with significant iterations of prototypes and legacy.

TD: You have a very interesting marketing strategy - what some consider the antithesis to the movie Field of Dreams, “if you come, we will build it”- talk about that mentality and how it has helped you achieve success?

BP: When a perspective customer is interested in our service, they fill out a questionnaire on our website. If we can’t serve them today, this request serves as our compass for the future; it tells us where to go. Once we have a known cluster of customers not being served—at least 12 customers—we create a plan and establish a gateway (a repeater site) to serve that community. In this way, we’re laying profitable community on top of profitable community. We don’t deploy massive infrastructure, NOC and OSS—and hold up a sign saying, “We’re here.”

TD: What challenges have you faced trying to get your service off the ground?

BP: We’ve had the classic problems of any startup business, mostly funding. It has been tough sometimes when you don’t have sufficient working capital. Still, we’ve try to hold on to a certain level of systems and support until we absolutely need to move on to the next level. Marketing has been another thing, letting people know that this service can be made available. It’s all a balancing act.

TD: Has it been difficult to deal with the climate and terrain of the foothills?

BP: Yes! Last March was the most difficult time when six and half feet of snow crippled our sites that are on top of mountains. In Morrison, we lost commercial power for six or seven hours. On Bear Mountain, we lost commercial power for three days. We had to get a Snowcat up there with a generator to get things going. Antennas don’t work too well under snow either.

TD: What does the future hold for WisperTel?

BP: We’re going to continue building out. I think we have a model that can go national. And we are developing value-added products such as VoIP, Unified Messaging, etc.

TD: Where to/what next?

BP: I’m having a lot of fun. I’m using skills I’ve acquired over 30 years so it couldn’t be a better position for me. I think we still have a lot of the market to push through and that’s what we’re doing now.

TD: Do you consider yourself a visionary?

BP: I wouldn’t call myself that, but I think I was able to notice an area that wasn’t being covered and decided to do something about it. Technologically, I am very much about using the latest advances. I don’t want to be stuck in the past. The Internet access we provide is the fastest out there.

TD: Advice for today’s telecom entrepreneurs?

BP: Focus. There’s a lot of opportunities out there, but you have to pick one and go with it and stay true to it—or else you’ll fail.