{"id":897,"date":"2019-04-02T08:04:25","date_gmt":"2019-04-01T20:04:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wispa.nz\/?p=897"},"modified":"2024-01-08T19:07:23","modified_gmt":"2024-01-08T07:07:23","slug":"raglan-and-beyond","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wispa.nz\/?p=897","title":{"rendered":"PureLink – Raglan And Beyond"},"content":{"rendered":"

The PureLink<\/a> Story (Formally known as Wanna)- A WISP profile by Ernie Newman<\/p>\n

\"At
At PureLink’s (formally known as Wanna Internet) Frankton engineering base \u2013 Paul Willard (left) and Jason Brand are guys who love coming to work.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Raglan\u2019s unique. For generations its been the Waikato\u2019s beach town – a summertime mecca for Waikato and Auckland beachgoers. Once it had an image problem, but today its very mainstream.<\/p>\n

Its crowded in summer. On a Saturday you can wait in line 90 minutes for a hamburger. Its unspoilt and natural. The surf is sensational. According to \u201cLonely Planet\u201d its New Zealand\u2019s best-looking town. The population is an eclectic mix of international business people, hippies, and surfers.<\/p>\n

On the downside, there\u2019s not a lot of employment, certainly so in the off season. And the residents aren\u2019t in a hurry to accelerate development with some having famously threatened to leave if KFC ever comes to town.<\/p>\n

There isn\u2019t much work in Raglan. Most people commute to Hamilton.<\/p>\n

Despite all that, Raglan has fibre-grade broadband before the cities even got it. Its got PureLink Internet to thank for that.<\/p>\n

Driving west from PureLink’s new premises in Frankton – a few metres from SH1 with oodles of room to expand – founder Jason Brand tells me how PureLink came about.<\/p>\n

Jason spent many years overseas. He\u2019s an electronic engineer by profession but a telecommunications guy by choice. He worked in London, South Africa and Australia. His career culminated as Group Chief Technical Architect of global financial services giant Investec.<\/p>\n

But Jason had done his dash with big corporates and computers. Around 2011 he returned to his roots in Raglan. With nothing much to do over Christmas he set up a wireless hot spot. It actually made a small amount of money.<\/p>\n

So Jason upgraded PureLink from a dalliance to a serious business. He organised backhaul from Snap Internet on a standard home plan and bought some access points to service a handful of customers. \u201cIt cost me a heap in data over-runs,\u201d he confessed. Then he stumbled across Go Wireless, the doyen of and equipment supplier to Kiwi WISPs. From there it was game on.<\/p>\n

Jason\u2019s original goal was to WiFi-connect the whole of Raglan. He didn\u2019t quite get there. But life moved on. The Snap bill got higher and higher as he connected multiple customers to what was essentially a single residential plan. So working with Waikato \u201cTelco Guy\u201d Shane Hobson he organised a professional backhaul deal through FX Networks, allowing him to sign up multiple customers in the far bigger market of Hamilton.<\/p>\n

At that time Chorus was realising it no longer had the benefit of a monopoly. Suddenly its backhaul pricing dropped by 90%. The backhaul floodgates opened.<\/p>\n

That made PureLink business model a whole lot more enticing. The company became nationwide but retained a Waikato focus. In no time they\u2019d built a dozen wireless sites from Te Akau south to Kawhia and Whatawhata in the east.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s been telling me all this as we wind our way west through undulating country towards the coast. Now, we turn off the road and climb a steep farm track for 15 minutes to PureLink’s site at Mount Te Uku station, way up in the sky among the wind turbines.<\/p>\n

\"High
High on a hill overlooking Raglan and the west coast, PureLink’s Mount Te Uku Station site is as solid as they come.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As WISP sites go this is special. Its powered by both solar panels and wind turbines. Solar is king but wind kicks in for a couple of weeks each year when the sun disappears. The pristine concrete slab looks as if its been vacuumed that morning – everything is immaculate. It\u2019s a site that\u2019s benefited from a decade of trial and error. The concrete pad makes life easy \u2013 its safe to work on, convenient, meets the OSH goals, and avoids the cattle damaging the fence by sticking their heads through to eat the grass.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Wind turbines for the national grid in the background. This ridge is seriously breezy.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
Nothing is spared to achieve a solid site \u2013 note the extensive bracing to offset the westerly gales, wind turbines used a couple of weeks each year to supplement the solar power, and flat concrete floor to make maintenance a breeze.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jason claims proudly a site like this should go a decade without serious maintenance.<\/p>\n

