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Start Your Own ISP

startyourownisp.com

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Re: Start Your Own ISP

#111

Post by matte_black »

grahamburger wrote: post #105
ImSkeptical wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for putting this together and sharing it. Really interesting read. I know it's a bit personal, but would you mind attaching numbers to the notion of small scale profitability?

It varies pretty dramatically depending on how much you have to pay for fiber, how many customers you're able to get per tower, what you're able to charge (competition) and what type of customers you get (business / residential / mdu). My back of the napkin calculations usually show that to give one person a health salary ($80-120k) and pay a few contractors or lower wage workers to do some of the grunt work you woul…

And how long should you expect it to take to reach 300-500 customers with average effort? The operation wouldn’t be profitable from day one so you’d need to have some runway.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#112

Post by darkengine »

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #53

Wow, this is fascinating! I would love to invest and start a wireless ISP on the eastside of Seattle. Suppose you have an area that is flat with lots of exposure, where everyone hates Comcast (maybe that last part is superfluous). I would think you'd find plenty of programmer customers if you have a say 200 mbit wireless connection without bandwidth caps (or maybe something insane like 10 tb/month). This seems like a…

The eastside is a really promising target for a WISP. I've done some tinkering with HamWAN (the top of Eastgate Park&Ride has great line-of-sight to Seattle), but it's strictly non-profit and doesn't cover the eastside too well due to an abundance of hills and tall buildings in the way. If one could peer in a fiber-connected building in downtown Bellevue, and beam that from the roof to a couple tower sites... you might just have a WISP.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#113

Post by ReverseCold »

hutch120 wrote: post #33
grahamburger wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, goo…

Thanks for the reply. Github pages used to be aimed purely at developers, but I think it's pretty mainstream now. If you've managed to get a web site up, then you won't have any problem with this. Happy to help if you have any questions PM me. I checked out riot.im but honestly I found the interface really confusing. Also, the lack of integration to a major auth service like Google/Twitter/Github/etc is a real turn o…

> I checked out riot.im but honestly I found the interface really confusing. Also, the lack of integration to a major auth service like Google/Twitter/Github/etc is a real turn off for me.

Matrix is decentralized, using centralized auth wouldn't work.

You could even host your own matrix homeserver to talk in that room. (like email, or XMPP)

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#114

Post by samcodes »

tyleo wrote: post #58
NotSammyHagar wrote: post #53

Wow, this is fascinating! I would love to invest and start a wireless ISP on the eastside of Seattle. Suppose you have an area that is flat with lots of exposure, where everyone hates Comcast (maybe that last part is superfluous). I would think you'd find plenty of programmer customers if you have a say 200 mbit wireless connection without bandwidth caps (or maybe something insane like 10 tb/month). This seems like a…

This sounds interesting. I am in Seattle and also hate Comcast with a passion. My roommate has a similar hate of Comcast. If I could get 200 mbit at a similar cost to what I am paying now it would be an instant transition.

Honestly, if the primary value proposition was "fuck your cable company, here's how to get internet without paying them" you could probably motivate some sales even if the price and service were the same.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#115

Post by Googolaire »

This is amazing I have tried even today to research starting an ISP it is still such a hard thing to learn about. Not sure if that's just because the isp hides it or what haha thanks so much for your share more info would be awesome

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#116

Post by Googolaire »

I have tried even now to learn this stuff it's as if it's being censorsed haha its still hard but I can't even imagine back then. I would love to learn all you know on this subject

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#117

Post by stickmangallows »

aphextron wrote: post #99
stickmangallows wrote: post #80

This is perfect. I started the ball rolling on my own ISP last month and have gathered advice from another local ISP and online sources. So far I've gotten one quote of $950/month for resellable 100/100mbps fiber, I'm about to start drumming up local support, and I have some various ideas about how to connect everything together. This will certainly help it along.

What has been your biggest hang up so far? Have you worked out a viable business plan?

It takes weeks to actually get the fiber quotes. I only got that one quote last week after a month and still trying to get others. Now I need to spread the word more and gauge how much interest there is before I can really commit to it. So far, it seems promising.

What finally got me started up on it was seeing how fast and cheap some of the wireless equipment had gotten, specifically Ubiquiti's wireless mesh equipment. Still need a lot of research on how to engineer a solution to my situation.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#118

Post by mceoin »

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 presume you're familiar with altheamesh.com? You might find them interesting (based locally)

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#119

Post by etaioinshrdlu »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #95
grahamburger wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not use free space optics for this but there are licensed wireless backhauls that can do this with high enough capacity and reliability. Feel free to contact me directly (contact info in the about me section of this site) for more info.

FSO was one of neatest things I learned to solve the "fiber is expensive to run in cities" problem back when I studied wireless. Just one class on that. I'd like to know why you recommend against FSO for this, if there's any time you would recommend it for smaller players, or drawbacks compared to LTE. I just haven't seen anyone bring up FSO in a while and wondered why.

I worked on this recently, free space optical system... http://www.doncio.navy.mil/chips/ArticleDetails.aspx?ID=5550

The parts are extremely expensive if you want a high data rate.

The acquisition logic for creating a link is very difficult as one has to aim their beam just perfectly.

I'd say it's not ready for prime time.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#120

Post by farazbabar »

I have been wanting to do this in Phoenix, AZ. We have then ultimate duopoly between cox and century link and no other alternatives for most neighborhoods. I find it perplexing and think that market exists to offer better service. I have some experience launching an ISP back in Pakistan when I was still a teenager but this guide is exactly the kind of motivation I needed to get me going.
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