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I've spent most of the last 15 years building and maintaining wireless ISP networks like this one. I've known several people (in the US) who have started an ISP

I've spent most of the last 15 years building and maintaining wireless ISP networks like this one. I've known several people (in the US) who have started an ISP like this in their garage and built it up to a few hundred costumers - enough to pay themselves a decent living salary. I'm also working on a startup in this space. Happy to answer questions.

hoppa_liza 10y ago
Does this line of service target solely the lack of connectivity, i.e. ISPs will not service you, or other issues like a slow/congested networks? My main point is figuring out where the other end of the line is, at the original ISP, or beyond that. And please forgive my lack of vocabulary, I have limited networks knowledge.
- grahamburger 10y ago
  If I understand your question correctly I think you're asking what network connectivity is 'upstream' from the wireless network, and how/if that compares to purchasing a connection from the telco? In my experience the way this works is that we buy a leased fiber connection - say 1GBPS, usually terminated either in a regular datacenter or in a business park somewhere. Sometimes you're buying that line from the same entity that is also selling residential Internet access in nearby neighborhoods (IE CenturyLink) but the business group you're dealing with is almost entirely distinct from the residential Internet service group. 1GBPS will go further than you think - you can put 700-800 heavy usage customers (cord cutters, college students, etc) on a 1GBPS link and never (or very rarely) max it out. Selling higher speed plans doesn't really increase the max throughput on the network either, except in fairly predictable 'bands'. That seems unintuitive, but most people don't really increase their Internet usage depending on the speed of the connection (other than at a few thresholds, IE going from <1mbps to something that allows cable-cutting) so selling a faster connection just gets them their data faster and frees up your capacity for the next request.
  - petra 10y ago
    What does a user mean in this case - a single person or a family ? And how does this work in prime time, when 50%+ of the people are watching netflix etc, at 4 Mbps average(1080p + 720p), with other video services even less compressed ?
    - grahamburger 10y ago
      a single family (or a single connection to the network, anyway. One customer from the ISP perspective.) You would think that at least 50% of people would be watching Netflix at the same time each night, but as of yet that doesn't seem to be the case. (At least not on any of the networks that I've been familiar with, which are in pretty tech-savvy areas like I mentioned, with heavy users.) It also helps that you can get one of Netflix's caching servers (can't remember what they're called) once you hit a certain threshold of traffic to their network. The key though is that the more customers you aggregate the less traffic you can plan for per customer. So for example if you have 100 customers you might need to budget your network at 4-5mbps/customer to make it through peak times without slowing every one down too bad, while if you have 1000 customer you can get by with ~1.5 mbps per customer.
timgws 10y ago
What gear are you looking to deploy? What I have seen most WISPs deploy is either the Canopy (Cambium Networks) hardware, or the Ubiquiti hardware. How many people are you going to service per point of access? How are you going to deliver connectivity to all your points of access?
- grahamburger 10y ago
  I'm not currently building a WISP, I'm building an auxiliary business for WISPs (Email in my profile if you're curious what it is - not really trying to promote here just yet) but since you asked I'll answer from past experience: 1) I've used Cambium and Ubiquiti and several others. Ubiquiti is hard to avoid because it's so damn cheap and it does work reasonably well, although Cambium is noticeably more robust. The latest stuff coming out is fixed 4G LTE, several companies pushing that gear in to the WISP space and I suspect that's where things will start to take off. 2) 30-50 for Cambium and Ubiquiti APs. Fewer if possible. On a large network the APs tend to be the bottle neck. 3) Fiber to primary POPs and then high capacity licensed wireless backhauls 2 to maybe 3 towers deep in the network. Depending on the local weather it's not unrealistic to get a licensed link that can support 800mbps to maybe 1.2 gbps over 3 to maybe 5 miles.

hoppa_liza 10y ago

Does this line of service target solely the lack of connectivity, i.e. ISPs will not service you, or other issues like a slow/congested networks? My main point is figuring out where the other end of the line is, at the original ISP, or beyond that. And please forgive my lack of vocabulary, I have limited networks knowledge.

grahamburger 10y ago
If I understand your question correctly I think you're asking what network connectivity is 'upstream' from the wireless network, and how/if that compares to purchasing a connection from the telco? In my experience the way this works is that we buy a leased fiber connection - say 1GBPS, usually terminated either in a regular datacenter or in a business park somewhere. Sometimes you're buying that line from the same entity that is also selling residential Internet access in nearby neighborhoods (IE CenturyLink) but the business group you're dealing with is almost entirely distinct from the residential Internet service group. 1GBPS will go further than you think - you can put 700-800 heavy usage customers (cord cutters, college students, etc) on a 1GBPS link and never (or very rarely) max it out. Selling higher speed plans doesn't really increase the max throughput on the network either, except in fairly predictable 'bands'. That seems unintuitive, but most people don't really increase their Internet usage depending on the speed of the connection (other than at a few thresholds, IE going from <1mbps to something that allows cable-cutting) so selling a faster connection just gets them their data faster and frees up your capacity for the next request.
- petra 10y ago
  What does a user mean in this case - a single person or a family ? And how does this work in prime time, when 50%+ of the people are watching netflix etc, at 4 Mbps average(1080p + 720p), with other video services even less compressed ?
  - grahamburger 10y ago
    a single family (or a single connection to the network, anyway. One customer from the ISP perspective.) You would think that at least 50% of people would be watching Netflix at the same time each night, but as of yet that doesn't seem to be the case. (At least not on any of the networks that I've been familiar with, which are in pretty tech-savvy areas like I mentioned, with heavy users.) It also helps that you can get one of Netflix's caching servers (can't remember what they're called) once you hit a certain threshold of traffic to their network. The key though is that the more customers you aggregate the less traffic you can plan for per customer. So for example if you have 100 customers you might need to budget your network at 4-5mbps/customer to make it through peak times without slowing every one down too bad, while if you have 1000 customer you can get by with ~1.5 mbps per customer.

timgws 10y ago

What gear are you looking to deploy? What I have seen most WISPs deploy is either the Canopy (Cambium Networks) hardware, or the Ubiquiti hardware. How many people are you going to service per point of access? How are you going to deliver connectivity to all your points of access?

grahamburger 10y ago
I'm not currently building a WISP, I'm building an auxiliary business for WISPs (Email in my profile if you're curious what it is - not really trying to promote here just yet) but since you asked I'll answer from past experience: 1) I've used Cambium and Ubiquiti and several others. Ubiquiti is hard to avoid because it's so damn cheap and it does work reasonably well, although Cambium is noticeably more robust. The latest stuff coming out is fixed 4G LTE, several companies pushing that gear in to the WISP space and I suspect that's where things will start to take off. 2) 30-50 for Cambium and Ubiquiti APs. Fewer if possible. On a large network the APs tend to be the bottle neck. 3) Fiber to primary POPs and then high capacity licensed wireless backhauls 2 to maybe 3 towers deep in the network. Depending on the local weather it's not unrealistic to get a licensed link that can support 800mbps to maybe 1.2 gbps over 3 to maybe 5 miles.