MANCHESTER, NH — Starting sometime next week people will be able to sit outside The Bookery on Elm Street and enjoy free Wi-Fi at a hotspot provided by a new high-speed internet provider in the city.
About this time last year, Jeremy Hitchcock, founder of Dyn and Minim, and his wife Liz Hitchcock, owner of the Bookery, launched Adored WiFi to bring high-speed Internet service to the city in a safe, secure and budget-friendly manner.
“We announced it and then we quickly realized maybe we should come up with some folks who have a little more expertise in this than Jeremy Hitchcock and Liz Hitchcock,” she said on Thursday.
Enter WhyFly, a Wilmington, Del., company that accomplished in their city what the Hitchcocks envisioned for Manchester.
After several conversations, Hitchcock said they were asking “why aren’t you in Manchester? You should be here, and they did.”
“Adored was looking for some folks to help and we were looking to grow and were looking for partners who shared our vision and it was just a natural fit,” said Nick Sabean, WhyFly’s chief revenue officer and chief of marketing. “They’ve been very supportive.”
Adored merged with WhyFly and is working out relationships with building owners in the city to use their rooftops as distribution centers. Three already signed up, including The Bookery and The Factory at Willow, and they are in the process of working out agreements with a couple more.
He said they need only a few buildings for its technology to work.
“Our service works by line-of-sight so I need to be able to see your rooftop,” he said. “That’s really it and that’s the technology we have now. We have new technology coming out that will go through multiple layers of trees and around buildings.”
Five-by-five-inch cones, each with 360-degree capability, are placed on rooftops. Each rooftop could house thousands of them, Sabean said, which explains why the company doesn’t need too many buildings for distribution of its signal.
WhyFly launched in Wilmington about five years ago with its first customer going live in 2017. “We run fiber into tall buildings and towers throughout the city and we use radio technology, placing radios all around the building providing 360-degree views of the city,” Sabean said.
In Wilmington, the company has about 3,000 residential customers and another 450 business customers ranging from mom-and-pop companies to the 76ers Fieldhouse.
For expansion, the company sought out a city that essentially had one internet provider. Topography and geography were also important as well as the density of its buildings.
Manchester met the criteria, with trees but not too many and a lot of buildings, particularly apartments.
WhyFly provides a low-cost product with the ability to connect multiple devices, according to Sabean. He said each person has about six devices – cell phones, televisions, tablets, laptops, streaming devices, smart home automation – requiring an internet connection.
“It (the internet) is vital to today’s world,” he said.
Sabean said with WhyFly it takes under 10 milliseconds for a signal to go from a computer to the server and back.
“I promise you will be able to do what you want to do,” he said.
The company delivers high-speed internet with wireless airFiber technology through a small antenna installed on a customer’s rooftop.
Initially, a residential customer pays $100 for installation and then $55 a month thereafter.
Their messaging is simple: “Awesome internet. Shenanigans-free and no gluten.”
“What no gluten means is no extra fees. Nothing’s going to hurt your wallet like gluten hurting your belly,” Sabean said.
WhyFly does not do bundling, does not require a contract and doesn’t raise prices ever, he said.
“We have a great program. If you refer someone you both get a free month. Our leader right now in Wilmington has 18 months of free service,” he said.
As people sign up for service, Sabean said the company will get a general idea of where to go first.
“If we see a certain neighborhood, we will attack that first,” he said.
They hope to grow word-of-mouth, by partnering with a lot of people like bartenders.
“We like to sign them up first because they’re talking to a lot of people and know a lot of people in the neighborhood,” Sabean said.
They expect the service to take off especially since, Jeremy Hitchcock said, within four days of announcing Adored last year in an article on Manchester Ink Link, they received nearly 1,000 inquiries about the internet service.
⇒ Coming Soon: More information on local access in Manchester to WhyFly – we’ll update the story the week of Aug. 24 so check back for details.
⇒ On the Web: More info about Delaware-based WhyFly.com
⇒ Follow on Twitter for updates as the new Manchester service begins to roll out: @WhyFly_NH
