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Launch HN: Necto (YC W18) – ISP Starter Kit

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Re: Launch HN: Necto (YC W18) – ISP Starter Kit

#33

Post by a-dub »

dsl wrote: post #25

Starting an ISP is relatively easy... get an uplink, some rack space somewhere, a router, hire a smart high school kid for tech support, and you are off to the races. The really hard part is last-mile connectivity. You are either on someone elses lines (cable, DSL, etc), dealing with NIMBYs to bury your own lines, or working around line of site to do wireless. It isn't clear that you've solved this problem (or even f…

I suppose it's a lot simpler these days compared to when ISPs provided e-mail, news, shell accounts, web hosting among other things...

That said, I wouldn't say it's "easy." You still need to track your customers through their full lifecycle with you, you still need to provision/audit both locally and in concert with CLECs and you still need to monitor, backup and keep everything up.

Moreover, if you plan to scale out in any way, you need to be principled, lest you end up with enormous flat files filled with bespoke configs that no-one even understands.

Re: Launch HN: Necto (YC W18) – ISP Starter Kit

#35

Post by xur17 »

I'm really interested to see what comes out of this.

It's interesting to see you list apartment complexes as one of the target markets - I've always wondered why more complexes don't just provide internet access as a perk instead of outsourcing to Time Warner, AT&T, etc.

Re: Launch HN: Necto (YC W18) – ISP Starter Kit

#36

Post by patrickg_zill »

I was under the impression (would be happy to be wrong) that the real problem was the last-mile of fiber, or DSL over copper and the dealing with the ILEC that involves. Basically the ILEC won't sell you DSL at a price that allows you to make any money. Am I correct about that?

Re: Launch HN: Necto (YC W18) – ISP Starter Kit

#37

Post by montasaurus »

dsl wrote: post #25

Starting an ISP is relatively easy... get an uplink, some rack space somewhere, a router, hire a smart high school kid for tech support, and you are off to the races. The really hard part is last-mile connectivity. You are either on someone elses lines (cable, DSL, etc), dealing with NIMBYs to bury your own lines, or working around line of site to do wireless. It isn't clear that you've solved this problem (or even f…

It's largely an infrastructure business at the end of the day, and not without its challenges. The real problem is that there are people willing to take on these challenges, but they get stuck as early as the "get an uplink" part of that process.

Just digging into that piece, there are a lot of decisions. Burstable or dedicated? Why are they billing based on 95th percentile? How much bandwidth should I budget per subscriber? The typical uplink quote we've seen has 6 different tables with like 80 different prices on it. If you've bought it before, you know what the tradeoffs are. If you haven't, that's a steep hill to climb just for step 1 of the process.

We deploy fixed wireless here in SF, mainly 60GHz and 5.8GHz. They require line of sight, but something like Baicells could be a good fit for areas where that's more of an issue. It's not just the NIMBYs when you go to hang/bury your own lines, the incumbents will box you out on power poles and generally make things difficult for you.

Re: Launch HN: Necto (YC W18) – ISP Starter Kit

#38

Post by atourgates »

How do you guys handle the physical side of network operations with your partners?

I live in a rural area in Idaho, and we've got a pretty great WISP here. But, I know that the owners and employees are close to retirement age, and I've often thought of approaching them to see if they have any plans to sell the business.

How do you handle physical, local network management with your partners? Things like installing hardware customer homes and businesses, managing outages at broadcast sites, and all the rest. Is that totally up to your local partners, or something you provide training/management for on any level?

Re: Launch HN: Necto (YC W18) – ISP Starter Kit

#39

Post by gumby »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #5

Is what you're offering substantially substantive above https://startyourownisp.com ? I won't mince words: you're asking customers to outsource the core pieces of their business (netops, backhaul, billing) that they should be competent in, which puts them in a precarious position if you exhaust your runway, decide to move on to another venture, or are acquired by a less-than-ideal org. Full disclosure: Muncipal/coop…

> you're asking customers to outsource the core pieces of their business (netops, backhaul, billing)

An alternative way to look at this is it's a "white label franchise" business where someone not steeped in the technology can do what they know best, likely acquiring and keeping customers. I don't know if it will work, but I'm interested to see.

> Full disclosure: Muncipal/coop broadband proponent.

Something like this could probably accelerate municipal, coop, and piggyback (e.g. local water district or other small, independent utility) to take advantage of local infrastructure without having to acquire skills in a completely new domain.

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