WISP (wireless internet service provider)

What is a WISP?

A WISP owns or leases tower sites and radio equipment. Each tower connects back to a larger network by a backhaul link, then out to the internet. Customers get an antenna on the building and a power supply indoors. The FCC does not treat a WISP as a separate class of company in its reports. A WISP shows up inside the "fixed wireless" category, next to the home internet that phone carriers sell over cellular networks.

Most WISPs are small and regional. In Northern Nevada the ones with plans on their own sites include High Desert Internet, Rango, Net NV, Sky Fiber and Avant Wireless, each described on our compare pages with the date read.

Is High Desert Internet a WISP?

Yes. High Desert Internet Services calls itself a locally owned fixed wireless provider, and its Google listing gives an opening date of August 2002. It sends service from towers by microwave radio, runs its own customer email and webmail, and offers web hosting and domain registration beside the internet plans.

The practical effect of being a local WISP is that the people who plan the path to your roof are the same people who answer the phone. Customers say so in their Google reviews. Its office phone line is staffed 9 to 5 every day, and its network is watched around the clock, with storm crews dispatched like a utility's.

What should I ask any WISP?

Ask whether the company has surveyed the path from a tower to your roof, who owns the antenna, whether a data transfer limit applies, and what happens when you cancel. For High Desert the answers sit in its service agreement, which is on our service agreement page: the antenna, radio, power supply and injector stay the company's property, and cancelling takes two weeks notice and the equipment back.

No WISP can honestly say it reaches a whole town. A tower reaches only the buildings it can see. Check your address and a person will look at your path and call you back.