[HN Gopher] Start Your Own ISP
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Start Your Own ISP
Author : agomez314
Score : 153 points
Date : 2024-04-25 19:06 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (startyourownisp.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (startyourownisp.com)
| spxneo wrote:
| too bad you can't do this in Canada
| Szpadel wrote:
| why?
| betaby wrote:
| Overregulation. Source, I work in telecom in Canada.
| loceng wrote:
| And now all telecom companies are required to interconnect,
| right? Or did that not happen? The government mandated that
| after the "Rogers outage" - so that other providers can act
| as "backups", so "that never happens again."
| betaby wrote:
| > And now all telecom companies are required to
| interconnect, right?
|
| No. That's not the case at all.
|
| > so that other providers can act as "backups", so "that
| never happens again."
|
| Also, no.
|
| Also what do you mean by interconnect? BGP IP peering is
| a thing for a while. Big folks peer with big folks.
| loceng wrote:
| "Ottawa announces it will require telecoms to provide
| backup for each other during outages following Rogers
| system failure" -
| https://www.thestar.com/business/ottawa-announces-it-
| will-re...
|
| Are you aware of this?
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| Ask TekSavvy that question.
| betaby wrote:
| Or Ebox. In fact some of hurdles were documented on
| dslreports forum. Starting with wholesale access to cable (
| worked OK for a while ) continuing with wholesale access to
| fiber ( never happens ) and ending with the end of the
| 'sane' rates for cable ( final nail before Ebox,
| Destributel and other were sold to Bell/Telus/Cogeco )
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Regulatory capture and the regulator being in bed with the
| incumbents. Not Canada-specific even, this is a common
| problem in a lot of countries when it comes to telecoms.
| anthk wrote:
| Nether in Spain...
| dotBen wrote:
| Neither in San Francisco.
|
| In 2005 Google wanted to do a nice gesture and offer free
| wifi across SF. The Board of Supervisors literally asked
| Google how much they were intending to pay the city in order
| to offer free wifi... SMH.
|
| It of course never happened.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Previously:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27539165 (June 17, 2021 --
| 607 points, 153 comments)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20726906 (August 17, 2019 --
| 635 points, 95 comments)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16160394 (January 16, 2018
| -- 938 points, 193 comments)
| candiodari wrote:
| There's an old joke however ...
|
| "How do you collect a small fortune with an ISP?"
|
| "Start with a large fortune"
| scorpiontelly wrote:
| I started one with a partner at age 21 and only a few thousand,
| but it can be a lot cheaper if you're not paying for a DIA
| renewiltord wrote:
| Man, this was exciting back in the day, but now big risk you'll
| get blown out by Starlink. Starlink can just put high-speed
| internet into everyone's backyards.
| bityard wrote:
| At twice the price of cable and fiber, at least in my
| backyard...
| Alupis wrote:
| And vastly slower speeds...
|
| Starlink is a replacement for dial-up, satellite, and in some
| cases legacy DSL- pretty much nothing else.
| freedomben wrote:
| I think this is going to depend somewhat on how congested
| your area is, but Starlink is my home ISP and I sometimes
| get faster (download) speeds at home than I do at the
| office where we have fiber at 200 Mbps down. It has a
| little more variance but is consistently quite fast. If the
| backend is on GCP, it amazes me how fast it will go.
| dboreham wrote:
| That's simply not true in my direct experience. I built a
| WISP back in the day, and although I don't have customers
| now, I still use the backhaul network to feed my office
| (typing this over that network). I have Starlink as a
| backup. Starlink is about as fast as my fixed wireless
| terrestrial link. It's often faster for download, and about
| 2/3 as fast for upload. Way, way faster than dialup and
| DSL.
| Alupis wrote:
| What kind of equipment are you using? Have you realigned
| it recently?
|
| You can push gigabit[1] ptp over the air these days for
| pretty cheap. Starlink seems to top out around 200Mbps in
| the best case.
|
| [1] https://store.ui.com/us/en/collections/uisp-wireless-
| airfibe...
| zachmu wrote:
| I'm on the basic plan and usually see about 75mbps. It can
| drop to 20 or so during peak netflix hours. But that's
| still plenty fast enough for multiple HD video streams.
| What we had before was much slower and much, much less
| reliable.
|
| If you can get a fast wired connection, do it. Starlink is
| for people who can't, and it's far and away the best option
| for them.
