
Start Your Own ISP - mahathu
https://startyourownisp.com/
======
jkilpatr
My company Althea ([https://althea.net](https://althea.net)) is making open
source router firmware that makes it easy to people to set up incentivized
mesh networks in their communities. It allows routers to pay each other for
bandwidth which means that everyone hosting a node earns money for the packets
they forward.

This ends the incumbency problem by making bandwidth a commodity. Want a byte,
buy a byte, switching to the best provider automatically. No software
knowledge required, fully plug and play. (equipment still required, can't
break the laws of RF. it's just regular WISP gear though)

Here's a talk I gave on exactly how the system is designed and implemented.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4EKbgShyLw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4EKbgShyLw)

[https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1izRgUr-Tm-
ixnqpd7NGW...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1izRgUr-Tm-
ixnqpd7NGWyiLgcAzXfPas1JmdFp25-yM)

~~~
Operyl
Huh, how do you deal with the problem of law enforcement assuming that an IP
is a single subscriber? Even if law enforcement believed it up front, it still
is a hassle to the users now dealing with law enforcement requests.

~~~
woah
The traffic goes out through an exit node so the only thing that a gateway’s
ISP sees is an encrypted tunnel.

~~~
devwastaken
That doesn't eliminate liability. If you're knowingly trafficking illigal
content you're also liable for it. Afaik the only exceptions are when the
content is being moderated .

~~~
jjeaff
How would you knowingly transmit illegal activity if everything is encrypted?

------
unnouinceput
Start your own ISP in US - there, I fixed the title for you.

I would love to start my own ISP in my country, except that dealing with my
corrupt government and corrupt bureaucracy existing here would mean I would
have to have triple the cash of official investment, because here without
"greasing the wheels" nothing works, and all of that is done by discretely
leaving an envelope with cash on the corner of the discussion table that
nobody in your presence will touch it. Also the amount of cash itself is a
mind game on its own. You must discreetly research the person to see how much
money they take as bribe. Too much and news about you being a newbie will
spread like wild fire and all your future discussions will drain you of even
more cash in discreet envelopes. Too little money and your request will get
denied making you face the same person handing over another discreet envelope,
and you better have at least the correct sum in there. So waste time asking
for this mind game, waste cash that you'll never be able to officially report
as deductible and then start implementing the points in article. Welcome to
Romania ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
timurlenk
Romania has 14.3M (1) Internet users for an active population of 9.2M (2)

As the same time, about 98% of the population has mobile phone coverage (which
implies some form of data access) with terminals that can be had for 0 upfront
cost and ~10€ per month subscription with very large traffic allowance.
Telekom (previous Romtelecom) can offer DSL services in most villages where a
phone exchange is present.

Corruption or not, its probably a bad idea to start a wireless Internet
provider in Romania because it already has excellent commodity connectivity
virtually everywhere.

1\.
[https://www.internetworldstats.com/europa.htm](https://www.internetworldstats.com/europa.htm)
2\. [https://www.romania-insider.com/romania-active-population-
do...](https://www.romania-insider.com/romania-active-population-down-2018)

~~~
unnouinceput
That is the situation for cities, yes. On villages is another dimension.
Broadcast is almost non-existent and everybody is relying on mobile. The few
that have Digi (that's the actual former Romtelecom) are a drop in a bucket.
As corruption is rampart, those on villages that require constant high speed
connection usually bribe some city hall workers to let them get a fiber from
the city hall to their house. The big majority of people, like I said, rely on
cell data by doing hot-spots with them, and that gives them most of the time
3G due to weakness of the signal. Romania has coverage over its territory, but
just enough to allow you to call an ambulance or police, but to rely a country
side business like a farm that sell its products over internet that's not
happening. We all wait to see what happens with 5G, and see wtf is the outcome
of the current trade war US/China and most importantly to see from where to
get 5G equipment for infrastructure. Huwaei is currently the incontestable
leader of 5G tech but with shots fired from US govt. against it, and due to
Romania being in NATO and having a US military presence we can't really just
say "you know what? we'll get 5G from Huwaei". On the other side we are part
of EU and current movement is to kinda ignore Trump and the trade war (see EU
stance vis-a-vis Iran issue) and most big telecom companies from
France/Germany do have talk with Huwaei. So we, a small fish, are caught
between a rock and a hard place...and we wait...and we started to fall behind.

That being said, a WISP for villages would definitely has its place in current
situation.

~~~
timurlenk
You are rambling and the situation you are describing is nonsensical and not
related to anything that is going on in Romania.

Telekom is the former Romtelecom.a quick Google search should clarify that for
you.

