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Start Your Own ISP

startyourownisp.com

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Re: Start Your Own ISP

#21

Post by newman314 »

grahamburger wrote: post #8

Hey everyone! Author here. Happy to answer questions. Thanks for posting @tomcam! Just a quick note about me - I currently work with the great folks at common.net running an ISP that is similar but not exactly like what's described here. Look us up if you're in East Bay maybe we can get you better Internet service! This site is not associated with common.net, though.

I know this varies greatly based on location but it would be good if you could include a section on legal challenges given that there are many municipalities actively trying to discourage any sort of competition.

Secondly, looking at common.net, how did you arrive at 75Mbps as the offering speed?

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#23

Post by grahamburger »

hutch120 wrote: post #14
grahamburger wrote: post #8

Hey everyone! Author here. Happy to answer questions. Thanks for posting @tomcam! Just a quick note about me - I currently work with the great folks at common.net running an ISP that is similar but not exactly like what's described here. Look us up if you're in East Bay maybe we can get you better Internet service! This site is not associated with common.net, though.

Hi Graham, nice site, love you are giving back! I've also done a few Ubiquity design/install projects. Couple of things I'd suggest. (take/or leave) You are clearly super knowledgeable in all the products you've mentioned, but it seems like the audience for this site is the newbie trying to break into the industry. With that in mind, I'd try to stick to a single product recommendation, and deep dive into it. For inst…

Good advice, thanks. I have struggled throughout with knowing when to be more specific and when to be more general, although I do try to pepper in a lot of 'if you don't know what to do, do this' type advice.

I've been trying to build the community around this matrix chatroom: https://riot.im/app/#/room/#startyourownisp:matrix.org I'm not really a developer by trade so Github isn't really a go-to solution for me, good thought though!

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#24

Post by grahamburger »

newman314 wrote: post #21
grahamburger wrote: post #8

Hey everyone! Author here. Happy to answer questions. Thanks for posting @tomcam! Just a quick note about me - I currently work with the great folks at common.net running an ISP that is similar but not exactly like what's described here. Look us up if you're in East Bay maybe we can get you better Internet service! This site is not associated with common.net, though.

I know this varies greatly based on location but it would be good if you could include a section on legal challenges given that there are many municipalities actively trying to discourage any sort of competition. Secondly, looking at common.net, how did you arrive at 75Mbps as the offering speed?

I actually have in my plan to include a section like that, not quite there yet though. But in general legal challenges are less of a problem than you might think - most of the legal challenges you hear about with running an ISP come from things like who owns/is allowed to use conduit, right of way for trenching new lines, those kinds of things. With wireless you sidestep all of that.

75mbps is what we feel like we can reasonably achieve across our entire user base. Most of our customers are up to double that.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#25

Post by tudelo »

joejohnson wrote: post #17
neosavvy wrote: post #5

This reminds me of these guys out in Brooklyn building out a sick fiber network. http://bkfiber.com/ They have some of the fastest speeds in NYC and they had uptime surpassing numerous big names like Spectrum and Optimum after Sandy.

Their speeds don't seem very fast: http://bkfiber.com/plans-service-areas.php With Verizon Fios you can get 100 Mbps symmetric at $80/month. (Also, why are bkfiber's speeds not symmetric? I thought all fiber connections had upload == download.)

Even that is pretty weak... Comcast offers 1000 down for 80 dollars a month in my area (MD in DC metro). I would expect a city to do just as well...

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#26

Post by grahamburger »

omot wrote: post #19
grahamburger wrote: post #8

Hey everyone! Author here. Happy to answer questions. Thanks for posting @tomcam! Just a quick note about me - I currently work with the great folks at common.net running an ISP that is similar but not exactly like what's described here. Look us up if you're in East Bay maybe we can get you better Internet service! This site is not associated with common.net, though.

Hey Graham. Do you pay Comcast/AT&T to connect to their ISPs? If so how much? What is the benefit of setting up your own ISP if you need to connect to one of these giants anyways.

In some cases yes you are buying an upstream connection from Comcast/AT&T/Centurylink/etc. I actually have a note about that specifically on the site, as it happens! (https://startyourownisp.com/posts/fiber-provider/#overview second paragraph)

Things to note - you're not buying a regular residential or even a business line, you're (usually) buying a dedicated Internet Access line and dealing with an entirely different group for sales/support. It does seem kind of strange at first but I think the reality is that the raw bandwidth isn't one of the main costs for those companies, it's the support/last mile build&maintenance etc that's expensive to them - so if you're willing to give them some money and take that part off their hands they don't seem to mind.

Also - there are plenty of other companies selling fiber that don't also sell residential Internet products, so you're not always buying from them.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#27

Post by grahamburger »

Scarbutt wrote: post #15
grahamburger wrote: post #8

Hey everyone! Author here. Happy to answer questions. Thanks for posting @tomcam! Just a quick note about me - I currently work with the great folks at common.net running an ISP that is similar but not exactly like what's described here. Look us up if you're in East Bay maybe we can get you better Internet service! This site is not associated with common.net, though.

What are the advantages of LTE for fixed wireless networks?

Good question. Off the top of my head: 1) much better wireless performance, higher modulation at lower receive signal levels. 2) easier channel planning - you use the same channels across all your towers and the core figures it all out. 3) you can potentially get roaming agreements with carriers (I don't know of anyone who has successfully done this but apparently it's feasible)

Big disadvantage is cost - you have to run a core which is very expensive ($100k+) Or you can use BaiCells and they'll rent you use of their core for fairly cheap.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#28

Post by grahamburger »

matte_black wrote: post #12

In practice, is this profitable?

(author here) I personally know probably a dozen or so people who have built a network like this, got enough customers to live comfortably for a while, and are either still doing that or eventually sold to a larger company and moved on to other things. So yes it can be profitable on a small scale.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#29

Post by grahamburger »

arca_vorago wrote: post #20

My very first real job at 16 was a WISP that served a small town in Arizona (~8k pop), by having a microwave tower on top of a hill in the middle of the town and just tying a few t1s in. The factor that got this WISP traction though was that we were doing family friendly filtering for customers, and in a religious town that went over pretty well. I left because I ended up doing too much of the work for $6 dollars an…

(author here) This is actually probably the hardest part of the whole thing - finding places to put the equipment and negotiating leases with all the right people.

If it's an actual cell phone tower you're looking at you can usually find it on the FCC website and find out who manages the tower. Most cell phone towers are managed by a third party management company (like Crown Castle or American Tower). The management company can usually tell you if there's fiber although their info is often outdated or just wrong. Even if the tower is owned and managed directly by a cell phone company they are still required to allow you to collocate (FCC!) but they will usually drag their feet through the process - plan on 9-12months and lots of red tape.

As for finding fiber - you can use a paid solution like fiberlocator.com. You can also drive around and look for fiber infrastructure, although admittedly it's hard to recognize if you don't know what you're looking for (or even if you do.) Frustratingly even when you find a company with fiber in the area they usually won't tell you where exactly the termination points are. You can sometimes give them a list of addresses and they'll give back yes/no for each one, though.

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