Start Your Own ISP

Anyone interested in actually doing this may wish to look up Jared Mauch:<p>* &quot;Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes&quot;: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=32411493">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=32411493</a><p>* &quot;NLNOG: Getting Fiber To My Town [video]&quot;: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=24424910">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=24424910</a><p>* &quot;Jared Mauch didn’t have good broadband–so he built his own fiber ISP&quot;: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=25753360">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=25753360</a><p>* &quot;How To Create Your Own ISP with Jared Mauch&quot;: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=kJH9Emr99KI" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=kJH9Emr99KI</a>

A good wisp can be competitive vs starlink.<p>The issue is that wisp owners are cowboys, who dont ever follow through with good practices. Their networks, often due to guides like this website, end up riddled with technical debt (Technical debt is usually but not always branded Mikrotik).<p>Starlink doesnt offer layer 2 services. Starlink doesnt offer half rate backup services. Starlink doesnt offer installation. Starlink can often be very congested.<p>A wisp operator can:<p>1. Pull fibre into an area and then distribute it via 60GHz.<p>2. Pull fibre a bit further away and use decent APs with good MIMO.<p>3. Use profits from the above to pull fibre closer and ultimately overbuild themselves in areas with enough density<p>4. Service extrmely deep rural customers who dont have other options.<p>5. Service MDU&#x27;s with a reverse model of 60GHz to the building, then fibre to the appt.<p>What actually happens in practice is that anything more complex than bouncing 5ghz off of a tower is too hard, hiring someone intelligent to do it for them is too expensive and too hard and so small wisps just sell to bigger wisps who sell to fibre carriers or go bust.

Previously:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27539165">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=27539165</a> (June 17, 2021 — 607 points, 153 comments)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20726906">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=20726906</a> (August 17, 2019 — 635 points, 95 comments)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=16160394">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=16160394</a> (January 16, 2018 — 938 points, 193 comments)

I&#x27;m somewhat skeptical about the advice given out on this site, while it looks ok on first glance, can I really trust their &quot;professional advice&quot; if their corporate parent site [0] is serving up, as of this writing, an expired SSL cert? What other things might they be missing?<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;outpost.plus" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;outpost.plus</a>

Lots of people are mentioning starlink. But there is a hard cap to how many subscribers can be in a given zone. Which means that although it is cheap right now, there is a hard cap for supply. That&#x27;s the main reason the marine and RV packages&#x2F;plans cost more.

There&#x27;s an old joke however ...<p>&quot;How do you collect a small fortune with an ISP?&quot;<p>&quot;Start with a large fortune&quot;

Fun and all, but hard to make money with Starlink and 5G providers are ready to eat your lunch.

Man, this was exciting back in the day, but now big risk you&#x27;ll get blown out by Starlink. Starlink can just put high-speed internet into everyone&#x27;s backyards.

Who wants to do this in Kirkland, WA?

I wish this hadn&#x27;t been about a WISP, because I&#x27;d have loved to read about someone&#x27;s experience bringing fibre to a door in a neighborhood. I live in a community with a regional ISP that offers me gigabit fibre with minimal extra hardware (just an ONT, hooray!), and with AT&amp;T starting to dig in our area, I wondered what it would take to have a neighborhood only competitor. Probably infeasible, and a major disadvantage over a WISP in that I&#x27;d need to dig, but if the ground is already dug up and conduits being laid...

too bad you can&#x27;t do this in Canada

Unfortunately the cost of IPv4 space at auction alone is prohibitively expensive.