Starting an ISP

Bl8ckr0uter

Anyone ever started an ISP or worked for a startup isp? Anyone have any experience to share regarding this? I mainly want to know how difficult it would be to do .

effekted

I've considered buying some wifi towers and trying to work out something with folks who own property in high locations near populated places and selling a subscription wifi or talking to the owners of high end subdivisions about possibly setting up neighborhood wifi and etc.

I was reading how generally the more bandwidth you use it's usually even cheaper for ISP's despite them charging more so that sparked my interest in making an ISP (yet not overly charge and mainly have a business that enjoys/wants to help people and not try and penny pinch as long as I'm profitable) so I started googling a bit about what it takes to start your own ISP and etc. and from what I read and gathered it's not necessarily a good startup unless you're already pretty wealthy and have a lot of money to put into it to get it started. It's hard to compete with the major carriers since their backbone is already built and subscription base has been established. The amount of software that you would need for billing, monitoring, and etc. is going to be pricey as well.

Priston

I would imagine it would be easier if you already had a well established company doing something related and expanded into an ISP or if you went out into a developing location were there is currently no service. Either way it would be alot of money.

phantasm

Two words: Franchise Agreements (VZ, ATT, Comcast, CenturyLink) and Good Luck.

qcomer

Wireless ISP Software | Wireless ISP Management Software lol

Bl8ckr0uter

I am sorry I did mean a WISP not a regular ISP

nerdydad

This is funny, because I was joking around with some guys about just this. Buy an ESR for a couple thousand on ebay, order a 10G circuit and start selling service in my neighborhood.

Bl8ckr0uter

nerdydad wrote: »

this is funny, because i was joking around with some guys about just this. Buy an esr for a couple thousand on ebay, order a 10g circuit and start selling service in my neighborhood.

esr......?


You must mean this? http://www.ebay.com/itm/Cisco-ESR10008-8-Slot-Chassis-ESR-10008-/370472894700?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5641e7c0ec

I was thinking about starting really small. Just ordering another connection into my house (50 down and 5 up), setting up a decent ap (probably like a ubuquiti ap or something) and literally go door to door. I would need to set up some sort of web portal/radisu (for accounting) and QOS (for rate limiting) but I think that would be a good start. In fact something like this could cover my block :
http://www.ubnt.com/powerapn

nerdydad

yeah, that exactly.

50 down 5 up on a dsl connection won't cut it though, you would really want to get more dedicated speeds, besides the fact that it would be completely against your contract to resell. On the WISP side your issues are mainly going to be access points, by FCC regulation you can only broadcast with so much power, and the amount of interference will probably be staggering. But for the sake of the discussion, check out http://www.open-mesh.com/.

Bl8ckr0uter

For my block I think 50/5 would be ok (obviously not long term but for a trail run just to see itf it would be worth it). I checked with my ISP and they had no rules against what I did with my bandwidth including internet services for people (which was shocking). I haven't checked out open mesh. I am mainly wanting to start on my block and go from there.

nerdydad

Check out the pricing on open mesh, I was pleasantly surprised, I didn't see prices on the powerapn's.

Bl8ckr0uter

nerdydad wrote: »

Check out the pricing on open mesh, I was pleasantly surprised, I didn't see prices on the powerapn's.

I just looked at the prices. I have seen some powerapns going for like 90.

Everyone

A few years ago when I lived in Montana, I tried to start a WiMAX WISP. Licensed spectrum stuff. Of course you can't compete with the big boys (AT&T, Sprint, Verizon) who weren't actually using WiMAX yet at the time, but still the only ones who can really afford to bid on the spectrum against each other. I found a loophole though, non-profit educational institutions owned a lot of this spectrum, and had for a very long time. It was perfectly legal to make an agreement with them that allowed you to use part of the spectrum they owned.

So I found a school in my area that was listed on the FCC as owning part of the licensed spectrum I could use for WiMAX. I contacted them, and they didn't even realize they owned it. I tried to work out an agreement with them. I told them I'd provide free internet service to the school if they let me use part of their spectrum. They were OK with the idea, but I never got far enough to make the actual agreement.

With it looking like I may be able to get the licensed spectrum I needed, I was pretty excited. I was going to be able to provide high speed internet to rural areas that currently only had dial-up available. The next obstacle was trying to find towers to use. I located some but had trouble contacting the owners to even find out how much it would cost to lease space on a tower.

Then there was the issue of cost, the WiMAX equipment was very expensive. I started putting a business plan together to try and take to local banks. I registered an LLC with the state, and got a federal tax ID number. I never got to the point where I actually asked anyone for financing, because the school I was going to get the spectrum from backed out.

It was an interesting experience. I know someone now who runs a WISP servering a large chunk of a rural area in central Illinois. He uses all unlicensed spectrum, so your standard a/b/g/n stuff, but commercial/WISP grade equipment, covers a pretty big area. He's told me that whenever cable or DSL expand into an area that he serves, he loses customers.

Lizano

I work for an MSP and have consulted for several WISPs. I would say the following, some points may seem obvious, but I mention them because I´ve seen them happen:

1) Start small, I have seen many spend a lot of cash on start up and then suffer greatly with income, some to the point of shutting down and selling the equipment just to get some cash back. Keep your initial investment to a necessary minimum.

2) Think redundancy from the get go, I see you are thinking of a 50/5 service, what type of service is it? Just cable or DSL? . Check what SLA they will give you on that and then remember that SLA´s are broken sometimes, so think worst case scenario. For a start-up company, having your customers down is very hurtful when your trying to build a good reputation. You would probably want to look at 2 services at least (and hardware to be able to load balance & failover), preferably one of these would be a dedicated line service, something above a couple of T1s (you can get a T1 for as low as $200 some places). ISPs have also been deploying alternate products to T1s that have been very reliable and better priced (Ethernet Over Copper, etc).

3) Do your market research, try selling the service in advance. I have seen people having success with this, i.e., if you plan to start offering service Jan 1st, hit the street now selling the service, tell people the service will have a monthly cost of x dollars, but if they sign on now, they will get promotional pricing, a lot of people bite that bait, and that way when you start up you already have customers signed up and maybe some cash flow.

4) Some people like less bills and more services, so if you see interest in some customers for other services besides just broadband, look for white label options that will give you the option of giving your customers whatever services they are interested in. This helps you win over some customers and bring in a few extra bucks on commissions. (white label voip, white label email, white label parental control web filtering, etc).

crrussell3

You also need to be concerned with what "activities" those under your connection will be doing.