| Alupis wrote:
| What kind of wired connection did you have previously?
|
| The target audience for Starlink in the continental US
| seems to be people who's other options are traditional
| satellite, dial-up, or sometimes DSL (typically implying
| you're in a more rural area, but not always). For people
| in those situations, Starlink can be a good alternative.
|
| However, if you have access to modern cable or FTTH...
| well, it's not a substitute.
| butshouldyou wrote:
| Regional pricing means it's 500-560 USD up-front to buy the
| receiver. Then, 50-100 USD per month for the residential
| plan, which includes unlimited data.
|
| That's not too bad. However, there's no speed listed. Third
| party reviews state 100/10 Mbps (up/down), which is not too
| bad considering the same site states a UK average of 75/15.
|
| The vast majority of the UK has pretty slow speeds.
|
| That said, unlimited internet subscriptions over fiber can be
| had for as little as 20 USD per month, which is far cheaper.
| dlachausse wrote:
| Spectrum is charging me $85 a month (and constantly
| increasing) for internet (JUST internet) that clocks out at
| about 200 Mbps, so that really doesn't sound all that bad.
| lh7777 wrote:
| In my area, fiber and cable aren't available. If you're
| lucky, you can get 5 mbps DSL for $70+ per month.
|
| The only credible options are WISP, Starlink, and cellular.
| WISP is the same price as Starlink and is slower / less
| reliable. Cellular is cheaper but gets slow at peak hours.
|
| In short, the local WISP has been losing a lot of customers
| to Starlink and T-Mobile Home Internet.
| quinncom wrote:
| Until Starlink can lower prices to < $10/month, community-level
| ISPs will still be relevant to many locations (LatAm, etc).
| Starlink uplinks might even be used by the ISPs.
|
| I lived in a village in Colombia, population about 2000, which
| had four competing wireless ISPs. The quality was extremely
| low, but so were the prices.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Starlink can't currently compete with cable and fiber speeds,
| and it's a Musk business, so it'll probably collapse when his
| house of cards comes down.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Hmm, not really. Starlink only offers 150mbit, at $150/mo,
| whereas the costs for starting your ISP as presented here is
| about $25k up front and $3k/mo to keep it running. That's
| ridiculous for one person, but entirely economically viable if
| you're literally starting your own local ISP to service a few
| hundred homes, driving down the one-time signup and monthly
| fees to something _drastically_ lower than what Starlink
| charges, for speeds that are _drastically_ higher than what
| Starlink offers.
|
| But as any business venture: if you don't know whether you can
| get the customers, you better have the cash lying around to pay
| for everything yourself =D
| theideaofcoffee wrote:
| I'm somewhat skeptical about the advice given out on this site,
| while it looks ok on first glance, can I really trust their
| "professional advice" if their corporate parent site [0] is
| serving up, as of this writing, an expired SSL cert? What other
| things might they be missing?
|
| [0] https://outpost.plus
| throw0101c wrote:
| Anyone interested in actually doing this may wish to look up
| Jared Mauch:
|
| * "Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to
| hundreds of homes": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32411493
|
| * "NLNOG: Getting Fiber To My Town [video]":
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24424910
|
| * "Jared Mauch didn't have good broadband-so he built his own
| fiber ISP": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25753360
|
| * "How To Create Your Own ISP with Jared Mauch":
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJH9Emr99KI
| aliljet wrote:
| Who wants to do this in Kirkland, WA?
| dboreham wrote:
| Fun and all, but hard to make money with Starlink and 5G
| providers are ready to eat your lunch.
| j45 wrote:
| There are still use cases and people who need something
| different than that.
|
| Besides that, not everyone is willing to pay for a Starlink
| priority plan.
| zachmu wrote:
| I just switched from long-range wireless to Starlink basic.
| It's 50% cheaper and much, much more reliable. Speeds are
| comparable (when the long-range wifi wasn't down, which it
| was pretty often). Long-range wifi had a data cap with crazy
| overage fees, Starlink is unlimited.
| Alupis wrote:
| I have yet to see a 5G home internet solution that's actually
| useful. It seems to be a "budget" internet option more than a
| viable alternative to most other solutions.
|
| Latency and speed are slow, and some of the providers mess
| with/block certain traffic (IKEv2 etc).
| bhhaskin wrote:
| 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's the main reason the marine and RV packages/plans cost
| more.
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(page generated 2024-04-25 23:00 UTC)