What's $25k get you?
One tower / roof top location?
I'm real skeptical that this is profitable on the low end.
Launch HN: Necto (YC W18) – ISP Starter Kit
61–70 of 85 posts
Re: Launch HN: Necto (YC W18) – ISP Starter Kit
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
To my knowledge, yes. Whenever I’ve had Comcast, Verizon, or another provider pull a last mile of fiber, it’s been done by a local contractor (my experience is limited to Illinois, Florida, Indiana, and Wisconsin) with the upstream provider coordinating the turnup.
thanks, final question if you don't mind. :) do you know how much the average trenching job costs or how long it takes (order of magnitude)? $10K and days, $100K and weeks, or ...? thanks again for sharing your knowledge.
Comcast recently pulled fiber down a main road (about half a mile?), then about 150 feet along poles down a residential road, then trenched about 15 feet beside my driveway. It took a couple of months to get permitting to run it along the main road, but maybe half a day to actually run it. It took half a day to run it on poles along the residential road, and 6-7 hours (four guys) to trench 15 feet beside my driveway. Plus another half a day (one guy) to terminate the fiber in my basement, and another half day (one guy) to install the CPE.
Re: Launch HN: Necto (YC W18) – ISP Starter Kit
#63I 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?
Getting good terms from an ILEC that you're directly competing with will be difficult. We advocate building your own last mile infrastructure where possible to get around that. Here in SF, we're using fixed wireless to do that.
Re: Launch HN: Necto (YC W18) – ISP Starter Kit
#64"the underserved San Francisco markets of Bayview and Portola" Next time you fly over the midwest, look at density. If you can see your neighbor, you're probably not underserved.
I don't think he meant low density, he meant that even though there are a bunch of people the incumbent telcos don't actually offer service there. The Bay Area's internet is surprisingly fragmented. We couldn't get fixed broadband at the old office when I know for a fact we were less than 100ft from municipal 10 gig fiber.
Re: Launch HN: Necto (YC W18) – ISP Starter Kit
#65If you're hacker looking to start your own micro-ISP using cool stuff, I think you should take a look at https://altheamesh.com/.
Re: Launch HN: Necto (YC W18) – ISP Starter Kit
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 sub…
Thats like saying you are helping people start a taxi business because they get confused when it comes to warranty options on buying their first car. If they don't have the fortitude to work out a transit contract, the ISP business might not be for them. I think it would be better to frame your business as a franchise opportunity. At the end of the day it really sounds like your customers are a capital source.
I don't think of it as a question of fortitude as much as opportunity cost. We're looking for operators that would be successful running other types of businesses instead. We want them to choose the ISP business over one that they might be more familiar with. No doubt they could come to understand a transit contract and all the other components, but it's frictions like those that reduce the number of people who decide being an ISP is the right business for them. If you can 1) find customers and 2) provide a great service experience, we want you selling internet! You can spend a lifetime getting good at those two things. We'd rather our operators do that, and we can handle the networking for them.
Re: Launch HN: Necto (YC W18) – ISP Starter Kit
#67How does your join necto privacy policy compare to local ISPs like Sonic? What about ISPs you help get started? Because your writeup about privacy is about net neutrality and throttling.
I see nothing about limiting data retention, not selling member data, or refusing to provide data voluntarily.
Re: Launch HN: Necto (YC W18) – ISP Starter Kit
#68If you're hacker looking to start your own micro-ISP using cool stuff, I think you should take a look at https://altheamesh.com/ .
I saw a demo of this in Oakland a few months ago. I thought it was super interesting, especially the way they're extending routing concepts. It feels like a very elegant technical solution.
Re: Launch HN: Necto (YC W18) – ISP Starter Kit
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
thanks, final question if you don't mind. :) do you know how much the average trenching job costs or how long it takes (order of magnitude)? $10K and days, $100K and weeks, or ...? thanks again for sharing your knowledge.
Comcast recently pulled fiber down a main road (about half a mile?), then about 150 feet along poles down a residential road, then trenched about 15 feet beside my driveway. It took a couple of months to get permitting to run it along the main road, but maybe half a day to actually run it. It took half a day to run it on poles along the residential road, and 6-7 hours (four guys) to trench 15 feet beside my driveway.…
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Re: Launch HN: Necto (YC W18) – ISP Starter Kit
#70Very cool, congrats guys. I am a Monkeybrains customer with a bunch of their equipment on my roof (I signed up for their enhanced "FTTH" campaign) and have wondered about replicating the service for myself and my neighbors if I were to move elsewhere.
Do you have an operating model for these small ISPs? Specifically I'm curious what the breakeven point is.