It would've been nice to see some numbers to show the capital required to build it. For the area he's in, just trenching in the fiber from the cell tower would cost $50K / mile on the low end. Then he has to pay for transit. And possibly leasing fiber depending on how he sets that up. That all costs thousands per month.<p>It looks like the guy lives in Marin County California, which is a pretty affluent area. He has enough money to live there while (seemingly) leisuring out on the ocean, not working for 6+ years. He made it sound like sharing the internet as an ISP didn't even occur to him until neighbors asked about it so he was ready to plonk down pretty hefty amounts of cash for just his own usage (I don't blame him of course, I'd do the same).<p>So yes, you too can start an ISP out of your garage, if you have a fat bank account. :-)
Basically every city in Poland has such company in 00s. Now we have around 450-500 ISPs in whole country. Most of them started their journey in garage :). Nowaydays most of them are doing FTTH/GPON constantly evolving - giving better services than big-country-wide companies like Orange. For example, I live in Bielsko Biala (southern Poland) and I pay around $25 monthly for 600/600Mbps with static external ipv4.
I had wireless internet like this growing up in a rural town in the early 2000s. It was 3 mbps unlimited, and our only other options were satellite (768k with 800ms rtt or so) and 56k dial-up. It was a godsend for me as a young kid wanting to learn and explore tech. I’m glad to hear he’s doing this, and it’s great for small scale, but this is what’s most exciting to me about SpaceX. The promise of LEO satellite internet is immense for people in these situations, but the cost doesn’t work out unless you can launch those satellites at a low cost. SpaceX seems to understand this and I see their drive to reusable rockets as a way to make this a high profit margin business that will enable them to do bigger and better things without being beholden to nation states for funding. I can’t wait for this. I hope to have a remote country house someday, but the internet has been one of the main drivers for us to stay closer in to town.
He has a direct fiber line into his house but the glimpses of the speed tests were showing ~180 Mb/s at the peak. This is far from the max performance a fiber line can deliver.<p>Is he getting throttled by the company that is leasing the fiber line or is there a bottleneck in his setup?
Back in Turkey (3 years ago) I had 100/5 cable internet. Now in Estonia, I have 500/500 fiber for 32 euros/month. I know that 500/500 is a "bit extra", but I have always thought at least 100mbps should be standard.<p>I still can't believe my eyes when I see connection speeds like 5, 10 mbps in countries like Germany or americas.<p>With these kind of speed rates, I have never thought of creating my own ISP. At least not for speed issues.
I like the P2P nature of the internet, but how do you get connected to a peer on good terms? Comcast, Verizon and AT&T limit not only who but what devices you can route packets for (e.g. hotspot data).<p>Any ideas on finding good peers to work with? I'm hoping for few usage restrictions first and then quality links characteristics next (e.g. bandwidth, latency, cost, etc...).