Every WISP\u2019s area has individual climatic and topographical challenges. PureLink contends with wild westerly salt water gales which cause huge issues with rust. Powder coating helps resist this. They\u2019ve seen wind turbines blown to pieces on a really bad day. It\u2019s not just confined to WISP sites – PureLink Systems and Networks Manager Paul Willard tells me he has put special reinforced walls on the west side of his home so it won\u2019t blow over. Issues with loose sand have seen the turbines literally blown off a site or two on bad days. Planting special grasses specific to the area helps to stabilise their equipment.<\/p>\n

PureLink’s coverage has grown greatly over time. Today the network comprises over a dozen sites covering the coast from Te Akau (west of Taupiri) to Kawhia, and inland to the general area of Whatawhata. There\u2019s constant expansion \u2013 a new site has just been commissioned at Aotea to strengthen the Kawhia footprint. All that\u2019s taken PureLink’s customer count to around 1100 businesses and homes.<\/p>\n

\"If
If all else fails, there are batteries.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Back at the Frankton base I get a chance to talk more to Paul Willard. By his own description a \u201cclassic nerd\u201d Paul spent time as Global Operations Manager for SMX email and has been in large corporates for most of his career. He\u2019s got the tech skills as well as business credentials honed by an MBA.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew nothing about WISPs when I came into this sector,\u201d he tells me. He shifted from the corporate world into another local WISP several years ago, then moved to PureLink. \u201cI went to the WISPA conference last week while Jason went up a hill to pour concrete for the next tower,\u201d he quips. \u201cThat shows the way we each prefer to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the future, who knows in such an evolving industry? Fibre to the premises is increasingly intruding into PureLink’s core territory. New settlements targeted now have small clusters of customers \u2013 maybe 20 compared to the 3500 on offer in Raglan. New wireless technologies, especially LTE (Long Term Evolution) are imminent and offer huge new efficiencies preceded by a lot of capital investment.<\/p>\n

Jason sees local customer service as PureLink’s greatest strength. He speculates that WISPs might morph into RISPs \u2013 regional Internet Service Providers offering a selection of different access technologies of which wireless is just one, from a range of vendors, through a local interface. \u201cPureLink is already in that transformation and preparing for the future,\u201d he says. \u201cThey value the opportunity to talk to a real person. Our edge is customer service \u2013 but even that is under threat as artificial intelligence takes on the traditional human interface in contact centres.\u201d<\/p>\n

Happy PureLink Customers are easy to find<\/h2>\n

Alex Crane, Security Consultant \u2013 \u201cAbsolutely Exemplary service!\u201d<\/p>\n

Not many customers describe their telecommunications service as \u201cAbsolutely exemplary\u201d but that\u2019s the description from PureLink’s customer Alex Crane. Alex is a Raglan-based security consultant whose needs are quite special, including penetration testing. His 120 year-old copper line in a dead spot in Raglan was never going to meet his needs, and experiences with both Vodafone and Spark showed no interest in a customer whose needs didn\u2019t fit their \u201ccookie cutter\u201d product.<\/p>\n

\u201cPureLink’s billing and reminder services, their automation levels and personal service, are the best customer service I\u2019ve ever experienced from an ISP,\u201d says Alex. It doesn\u2019t get much better than that.<\/p>\n

Crusader Meats<\/h2>\n

\u2013 \u201cSome People Really<\/i> Know What They\u2019re Doing\u201d<\/h2>\n

Across the opposite side of PureLink’s network I find another huge PureLink fan. Gordon Simmonds is the accountant at Crusader Meats on Highway 30, midway between Mangakino and Benneydale. With 170 staff Crusader is small by meat industry standards, but in Benneydale its massive.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had nothing here for connectivity,\u201d Gordon tells me. \u201cThe copper was unusable \u2013 it couldn\u2019t even do Internet banking. We\u2019d had a go ourselves at getting a wireless connection, but it was going down most days.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen Jason from PureLink came into the picture. He started again with proper solar power and technology. Everything went perfectly. Soon we had enough confidence to add our voice services into the mix \u2013 which is really important in a place with no cell coverage – and to add our other sites also.\u201d<\/p>\n

PureLink<\/a><\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The PureLink Story (Formally known as Wanna)- A WISP profile by Ernie Newman Raglan\u2019s unique. For generations its been the Waikato\u2019s beach town – a summertime mecca for Waikato and Auckland beachgoers. Once it had an image problem, but today its very mainstream. Its crowded in summer. On a Saturday you can wait in line … <\/p>\n

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