ISPCon vendor hopes for ‘Allot’ of customers

(Telephony) While much of the mood on the floor of this week’s Spring ISPCon in Baltimore is somber--owing to market conditions and, at least perceptually, a lack of foot traffic--at least one player figures he’s sitting pretty.

Eric Rosser, president of Allot Communications, is specializing on the seemingly hopeless fixed broadband wireless ISP space. And, surprisingly, he’s unconcerned.

“If somebody is selling broadband services and they need to offer tiered services, they need our stuff,” he says frankly.

His “stuff” is technology that helps deliver tiered, usage-based service, including quality of service on a per-flow basis. At the same time, it can adjust data speeds to meet customer parameters, “which sounds easy, but no one does it,” Rosser said.

There are a “ton of fixed wireless broadband providers,” mostly in the unlicensed space selling to a mix of residential and commercial customers, Rosser said. Residential customers can get “best effort” service, but Allot’s technology targets wireless operators that must guarantee quality of service to land lucrative commercial customers.

“They’re here,” Rosser said of his customers. However, he admits some of them won’t be when Fall ISPCon rolls around.

“There’s so many fixed-wireless companies offering gear, 25% of those companies won’t be around next year,” he agreed.

Even so, he’s confident that he has a winning niche.

“In QoS, there’s us,” he said.