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Start Your Own ISP

startyourownisp.com

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Re: Start Your Own ISP

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Graham, nice site, love you are giving back! I've also done a few Ubiquity design/install projects. Couple of things I'd suggest. (take/or leave) You are clearly super knowledgeable in all the products you've mentioned, but it seems like the audience for this site is the newbie trying to break into the industry. With that in mind, I'd try to stick to a single product recommendation, and deep dive into it. For inst…

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…

I disagree a little. I'd rather you overshare by default so we don't miss an opportunity to learn something. The kind of people who will actually go deploy ISP's vs talk about them will not fret over 4 vs 1 device. They'll just email you for clarification. :)

I do like the idea of simple, base recommendations with context-driven extras. Plus, in-depth guides on what you found each piece of equipment useful for, common situations you ran into with equipment or deployments, how you dealt with them. This kind of thing could be like a blog you do regularly as you go so it's not too time consuming. A small community could help you curate it or answer common questions on a forum or something.

Anyway, thanks for your efforts as I found all that info useful in putting together cost ranges for some people. Personally, I'm wanting something similar for fiber maybe like Sonic does or those folks in Britain rolling it out in rural areas. The wireless I'm collecting for others or just as a fallback option for any project I get into if fiber is too infeasible.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#92

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.

How dependent is this on flat land and no trees? This would be great for northwest Arkansas, but we have lots of trees and hills. We are stuck with only Cox, and ATT in some places.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#93

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…

(author here) This is actually probably the hardest part of the whole thing - finding places to put the equipment and negotiating leases with all the right people. If it's an actual cell phone tower you're looking at you can usually find it on the FCC website and find out who manages the tower. Most cell phone towers are managed by a third party management company (like Crown Castle or American Tower). The management…

> managed directly by a cell phone company they are still required to allow you to collocate (FCC!) but they will usually drag their feet through the process

No way! Is that only for ISPs or could I get a ham repeater up there if I had enough time/money?

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#94

In practice, is this profitable?

(author here) I personally know probably a dozen or so people who have built a network like this, got enough customers to live comfortably for a while, and are either still doing that or eventually sold to a larger company and moved on to other things. So yes it can be profitable on a small scale.

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?

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#95
post #59

Would it be feasible to provide an alternate to fiber for intranet within an ISP over a city using FSOC (freespace optical communications)? I kind of doubt it is practical but it seems like having some amazing high bandwidth safe way to transmit data from private homes rooftops over significant distance would solve another one of the technical/logistical hurdles (digging streets and laying fiber) keeping monopolies i…

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.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#96
post #56

Anyone created shared access for their condo building? Our building is wired for xfinity cable and Fios gig Fiber, but I was thinking of having a building provided internet for a low price. I'm not sure if Verizon will give us a wholesale connection when they'd prefer everyone pay separately.

(author here) I'm interested in talking to you more directly about this. Contact info is in the about me section on this site, shoot me an email if you get a chance.

I notice you're trying to answer a lot of people's questions in private. That's really kind of you. I am concerned that there's probably a lot more people out there with similar questions that would take a lot of time to help. Like in my other comment, I suggest making notes during all of those exchanges to see if you have any general tips you could share. You don't even have to do full write-ups on them: just a FAQ page for this thread or something that warns on top you are dropping it somewhat unfiltered due to being low on time. It can say email you for any follow-up questions which you might just put back in those parts of the FAQ. Then, people can just share the link, discuss what was said on other forums, generate more info, and so on.

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#97

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.

What an amazing thing you've done taking the time to share your knowledge for free with everyone - thank you!

This is very timely for me. I actually had just started paying a consultant to help me plan out a WISP, because it's so overwhelming starting out because you don't even know what questions to ask to get started (the internet is a great resource for so many things... but much less helpful when you don't have well-formed questions!). So far everything I'm seeing lines up with what I've researched myself or what my consultant has helped me with, so this seems to be an amazing free resource!

I even already learned something in the first couple sections - I had been using Google Earth Pro to scout potential tower locations, and I knew what a viewshed was, but I thought I was going to have to pay for ArcGIS or another program to generate them. For some reason I thought Google Earth Pro could only do elevation profiles! It's cool you mentioned using a drone; I was already thinking of doing that and it's awesome to know that's not a weird thing to do. Have you heard of drone photogrammetry[1] before? It's probably overkill but it seems like an interesting concept for generating high resolution viewsheds (i.e. taking foliage and other obstacles that won't show up on a topographic map into account).

My consultant helped me find a fiber backhaul solution; CenturyLink fiber dominates my area so I'm either going to be buying transit directly from them or buying transport to an internet exchange at the nearest metro area (the latter sounds way more fun to me and has some interesting peering options). But I'm still at the point of evaluating the customer base. So one thing that I'd like to see is more details on how to make first contact with potential customers to gauge their feelings towards a new ISP. So far I'm thinking of buying a list of mailing address from a mailing list broker, then mailing out postcards with a link to a Google Forms survey (and maybe an alternate option of just calling me if they don't currently have internet service). But I don't know how this is typically done.

I'd also like to see a section on skillsets that an ISP operator should develop. I started studying for the CCNA because I want to be able to wrap my head around the carrier-grade networking that will belie the business. It would be interesting to hear your opinion on how much you can punt on these kinds of skills vs. what you really need to know, or even when you should just hire the work out.

I also signed up to take a course on fiber optic outside plant planning because some day I'd like to level up to being a FTTH ISP. That's a whole different ballgame since you basically have to operate a construction company to plow/blow/splice all the fiber, deal with all the permitting, insane CAPEX etc. I know that's getting way ahead of myself and I should just focus on only WISP-related things to start but that's what I wish I could do if I were a millionaire. But if you have any experience with fiber ISPs I would be really interested in seeing that on your website as well (later!).

Another cool topic to cover (sorry if I missed it) would be the whole process of putting up an actual tower - I've heard that it can often be as cost-effective to erect your own rather than leasing (like pays for itself in 2-3 years). I was just reading a series of blog articles[2] a couple weeks ago by a guy who put up a ham radio tower that had lots of very interesting info and pics.

[1]: https://cloudrf.com/drone_photogrammetry

[2]: https://morsetutor.com/2014/09/tower-time-part-1/

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#99

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?

Re: Start Your Own ISP

#100

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…

That's a great story and incidentally a similar one to another Nebraska ISP I'm familiar with (KDSI). I think they got started when a larger industrial company had excess bandwidth. Sounds like your story was a lot of fun for a high schooler. Who did you sell it to and why?
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