Start Your Own ISP
startyourownisp.com
startyourownisp.com
This ends the incumbency problem by making bandwidth a commodity. Want a byte, buy a byte, switching to the best provider automatically. No software knowledge required, fully plug and play. (equipment still required, can't break the laws of RF. it's just regular WISP gear though)
Here's a talk I gave on exactly how the system is designed and implemented.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4EKbgShyLw
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1izRgUr-Tm-ixnqpd7NGW...
In general our only 'mesh tech' innovation is the mandatory WireGuard encryption for all user traffic. Which as far as I know is a first. The rest is the billing and some ease of configuration.
Thanks
The main issue is one of trust, we have left it up to the user what exit nodes to add to their system beyond a few we ship in the firmware run by ourselves.
Personally I think this is a point of weakness long term, we need to decide on criteria for including other exit servers. Trust is hard
WireGuard itself is open source, our firmware and software is open source. So if the question is about encryption/software integrity go take a look.
If it's about what traffic is routed through WireGuard the answer is all user traffic to the internet, no exceptions.
Depends on the type of illegal content. There is no established case law that protects you as a moderator of CP. Yes, LEO will not arrest you usually for it, but there is nothing that positively makes you safe as a moderator working to remove and report CP content.
I would love to start my own ISP in my country, except that dealing with my corrupt government and corrupt bureaucracy existing here would mean I would have to have triple the cash of official investment, because here without "greasing the wheels" nothing works, and all of that is done by discretely leaving an envelope with cash on the corner of the discussion table that nobody in your presence will touch it. Also the amount of cash itself is a mind game on its own. You must discreetly research the person to see how much money they take as bribe. Too much and news about you being a newbie will spread like wild fire and all your future discussions will drain you of even more cash in discreet envelopes. Too little money and your request will get denied making you face the same person handing over another discreet envelope, and you better have at least the correct sum in there. So waste time asking for this mind game, waste cash that you'll never be able to officially report as deductible and then start implementing the points in article. Welcome to Romania ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Seems like it would be very hard to make a profit unless you can find hundreds of customers close to each other who are willing to pay unusually high prices for internet connectivity.
As the same time, about 98% of the population has mobile phone coverage (which implies some form of data access) with terminals that can be had for 0 upfront cost and ~10€ per month subscription with very large traffic allowance. Telekom (previous Romtelecom) can offer DSL services in most villages where a phone exchange is present.
Corruption or not, its probably a bad idea to start a wireless Internet provider in Romania because it already has excellent commodity connectivity virtually everywhere.
1. https://www.internetworldstats.com/europa.htm 2. https://www.romania-insider.com/romania-active-population-do...
That being said, a WISP for villages would definitely has its place in current situation.
Telekom is the former Romtelecom.a quick Google search should clarify that for you.
Coverage in Romania is 98% mandated to all operators by law and regularly checked (http://www.ancom.org.ro/en/ancom-has-verified-the-coverage-o...)
Bribing a city Hall worker for fiber Internet connection is again made up. City halls and all other institutions in Romania are not connected to the regular Internet, the connectivity is provided by STS (Special Telecommunications Services) to a private government network. In remote villages this is provided over satellite or radio link. Regular Internet is purchased by the local authorities from local providers (as needed) and is the same service that would be available to anyone else.
If you would run a local farm, do not host your eCommerce site using the available bandwidth, do it in the cloud, that's what grown ups do.
Please provide sources for your claims and do start a WISP if you want to address the rest of the population 2-10%, spread out over a country the size of UK.
I'm not at a computer tonight I'll run through later today or tomorrow and answer questions. My contact info is on the website as well.
Maybe you can start your own ISP, but do not assume it will be in the same place you live. Analyze the country and find the pockets where you can thrive and grow a successful business, otherwise don’t even bother. Also bring a decent amount of cash and a good credit line.
* People found an ISP $NEWCOMER in an area where $ESTABLISHED has bad service and high fees.
* The newcomer invests loads of money into cabling the neighbourhood with fiber (or wireless internet) and offers deals with lower fees and better connectivity than $ESTABLISHED
* In a static world everyone would switch to $NEWCOMER and they'd make a lot of money, being able to expand to other places. But executives at $ESTABLISHED aren't stupid. They invest as well and lower their prices, too, just enough to be lower than $NEWCOMER.
* $ESTABLISHED waits until $NEWCOMER runs out of money. They rise prices again. It doesn't even matter if its price reductions mean $ESTABLISHED loses money in that region. The regions where there is no newcomer bring in enough cash to pay for the few regions with (temporary) losses.
