Thursday, March 8, 2018

How much should I charge?

I work in the wireless industry, but the brother of a long time customer of mine, came to me seeking help with his home internet service.

His previous DSL setup was only receiving 1.3 Mbps, while he was paying $150/month for 3 Mbps & home telephone. His lot is very large & his historic house is 4,500 sq ft. (A $2.4 million home in a community with an average home price of $160k. )

A competitor of his current ISP quoted $6,000 for “last mile” construction because he was 120-180 ft too far from their node. That was before the cost of the utility pole and was expected to take 9 months.

I decided to get creative. I suggested & negotiated an agreement between my client and his neighbor (acquaintances for 50 years) which meant the ISP running a secondary connection to the neighbor’s. I was there for the duration of the install.

Tomorrow, I will trench and bury about 300 ft of cable to move the modem and we’re hoping to achieve close to 100 Mbps after about a month and a half of researching and back and forth trying to work with ISP’s.

I’ll then either be installing a PoE to distribute WiFi or a mesh system once all the work outdoors is done..

Both my client & his brother own several successful businesses and are definitely multimillionaires. I really believe he’d write me a check for 8 or 10 grand if I asked , but I’m not looking to take advantage just because he’s loaded.

What’s fair here? I’m in my mid-twenties and could damn sure use the money, but I definitely value long term relationships over shortsighted profit. Any insight would be greatly appreciated!



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