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I agree I left out a lot of incidentals, but it wasn't meant to be an all-encompassing analysis, just some napkin numbers. The $3000/month isn't for someone wi

I agree I left out a lot of incidentals, but it wasn't meant to be an all-encompassing analysis, just some napkin numbers. The $3000/month isn't for someone with a deep and good understanding of network security -- that should be you (the one making the $96k piece) -- it's for someone that can answer the phone, help people set their routers to DHCP, etc... $17/hr isn't bad pay(at least around here) for someone with basic network knowledge. Also many places the bandwidth is cheaper, some it's more expensive, but, being a WISP, you might be in a position to pipe your bandwidth from somewhere cheap to where you are. If your bandwidth isn't cheap, then you provide 10mb/s service instead of 30. While not considered actual broadband, it's plenty for gaming, netflix, most general web usage.

jauer 10y ago
Exactly. We usually aim for a 10-month ROI and that's using higher-end Cambium radios (way better for ops at scale than something like Ubiquiti), Juniper network gear, batteries on everything, and proper telco circuits. We also have a few thousand subs so we get economies of scale on transport and transit. (digression) There's a kind of WISP valley of death roughly between the hobby WISP (0-500 users) with a owner/operator and one or two employees, maybe running on business DOCSIS for upstream and Ubiquity and/or Mikrotik radios & routers and the professional carrier WISP (2-5k+ users) with biz people, experienced ops people, longhaul fiber or licensed microwave for backhaul, etc. Small WISPs often can't afford the time or money to be proper (if they even have the experience to know what proper is) until they pass the valley of death. Many fall to bankruptcy or burnout trying to get past the valley.