Coverage in Romania is 98% mandated to _all_ operators by law and regularly
checked ([http://www.ancom.org.ro/en/ancom-has-verified-the-
coverage-o...](http://www.ancom.org.ro/en/ancom-has-verified-the-coverage-of-
voice-services-in-romania-_5982))

Bribing a city Hall worker for fiber Internet connection is again made up.
City halls and all other institutions in Romania are not connected to the
regular Internet, the connectivity is provided by STS (Special
Telecommunications Services) to a private government network. In remote
villages this is provided over satellite or radio link. Regular Internet is
purchased by the local authorities from local providers (as needed) and is the
same service that would be available to anyone else.

If you would run a local farm, do not host your eCommerce site using the
available bandwidth, do it in the cloud, that's what grown ups do.

Please provide sources for your claims and do start a WISP if you want to
address the rest of the population 2-10%, spread out over a country the size
of UK.

------
grahamburger
Oh hello everyone! This is my website. Not sure why it hit HN today but cool
too see it here! Thanks @mahathu!

I'm not at a computer tonight I'll run through later today or tomorrow and
answer questions. My contact info is on the website as well.

~~~
MichaelApproved
Do you mind sharing how you found out it was posted here today?

~~~
grahamburger
I'm a regular HN reader, just happened to pull up the homepage and see it.

~~~
V-eHGsd_
is brett glass of [http://bikeshed.org](http://bikeshed.org) fame still a
wireless isp mucky muck?

------
xwdv
I see this post come around every once in a while, and while the idea seems
alluring, the fact is if you’re not in the right location and market, this
kind of business will be unsustainable.

Maybe you can start your own ISP, but do not assume it will be in the same
place you live. Analyze the country and find the pockets where you can thrive
and grow a successful business, otherwise don’t even bother. Also bring a
decent amount of cash and a good credit line.

~~~
est31
Yeah, the story is usually like this:

* People found an ISP $NEWCOMER in an area where $ESTABLISHED has bad service and high fees.

* The newcomer invests loads of money into cabling the neighbourhood with fiber (or wireless internet) and offers deals with lower fees and better connectivity than $ESTABLISHED

* In a static world everyone would switch to $NEWCOMER and they'd make a lot of money, being able to expand to other places. But executives at $ESTABLISHED aren't stupid. They invest as well and lower their prices, too, just enough to be lower than $NEWCOMER.

* $ESTABLISHED waits until $NEWCOMER runs out of money. They rise prices again. It doesn't even matter if its price reductions mean $ESTABLISHED loses money in that region. The regions where there is no newcomer bring in enough cash to pay for the few regions with (temporary) losses.

Of course even if $NEWCOMER runs out of money, someone will buy their
infrastructure and offer similar services, but there are more components in
the competitive moats of established ISPs like (local) government granted
monopolies in exchange for providing public buildings like school with free
internet, or the bundling of streaming services with internet deals. Those
moats usually are wide enough that there is no avail for small ISPs to break
through. That being said, if you break through the moat, it's an insanely
profitable business. DTAG had to invest tons of money until they got there and
now they are in the place where the big ISPs can't harm them any more and the
american daughter company is now the favourite of the DTAG shareholders.

~~~
ApolloFortyNine
A WISP, at scale (50 users or more), should have a cost per user of about
$10/m. You can oversell bandwidth considerably, more than most people realize.
I've specifically seen an 80 customer wisp reporting their peak time is only
230mbps. This largely makes sense as you people streaming video is going to be
your biggest usage, and that really only average 15mbps at the worse. A
$1/mbit for ISP bandwidth should be doable in most areas, and since it's
wireless your costs per user are actually rather low, given a good tower.

But WISPs do make the most sense in areas where there is no good alternative
(only DSL or Dish).

~~~
chrishacken
I'd love to know where you can get a fiber circuit for $500/m. (And even if
you can, then you probably can't compete with whoever's selling you that
circuit anyway.) When we started we haggled considerably.. (had to sign a 20
year deal) and managed to get a 2G/10G circuit for $1,500/m. (A 1G circuit
would have been $1200/m)

~~~
mciancia
Some places are cheaper than others, looking at this thread especially outside
US.

In Poland you can get 1Gbps connection for 200USD/month and 5Gbps for
~600USD/m

~~~
cavisne
These are not fiber circuits, ie dedicated bandwidth, they are shared
residential services.

~~~
mciancia
Those are not shared residential services, but normal business/ISP grade
connection with SLA and so on.

~~~
dicknuckle
I guarantee it's not dedicated. it may go over a dedicated line at some point,
but I'm in the layer2 business running GMPLS and shared switched traffic and
you're either on GPON or some Metro Ethernet gear. you are sharing the
neighborhood bandwidth on a metro switch, or you're sharing both light
spectrum (GPON) AND the neighborhood bandwidth. you could have 100g but it's
still shared.

