How To Charge My Client

[Ignite]

OK. Still do the business plan though.
I do wonder why the ISP doesn't want to own it all end to end and pay you as an engineer though. Smells fishy but not much detail.

Is this a real ISP or a schonky little outfit pretending to be one?

Maybe I'm not explaining myself properly.

A. My client acquires a business property.
B. Property is refurbished and partitioned into spaces.
C. The agent takes care of the renting out these spaces for my client.
D. Normally, the client will have a 1Gbps internet installed in a designated comms room.
E. Client hires me to install a WiFi network which is shared among all the business tenants in the building. One SSID.
All new site will have the same setup, but my client will charge extra for tenants wanting their own isolated setup and faster internet speed. Example, a wired connection with an external IP.
I can do this setup for my client, no issues. Nothing fishy or sinister going on. I've seen this setup before all over London.

[Lance]

Maybe I'm not explaining myself properly.

A. My client acquires a business property.
B. Property is refurbished and partitioned into spaces.
C. The agent takes care of the renting out these spaces for my client.
D. Normally, the client will have a 1Gbps internet installed in a designated comms room.
E. Client hires me to install a WiFi network which is shared among all the business tenants in the building. One SSID.
All new site will have the same setup, but my client will charge extra for tenants wanting their own isolated setup and faster internet speed. Example, a wired connection with an external IP.
I can do this setup for my client, no issues. Nothing fishy or sinister going on. I've seen this setup before all over London.

I am a bit confused how an ISP could be acquiring business property to rent. Are they an ISP or not?

It sounds like you're just supplying and supporting the WiFi?
And the client is charging the business units (I thought this was domestic to be honest) a monthly fee? You have no relationship with the businesses, you're just an on call guy?

Who owns the hardware? You or the client?

You say
"I don't want to overcharge him and on the other hand, I don't want to under charge"
What you really ought to do is "charge slightly less than the next other company offering the same service". Your pricing seems way low.


Why not do the support work on a T&M basis? And charge quite a bit more than £180 an hour. You also want a 3 year contract not a one year, and you want exclusivity for all their similar sites in London.

Or..... Instead of a per device fee why not £10k per year per site?

With everything moving to the cloud and, especially in London, 4G being so fast, reliable and low cost I would not think it's a good idea to expose yourself to any financial risk on this in the slightest. It's not like the rewards are going to be huge. I'd be amazed if you could make a decent living out of it when compared with just being a network contract resource in London.

As WTFH says... what about holiday? You need 2 people, so your costs have doubled. If the customers want 24hr then you need 3 people minimum + an extra for holiday/sickness cover. This is a proper business with real costs. You've going to need £100k revenue minimum. Can you get that whilst running it with 2 people (1 person for 60 days)?

[Cid]

Rather then charging you client who in turn is going to charge his clients.
Why do you offer to take the whole IT shebang off your clients hands.
You deal with providing the comm's for the site and charge the end users directly ?

The lions share of your clients profit is from the letting of small short term offices.
Maybe the IT thing is just a ball ache he doesn't want to be involved with.
Maybe the small 5 of profit compared to his main business just dosn't warranty his time.
Maybe he finds this whole IT thing akin to magic and wants none of it.

it would be very easy for you to knock up a small leaflet with an outline of the services available and costs involved, which your client could include with their brochure.

If you client has multiple sites and is continuing to grow then it has to be a viable prospect.

for a modest outlay you can run in comms and set up a PBX (or arrange a re-seller account with a hosted provider). you can offer set up of internet and phones within 24 hours.
and give a fixed monthly cost.

Once you have covered your costs the rest is all gravy.

none of this is magic....
the hardest part is having the opportunity from the client and the stones to commit.

[Ignite]

I am a bit confused how an ISP could be acquiring business property to rent. Are they an ISP or not?

It sounds like you're just supplying and supporting the WiFi?
And the client is charging the business units (I thought this was domestic, to be honest) a monthly fee? You have no relationship with the businesses, you're just an on call guy?

Who owns the hardware? You or the client?

You say
"I don't want to overcharge him and on the other hand, I don't want to undercharge"
What you really ought to do is "charge slightly less than the next other company offering the same service". Your pricing seems way low.


Why not do the support work on a T&M basis? And charge quite a bit more than £180 an hour. You also want a 3-year contract not a one year, and you want exclusivity for all their similar sites in London.

Or..... Instead of a per device fee why not £10k per year per site?

With everything moving to the cloud and, especially in London, 4G being so fast, reliable and low cost I would not think it's a good idea to expose yourself to any financial risk on this in the slightest. It's not like the rewards are going to be huge. I'd be amazed if you could make a decent living out of it when compared with just being a network contract resource in London.

As WTFH says... what about the holiday? You need 2 people, so your costs have doubled. If the customers want 24hr then you need 3 people minimum + an extra for holiday/sickness cover. This is a proper business with real costs. You've going to need £100k revenue minimum. Can you get that whilst running it with 2 people (1 person for 60 days)?

Hi

To clear things up, The ISP will be a company like BT, TalkTalk, Virgin Media, etc....
My client owns all the WiFi hardware.
Some tenants have their own internal network and owned their own equipment.

I know 4G is moving forward, but the tenants always ended up using our network as we have a high-speed 1Gbps connection at each site. They all seem to abandon their Relish boxes now. When I first met my client 2 years back, he was also supplying Relish 4G internet to the tenants. If it wasn't for these Relish 4G internet, I probably wouldn't have met this client. I have no complaints about my client, and I know he's going to keep me busy and I just want to prepare myself. I do have other clients also, both on SLAs and PAYG support. If all goes to plan, I will obviously have to start hiring.

Yes, I'm only supplying and supporting the WiFi and I have no relationship to the business.
I know my rates are low and I'm working on it, as I have enough clients to keep me busy for a while. I'm also thinking of dropping three clients next year or give them a fee increase.

However, your reasoning sounds solid and I will explore some of your ideas.

Thanks for your input.

[LondonManc]

If you've got multiple clients, maybe tiered levels of support SLAs? Platinum, gold, silver with SLAs to respond to calls within, say 2, 4 and 6 hours and do something within 4, 12 and 24 hours? Just examples - you'd know what you can reasonably do if a call comes in and what you can put on one side. Probably more useful when you have a sidekick in play so that they can be general support monkey.