How does one start a rural ISP? Would you mind sharing a bit about that?
- Find the customers*
- Find somewhere to broadcast from*
- Find a wholesale fibre provider*
- Register with your country's regulator & read a bunch of laws
- While you are doing the above, learn about networking. Get this right before you launch, then forgot about it. Post-launch all problems will (hopefully) be non-tech related.
And also lots of good old-fashioned business cash-flow spreadsheets.
I really like enjoy it (even though it can be stressful) because:
- I like geekery
- I like business (even thought it can be stressful)
- I like being in nature, and this one of the few lines of work that combines the OSI model & chainsaws.
- I like having a reason to meet people in my area. Great way to make friends.
- This area really needs it. There is fibre in the villages, but lots of people live & work on remote patches of land. The service I provide really makes a difference to their lives.
It don't think it'll necessarily make you rich, but it may give you a meaningful livelihood if you have the market for such a service.
* You kinda need to do these three simultaneously, because they all need to be in the same location. At some point I just had to commit to one of the three and hope that everything else fell into place.
We also need to log netflow data due to the EU counter terrorism directive, and keep it securely. Last I heard it had been deemed unconstitutional by the EU courts, but the law had yet to be revoked.
The hardest part BY FAR, was getting the fibre connection. My advice for this is to do your research to find the available providers in you area/country. There is no fibre map for Portugal, so this was tricky. Reach out to actual people and ask for contacts at telecoms companies in your country. You are looking for Direct Internet Access (DIA). This comment of mine is a bit relevant [1]
The WISP facebook groups [2] [3] really helped me with this, and in figuring out what I need to go and learn about. Don't let those groups stress you out though. I've un-followed them now.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30128418