121–130 of 199 posts
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.
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 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.
You will have to hook into Cox or CenturyLink, it's not really competition I don't think.
I'd love to do something like this, but I'm too afraid of dealing with the police if someone uses my service to do anything illegal. If it's very small (e.g. a neighborhood), might they just accuse the operator (me) and I'd have to prove my innocence?
(author here) My experience has been that if you're up front with the police about what you're doing they won't beat your door down and haul you away. What usually happens is that the police look up the IP address they've identified as a problem and then check the ARIN database to see who owns it. ARIN is going to give them the name of the ISP not of the subscriber, so they're accustomed to then calling the ISP to su…
> In the past what I've seen is that the police will ask you to identify who was using an IP and also to help them catch the person in the act if they do the thing again
What's the method to catch the person in the act? Is it something like creating a rule: "if [this website] was visited between [foo] and [bar] notify me" at the routing level?
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…
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…
I started one of the first 56k dial up ISPs in Nebraska when I was 13 years old with the help of my parents. In high school I partnered with some friends after reading a CNET article about a WISP in Washington state. My friend's dad had a few businesses that needed to share a T1 line so we connected them wirelessly and sold the excess capacity to farmers in rural Nebraska and Kansas. It was an amazing experience. Wor…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...