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Starting an Internet Service Provider

chrishacken.com

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Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#31

Post by 9NRtKyP4 »

jon-wood wrote: post #21
falsedan wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's thanks to the BT/OpenReach split in the 90s forcing small ISPs to compete on service & cost (because they all have the same guaranteed cost to access the infrastructure). Plus y'know you can blow fibre to 90% of the population in a reasonable amount of time.

Except it's not - for 200/20 at those prices the GP must be talking about a Virgin Media line, and they run their own cables. The increased competition between providers probably contributes to driving down prices to just above the point of profitability, but its not responsible for the infrastructure in this case.

200/20 is available from Openreach as fibre-to-the-premises but it's rare and only a handful of providers offer it.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#32

Post by poorman »

trafficlight wrote: post #28

Fantastic write up, Chris. Chris has been hanging out with us (Treasure State Internet, our startup ISP in Montana) in a Slack channel called ISP School. If you're interested in any aspect of starting and running an ISP, please join us. http://slack.tsi.io/#ispschool

It says ura_limit_reached. I'm guessing you don't have enough paid accounts.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#34

Post by problems »

Nice work.

It's pretty incredible the kind of issues you see when you're running a service your customers depend on - especially if that's potentially latency sensitive. I've seen packets between Chicago and rural Ohio getting routed through both San Jose and Florida. Random down links between major backbone providers and other crazy messes.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#35

Post by trafficlight »

poorman wrote: post #32
trafficlight wrote: post #28

Fantastic write up, Chris. Chris has been hanging out with us (Treasure State Internet, our startup ISP in Montana) in a Slack channel called ISP School. If you're interested in any aspect of starting and running an ISP, please join us. http://slack.tsi.io/#ispschool

It says ura_limit_reached. I'm guessing you don't have enough paid accounts.

I'll look into it. We should have an unlimited account.

Edit: it appears there is a 5 guest limit per paid account.

Edit 2: I think I'm going to set up a Mattermost server and push people that way.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#37

Post by toomuchtodo »

> Investment would be nice, but I have had zero luck with that to-date.

Hey Chris!

I'm interested in what sort of investment and the terms you'd be comfortable with (I've helped built and operate datacenters, a web hosting company, etc; I'm familiar with the capex and returns involved). Mind if I reach out via email?

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#38

Post by martinald »

chrishacken wrote: post #15
vflagr wrote: post #10

This was a super interesting read. The one thing I never fail to get over though is how expensive internet is in the states. In the UK you can get 200/20 for about £58 p/m including TV & Phone. I couldn't imagine paying nearly $100 p/m for 100mbps.

It's not that the bandwidth is expensive; it's the cost to deploy everything. If there was preexisting conduit/fiber in the ground and all we had to do was plug two cables together, I'd be able to charge $25/m too. I've never been to the UK, but I believe your population density is a lot higher than that of the US; which is where all of our costs originate (interconnecting the customer to our network).

I don't think that's the reason really.

The main reason I can see is that Comcast (or cable internet) has no real competition. I don't understand why that is. AT&T, Verizon etc seem to have given up on competing. Verizon stopped their rollout of FTTH a while back nearly entirely, though it has restarted very slowly.

AT&Ts VDSL based UVerse solution is way too sparse, with very long cable runs. Compare this to BT in the UK where most VDSL2 runs they are doing are Ok, so this may be caused by low population density, but I'm not entirely convinced. It must be way cheaper to dig trenches in suburbia USA as many of the places don't even have sidewalks to dig up and then expensively refill, you could just trench along the side of the road.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#39

Post by chrishacken »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #37

> Investment would be nice, but I have had zero luck with that to-date. Hey Chris! I'm interested in what sort of investment and the terms you'd be comfortable with (I've helped built and operate datacenters, a web hosting company, etc; I'm familiar with the capex and returns involved). Mind if I reach out via email?

Of course; chris (at) nepafiber.com
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