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Starting an Internet Service Provider

chrishacken.com

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Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#81

Post by drcongo »

thomseddon wrote: post #47

Chris, after starting an ISP[1] in the UK in 2014 I certainly feel you're pain around the difficulties in starting an ISP! Myself and my co-founders have often looked at the comparable easy of growth software based startups and wondered what on earth we were doing, but we soldier on and our looking at our reliable, contracted MRR now is certainly starting to make up for it :) Good luck, I look forward to keeping up w…

Your prices are amazing. I might leave a post-it with your web address on our office landlord's desk.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#82

Post by woah »

trafficlight wrote: post #35
poorman wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Might want to try Riot. It uses a protocol called Matrix, which is the successor to IRC. What this means is that you're not tied to them. Also the web, desktop, and mobile clients are pretty sweet.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#83

Post by shambolic »

gigatexal wrote: post #58
chrishacken wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. I obviously completely agree; we tried relentlessly to contact our local utilities to gain access to their underground conduit and was never able to get someone on the phone or even much of a response. I eventually got to the point where I was like, "F k it, I'll do it on my own." Now we're looking at microtrenching, which is probably an even larger endeavor, but at least we'll own the conduit.

What're your thoughts on this idea: internet access is a right and should be treated like a utility. Operators like you and others create supply and then are guaranteed a price or rate as (probably) negotiated by the consortium of suppliers like yourself and others and the local government. And then in return businesses and consumers can rely on (fiber based) internet for a reasonable cost. I personally don't care fo…

The biggest problem is: where is the money going to come from?

Even if you guarantee a rate of return, somebody still needs to finance the buildout.

Second issue is, how will infrastructure that is installed, but not used be paid for? Take rate is rarely 100%, so who is going to pay for that part and how?

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#84

Post by amenod »

froztbyte wrote: post #62
nickpsecurity wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. So, you actually had it easier than Chris since the expectations of service are so low in Africa. You might have had it harder because of all the extra issues you deal with. As I figured, it's not as straight-forward as your original comment implied.

As a mini-followup: due to this kind of scenario, we ended up having to replace UPS battery packs in about 8 months (1/3 of their minimum intended lifecycle) due to how heavily they got load-rushed over the months. The load cycle literally killed them in that time.

Interesting - so I guess there is need for a solution which charges UPS-es in some smarter way?

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#85

Post by fode »

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

Trying to sign up as well to no avail.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#86

Post by rayiner »

tomarr wrote: post #48
chrishacken wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

It's interesting that this is always the american response whenever the broadband comparisons are made. I don't mean this in a negative way, but it's a very persistent argument and I wonder if there's some external factor that pushes it (telcos/media/other). I think this is definitely a factor - but it's vastly overstated. The USA is more urbanised than many European countries at 80%, so there's definitely quick wins…

The effect of density is not overstated. States' average bandwidth in the Akamai rankings line up closely with population density. I live in Maryland (one of the most densely populated states, though half the density of the U.K.) and most of the urban areas have fiber available (the exception being Baltimore city, for political reasons).

Even if you live in an urban area, the prevalence of rural areas (and poor urban areas), has an impact on you, because the US supports rural telecommunications through various internal cross-subsidies instead of direct support.

The regulatory regime plays a role too, but it's more complicated than your simplistic presentation. In the U.K., the last mile infrastructure is owned by a single company (BT Openreach), but equally importantly, the government ensures it is a quite profitable company. Much more so than American utilities. That was a conscious part of the BT privatization: designing a rate structure that would ensure prices high enough to create adequate incentives for investment.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#87

Post by m3talsmith »

chrishacken wrote: post #8
patrickg_zill wrote: post #5

I've seen a possibly related issue with static electricity in a large building in PA that had 3 power feeds, after lightning we would have ethernet port problems. I would suggest that you declare a 2am Thursday maintenance window and use a script to automatically reboot all the devices. This in combination with checking that you have a good separate ground wire connection at all antenna locations should pretty much f…

That sounds like a great idea. I've actually debated doing this before, but I wasn't sure if the service disruption was worth it considering it happens maybe once every other month and sporadically at that.

I ran a bootstrapped ISP much the same way. I ran into the static issue as well did a few things to fix it. Ran a better ground on the roof. Isolated the tower from the roof surface with wood (that was done during tower erection). Lastly, I put a fiber link cut in-between the run of Ethernet from the data center, and the router box on the tower.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#88

Post by feld »

shambolic wrote: post #80
feld wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Find out as much as you can about your city's regulations. In Madison, WI if your conduit is 3" or larger the city can take ownership of it if they want with zero compensation for the cost you spent to build it out. They will reuse it for utilities, traffic lights, etc. You can still use it, but they own it.

Jeez, that's rough. Sounds like a great recipe to drive away investment and for only installing 2" conduit to the detriment of all.

This is why you get an agreement with the city to share their conduit and help each other out where possible. Not sure of the political climate there, but getting on their good side will save you money and time.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#89

Post by gigatexal »

shambolic wrote: post #83
gigatexal wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What're your thoughts on this idea: internet access is a right and should be treated like a utility. Operators like you and others create supply and then are guaranteed a price or rate as (probably) negotiated by the consortium of suppliers like yourself and others and the local government. And then in return businesses and consumers can rely on (fiber based) internet for a reasonable cost. I personally don't care fo…

The biggest problem is: where is the money going to come from? Even if you guarantee a rate of return, somebody still needs to finance the buildout. Second issue is, how will infrastructure that is installed, but not used be paid for? Take rate is rarely 100%, so who is going to pay for that part and how?

Governments would pay for this via taxes. At least that's one way. So in the end all of us would be paying for internet, and I guess if there were a way to get internet at 1gig up/1 gig down with no data caps that was very reliable for under 100 bucks a month I would do it. But the build-out costs a lot as you've stated so the capital would have to come from somewhere and perhaps that'd come from infrastructure spending.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#90

Post by derefr »

patrickg_zill wrote: post #5

I've seen a possibly related issue with static electricity in a large building in PA that had 3 power feeds, after lightning we would have ethernet port problems. I would suggest that you declare a 2am Thursday maintenance window and use a script to automatically reboot all the devices. This in combination with checking that you have a good separate ground wire connection at all antenna locations should pretty much f…

> The reboot cycles the power

Er, does it? Some of the components might go offline, but there's usually still a trickle-charge running to the components even when the computer is "off"—and especially the ethernet card, for Wake-on-LAN support (even if it's disabled.)

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