Of course even if $NEWCOMER runs out of money, someone will buy their infrastructure and offer similar services, but there are more components in the competitive moats of established ISPs like (local) government granted monopolies in exchange for providing public buildings like school with free internet, or the bundling of streaming services with internet deals. Those moats usually are wide enough that there is no avail for small ISPs to break through. That being said, if you break through the moat, it's an insanely profitable business. DTAG had to invest tons of money until they got there and now they are in the place where the big ISPs can't harm them any more and the american daughter company is now the favourite of the DTAG shareholders.
But WISPs do make the most sense in areas where there is no good alternative (only DSL or Dish).
I've got a lot of experience serving the low-margin market, both for ISPs, WISPs, but mostly on the hosting side, (and hosting is actually easier; the less you have the customer on the equipment, the less time you spend fixing stuff they broke.) and let me tell you, low margin does not at all line up with low support expectations.
Even if you can charge your customer twice what it's costing you and making ten bucks a month per user, one tech support issue can end up eating all the margin that customer would have given you for years.
In Poland you can get 1Gbps connection for 200USD/month and 5Gbps for ~600USD/m
Of course, the rate you gave holds with the $1/mb I was assuming. You oversell bandwidth obviously.
Not as much as Comcast/$ESTABLISHED company can. The people most likely to switch to a WISP or alternative ISP are the people most likely to crush your bandwidth.
I run a small non-profit WISP (with price per user about $15/m), and the cost of bandwidth is not a significant part of the budget (about 15 %). Biggest part of the budget (about 60 %) is hardware and work for development and repairs of the network.
> since it's wireless your costs per user are actually rather low, given a good tower.
I would say that wireless has pretty high cost per user. To have good coverage and not overloaded APs, you target ~5 users per AP and 1-3 APs per node.
One interesting I ran across is how mountainous villages in Nepal has their Internet connections. I was in Annapurna trail last month, and in Manang village (which has about 20 guest houses), there is one big satellite connection and everyone shares from it. The owner charges the consumers a flat fee. From what I hear, and it could be exaggerated, they pay about $500 per year. I think a remote location, one uplink satellite, and a few wired subscribers can be a viable business!
startyourownisp is not really about that.
now if you can do a microwave or other backhaul that’s great but it still sounds like something you should be able to get someone to provide for you.
when you build out physical infrastructure you are guaranteed to have real world physical problems, on top of deep infra tech maintenance issues that you can’t just let slide.
nothing is easy at this level.
$500k is likely cheap (but would have to see details) the main problem is that you are spending it all at once instead of capitalizing it over 20 years like the ISP is.
over the same period of time it’s going to cost the same. but in all the intervening years fixing problems is going to take longer, things will be less reliable, and you have to invest in things that are not a core competency.
again, not enough details are presented so it’s hard to say, but in general DIY is a bad way to go here.
like you said, without details, i think the current systems admin could make this decision better than either of us arm chairing quarterbacking it. I certainly think it's viable though, when compared to operating under the poor dsl solution they currently have.
That being said, what this guide really gives me is an alternative solution to present to a CEO and IT manager who think that it is an unsolvable problem. I still think this ends with a 3rd party doing everything, but for substantially less than $500k (before monthly service fees).
Email in profile.
If only regulatory capture wasn't a thing...
To the downvoters: can you actually respond and explain why you are downvoting this sentiment?
These are very dense talks with tons of information you'll probably not need unless you're reeeally going to do it, but it's good to watch for an overview of all steps involved anyway even if you don't.
The talks are from Altheapalooza from https://althea.net/, but they can be applied to non-Althea ISPs also (although you should consider Althea as it's great despite the shitcoinery).
Is this still true?
Eventually I gave up, but I bet Mesh Wifi are seriously becoming a thing in dense cities. Also some off-the-shelve routers allow 4G-USB-sticks as backup options. Fully automatizing this would be so awesome!
Am I missing a link here or something?
Reselling consumer-level Internet access to means you're taking away the users that would otherwise be subsidizing your service (because they're buying from you instead) while still expecting the local ISP to shoulder a large share of the costs for bringing your packets to their final destinations.
That issue goes away if you pay for a dedicated line (IE, explicitly contracted reserved bandwidth) to an IXP or place somewhere will sell you bulk transit, and you're paying for that too. That's fine. The problem is with expecting to make a profit by being the ISP to your whole block, based on a $100/mo GBPS fiber drop.
Not to say that the ISP mono/duopolists aren't loathesome--excessive market power is the root of... not all, but lots of socio-economic evil. The economics of telecommunications is complicated.
I wonder how cheaply it could be done for 1 customer (my parents house has terrible wireless internet and I'd like to move home and try doing a startup)
Depends on your definition of cheap. Your biggest expenses would be monthly bill to your fiber provider, then any necessary rent for backhaul sites, then the up-front cost.
I can't say for sure the monthly cost but it would definitely be in the low four figures.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jjUYOQMuZ4cRyTv1M5X8...
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jjUYOQMuZ4cRyTv1M5X8...
@woah?