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Starting an Internet Service Provider

chrishacken.com

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Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#11

Post by froztbyte »

arca_vorago wrote: post #9

Thanks for this article. I have been considering the feasibility of starting a WISP here in West Texas, so it's cool to see the beggining stages from the inside perspective. I whish I knew more about the laws on common access to equipment/lines. For example, the only cable provider locally is Suddenlink, AT&T Uverse is still on copper phone lines, and there is only one local ISP bringing fiber to residential customer…

(all below is in an American/US context)

Read about ILECs/CLECs. Understand what the cable offerings' contention model is.

Do the math.

Understand the support burdens of NAT-on-NAT.

Run the numbers of RF contention, and shared-medium bandwidth management.

Do the math.

Probably the best advice I could give here: It's very easy to do a mediocre job of all this. It's a fair bit harder to do a good job of it. And think of how much you dislike the mediocre ISPs.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#12

Post by chrishacken »

shambolic wrote: post #7
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.

> 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 find that really hard to believe. Go to their offices and ask for the manager. > I eventually got to the point where I was like, "Fk it, I'll do it on my own." Now we're looking at microtrenching, which is probably an even larger endeavor, but…

Renting duct is $3/ft/year. That's $15,840 per mile per year. That's not including ~$30,000 to contract out the work (I was quoted $7/ft) and $5,000 that the utility charges to have someone on-site to oversee the operation. I've determined we can microtrench ourselves for between $30,000 and $40,000.

I've been on contact with another ISP, https://tsi.io who has successfully done micro-trenching with very minimal capital. We're doing all of the work ourselves to reduce overhead.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#13

Post by falsedan »

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.

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.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#14

Post by nickpsecurity »

I think I asked you for the write-up before. Thanks for doing it. I'd like more details, though, on the costs of equipment, installation, and so on for wireless and fiber. I mean, outside of running fiber to houses or businesses, what's the cost of the switches, any boxes protecting them, and the bandwidth? And how much bandwidth can you get away with offering them or reserving for yourself?

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#15

Post by chrishacken »

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).

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#16

Post by nickpsecurity »

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.

You could make the maintenance once a month on days your monitoring shows already have about no traffic. If a HA setup, then fail-over, reboot main, fail-back-over, reboot other stuff. Minimal disruption there.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#17

Post by ndespres »

froztbyte wrote: post #6

While I don't wish you ill will, I do wish to remark that you have had it remarkably easy with this. Source: 7 ISPs. In Africa. On unreliable power, broken fibre, people stealing your spectrum, etc.

I subscribed to Chris' newsletter as I hope to hear more about the challenges involved in his endeavor. Starting a small ISP has been a vision of mine since my first after-school job at a ISP helpdesk 15 years ago. I'd really love to be involved in running a community ISP in an underserved area, so I'm interested in reading about the technical and regulatory challenges especially.

@froztbyte I'd be doubly interested in a writeup of your experience, have you blogged anywhere?

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#18

Post by nickpsecurity »

froztbyte wrote: post #6

While I don't wish you ill will, I do wish to remark that you have had it remarkably easy with this. Source: 7 ISPs. In Africa. On unreliable power, broken fibre, people stealing your spectrum, etc.

Do your customers tolerate all that? As in, can you ignore a good chunk of it because Internet issues are more acceptable in Africa? Or did you have to prevent, detect, and/or mitigate all of it because they expect nearly-perfect Internet in your area?

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#19

Post by froztbyte »

ndespres wrote: post #17
froztbyte wrote: post #6

While I don't wish you ill will, I do wish to remark that you have had it remarkably easy with this. Source: 7 ISPs. In Africa. On unreliable power, broken fibre, people stealing your spectrum, etc.

I subscribed to Chris' newsletter as I hope to hear more about the challenges involved in his endeavor. Starting a small ISP has been a vision of mine since my first after-school job at a ISP helpdesk 15 years ago. I'd really love to be involved in running a community ISP in an underserved area, so I'm interested in reading about the technical and regulatory challenges especially. @froztbyte I'd be doubly interested…

Nothing exciting published, no. Blogging wasn't particularly big around this part of the world/specific-weird-subset-of-the-market for most of that time. Should I consider writing up some of them?

Past aside, there are many things already underway, in many areas, that you could be involved in if you wished. Do some research around areas that you find yourself interested in (both technologically, and geographically), and see where that takes you.

Re: Starting an Internet Service Provider

#20

Post by jon-wood »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #16
chrishacken wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You could make the maintenance once a month on days your monitoring shows already have about no traffic. If a HA setup, then fail-over, reboot main, fail-back-over, reboot other stuff. Minimal disruption there.

If you've got an HA setup you should probably be doing this monthly anyway just to verify that it actually works. The adage that an untested backup isn't a backup at all applies to backup internet connections as well.
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