News and Blog

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Jennifer Fritzsche for iGR, a market strategy consultancy focused on the wireless and mobile communications industry. 

Skywire Networks, one of NYC’s fastest growing ISP’s, having lit nearly 2,000 NYC Metro buildings, is excited to announce that it has added two newly served neighborhoods: the East Village and the Lower East Side of Manhattan, to the 50+ neighborhoods that the company serves today.

We are all dealing with some form of “supply chain issues” in our lives due to the Covid pandemic. Whether it’s a shortage of building supplies, medical supplies, or large green olives and small seltzer bottles (near and dear to my heart). A search on Google for the phrase “supply chain issues” comes back with 1,420,000,000 search items.

Words can’t adequately describe what we all experienced in 2020. In early March and through the spring and summer, NYC was at the epicenter of the Covid-19 crisis.

Early on, a number of our employees (including me) had the virus. Fortunately, we all got through the first wave in good shape. For months, most businesses either moved to remote working or shut down, thereby leaving the city as a ghost town. The sounds of sirens filled the air around our offices in Brooklyn, only interrupted by the loud clanking of the pots and pans at 7PM each night by our citizens thanking our nurses, doctors and first responders.

I recently read a thoroughly researched article titled – “It’s 2020: Why Is The Internet Still Treated Like A Luxury, Not A Utility?” As the CEO of Skywire Networks, not only have I been asking this same question for many years, but I have worked with my team over the past 6 years to build an internet network throughout NYC, especially in the “fiber poor” outer-boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx.

Early last month, with much fanfare, Apple announced their new 5G iPhone12. As the Apple ads hit the airwaves, not surprisingly so did the ads for Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T all touting their “5G” networks. If you read the fine print, you will realize that a very small portion of the 5G nationwide network is available and operating. There are 20,000 cities in the US and one of the carriers noted that they have lit 2,000 cities or 10%. If you dig a bit deeper, the total populations of these 2,000 cities is less than 1% of the total population. Anyway, these companies want to sell tons of phones and selling a new shiny object like 5G is a great way to do so.

Skywire Networks, one of NYC’s fastest growing ISP’s, having lit more than 800 buildings and providing data services to thousands of business customers, is excited to announce that it has extended its network to Northern Manhattan and Southern Bronx.

The following article was written by our good friend Skyler Ditchfield, the CEO at California based GeoLinks and we couldn't agree more.  While Skywire Networks provides both Fiber and Fixed Wireless access methods (often both resulting in true diversity), Fixed Wireless is a key component of what we do as owners of one the largest networks in NYC.

Fixed wireless is one of the most reliable, cost-effective connectivity solutions in the marketplace. Despite a proven track record, many misconceptions persist about fixed wireless service. Some of this confusion stems from the early iterations of fixed wireless, some is the product of Internet rumors and some is based on simple misunderstanding of the different types of wireless connections. In reality, today’s fixed wireless solutions can be game changers for business in terms of cost, reliability, redundancy, speed of deployment and scalability.

To set the record straight, we’ve prepared this quick guide to 8 key facts about fixed wireless Internet services.

We hope that you and your families are safe and healthy during this pandemic.

NYC is at the center of this crisis and our team is on the front lines in deploying critical infrastructure to city, state and federal agencies.

Spectrum is so bad that even their employees are urging customers to leave.  

Over the past ten years, the carrier and channel community has been selling Ethernet over Copper (EOC) as a higher bandwidth solution often used to replace T-1's. Carriers and Channel Partners in NYC (and elsewhere) that rely on EOC provided by Verizon are learning that the copper infrastructure is being retired and these circuits are at risk. This is already becoming a MAJOR problem for those carriers and channel partners that sell EOC services. 

New York City is a city of skyscrapers, high-rises and water towers perched far above the ground. But so much of what connects our city -- the subway system, water and electric utilities, fiber and so on -- lies beneath the ground. In an old, densely built city like New York, instead of perpetually looking to dig up of streets to deliver essential services to NYC businesses, we should be looking to solutions that allow for minimal disruption while providing the highest quality service.

 Alan Levy , Forbes Councils

Take a look at any ad for a cellphone service provider, and you’ll see that the overwhelming emphasis is always on speed and, more specifically, on the fact that its competitor doesn’t offer the speed you need to do whatever it is you need to do. And yet, when it comes to business broadband, so many people are willing to stick with what they have, either because they are unaware of other options or because their buildings lack the infrastructure to do so. For high-speed broadband in commercial buildings in New York City, for example, there’s a stark difference between the haves and have-nots, especially in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens, as well as most areas in Manhattan outside of midtown and downtown. It seems incredibly ironic that NYC, one of the largest and wealthiest cities in the world, has such a weak broadband footprint for a large urban city.