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Comment by NotSammyHagar | Hacker News Reader

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 much better area to invest in instead of putting more money in my 401k. It's not so much much money, less than two year's 401k contributions to run it for a year and see if it catches on.

I hate comcast with a passion, they are on the only provider in my area. Here's another fantasy, I imagine two points of presence, one at my house. I run fiber to my house as part of this business, then I've got infinite capacity. Who's up for this?

How much does it cut out if it rains, probably that is a problem here.

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Hey NotSammy! That's exactly what this is about, hope it helps you get started!

Rain can be planned around. Rain has a very predictable effect on wireless connections (called rain fade) so what you do is look at the heaviest rain storms from the last few years and put that in to the wireless link budgets and make sure you're broadcasting loud enough and your links are short enough that they won't fail in a rainstorm.

Then of course you also have to spend some extra time making sure all your devices are weather proofed properly.

There's no reason this can't work in a heavy rain area. Heavy tree cover is a bigger problem, though.

This sounds interesting. I am in Seattle and also hate Comcast with a passion. My roommate has a similar hate of Comcast. If I could get 200 mbit at a similar cost to what I am paying now it would be an instant transition.

I'm on the east side too. Seattle has many more providers than the east side. Where I am there is only Comcast and much slower dsl (20mb). DSL comes with a bandwidth cap. I have the standard comcast 1tb/month limit, but with an xbox, it's easy to use 100 gig just for a couple of giant games. I can see it wouldn't be too hard to use a terabyte.

Honestly, if the primary value proposition was "fuck your cable company, here's how to get internet without paying them" you could probably motivate some sales even if the price and service were the same.

It seems like there'd be a market for a "ISPaaS" style company. This company would consult on the setup, in the style of this guide, but would remote-admin all the gear, keep track of updates, security settings, make sure everything is documented, run 24/7 NOC monitoring, spot bottlenecks early and recommend upgrades, review site access contracts (or provide standard contracts), run billing and customer service etc. Basically, all the things that are easier and cheaper to run at scale. Their business model would be to take a cut of billing. The local owner would scout, deal with negotiating site access and provide the capital. The ISPaaS could provide detailed standard/lightly customised installation documents that could be handed to local contractors, or handled by the owner. They could also maintain a stash of marketing collateral and website templates and of course provide a forum for network owners to share ideas and best practices.

> It seems like there'd be a market for a "ISPaaS" style company.

A few UK companies (easynet springs to mind) had "virtual ISPs" where you pay to use all their infrastructure (hosting, email, dialup, etc.) and get branded pages / etc.

I don't think any of them have survived to the modern era though.

(author here) It's possible that this could turn in to something like that. When I originally started writing it that's exactly what I had in mind, actually - but I have since started working with common.net and I'm quite happy there.

If this is something people are interested in though reach out to me! I may be able to line something like this up.

I am very interested in this. Making it dead simple to set up an ISP would be a very awesome thing.

shoot me an email graham at startyourownisp.com.

Sent!

Australia specific, but: https://www.telcoinabox.com.au/

The eastside is a really promising target for a WISP. I've done some tinkering with HamWAN (the top of Eastgate Park&Ride has great line-of-sight to Seattle), but it's strictly non-profit and doesn't cover the eastside too well due to an abundance of hills and tall buildings in the way. If one could peer in a fiber-connected building in downtown Bellevue, and beam that from the roof to a couple tower sites... you might just have a WISP.

This is exactly the market for 5G cellular, btw. You will have your pick of carriers in a couple years that can provide you with this service...

This is why we're starting to run fiber. 5G and tree's don't mix well.

I'm also in Seattle and would be interested in working on this if you're looking for partners, shoot me an email? magrimes@mtu.edu

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