------
topkai22
Thank you, this is fantastic. I am working with a 100+ employee company doing
highly technical engineering work in a very rural location, currently trying
to run their business off of 10 MBPS. They are getting quotes exceeding $500k
from most people they talk to just get any additional bandwidth to them
(presumable fixed line fiber), which has resulted in this critical upgrade
being put off for quite some time. This guide makes me think they could quite
possibly build out their own backhaul system to a neighboring town for
substantially less money. Should make my next conversation very interesting.

~~~
techslave
it’s probably not wise to build your own backhaul if you’re not in that
business. don’t know the particulars of course but most likely DIY is not the
way to go.

startyourownisp is not really about that.

now if you can do a microwave or other backhaul that’s great but it still
sounds like something you should be able to get someone to provide for you.

~~~
johnmarcus
he already said he could get someone to provide to him...for $500k. Why would
it be unwise to build this if "he's not in the business?" isn't that literally
what the above site is for?

~~~
techslave
TANSTAAFL

when you build out physical infrastructure you are guaranteed to have real
world physical problems, on top of deep infra tech maintenance issues that you
can’t just let slide.

nothing is easy at this level.

$500k is likely cheap (but would have to see details) the main problem is that
you are spending it all at once instead of capitalizing it over 20 years like
the ISP is.

over the same period of time it’s going to cost the same. but in all the
intervening years fixing problems is going to take longer, things will be less
reliable, and you have to invest in things that are not a core competency.

again, not enough details are presented so it’s hard to say, but in general
DIY is a bad way to go here.

~~~
johnmarcus
meh, i disagree. If volunteers can build out networks like these which work
pretty well, then I gather paid IT folks can as well. Since it has pretty low
cost to start with, it could be used as a backup system until reliability
issues have been worked out, and then used as primary with a fallback to the
existing functional but painfully slow service they have now. Good monitoring
could go a long way to making it viable. The extra money saved could then be
used to pay for technology that does contribute to the companies core
competency.

like you said, without details, i think the current systems admin could make
this decision better than either of us arm chairing quarterbacking it. I
certainly think it's viable though, when compared to operating under the poor
dsl solution they currently have.

------
eximius
My problem is that I want to do this with fiber, not Wireless, which is
considerably more expensive.

If only regulatory capture wasn't a thing...

~~~
iptrans
If you want help with getting the costs down for fiber builds, hit me up.
Email in profile.

~~~
eximius
tbh, your profile is a little too cryptic. I'm not sure I sent to the right
address...

------
EGreg
How about building software for local mesh and municipal broadband networks
instead? Why does software these days have to reside on servers 1000 miles
away? Not only is this slower, but also more wasteful of energy.

 _To the downvoters: can you actually respond and explain why you are
downvoting this sentiment?_

------
xvector
Would be cool to see community-run non-profit ISPs.

~~~
war1025
Both my hometown and where I currently live have municipal broadband.

[https://osage.net/internet-services/](https://osage.net/internet-services/)

[http://centraliowabroadband.org/](http://centraliowabroadband.org/)

------
deforciant
One of my first jobs while I was still in uni was working for a small ISP. It
was really fun, we had many base stations and mostly provided wireless
connectivity. However it's all okay when it's summer to go and deploy/fix
antennas but when it was -20C outside and you have to climb on the roof and
fix cables or mount a new antenna.. Well, at that point I understood that I
need to change jobs :)

------
fiatjaf
Here are some talks from the guy behind that site:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cq4mWTQZmnI&list=PL1MwlVJloJ...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cq4mWTQZmnI&list=PL1MwlVJloJeyXbme61ZBzuOtxxS76R4tc)

These are very dense talks with tons of information you'll probably not need
unless you're reeeally going to do it, but it's good to watch for an overview
of all steps involved anyway even if you don't.

The talks are from Altheapalooza from
[https://althea.net/](https://althea.net/), but they can be applied to non-
Althea ISPs also (although you should consider Althea as it's great despite
the shitcoinery).

~~~
emptysongglass
Ethereum is not a shitcoin, not really sure why you felt that dig was
necessary.

------
bdz
>Right now even with a very tech-forward customer base 500 customers will only
rarely spike above 900 Mbps (0.9Gbps). That means that even at peak times a
customer could still come on and run a speed test and get 100Mbps.

Is this still true?

------
dang
A thread from last year:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16160394](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16160394)

------
blablabla123
A problem I had years ago was, I was living in an apartment that didn't even
have a phone line. So I used 3G (4G was there but just not working at all)
because the house Wifi was useless, in fact in the whole area this was a
problem. So I started getting interested in using public Wifi (Freifunk) with
a big antenna as upstream, and also provide it for the house eventually. But
since then I realized that even on a normal Linux computer,
configuring/routing multiple Wifi interfaces is absolutely non-trivial.

Eventually I gave up, but I bet Mesh Wifi are seriously becoming a thing in
dense cities. Also some off-the-shelve routers allow 4G-USB-sticks as backup
options. Fully automatizing this would be so awesome!

------
advertising
Where are the numbers on revenue here or what point of scale shows profit.
They show a spreadsheet with 10 users costing $2,800/mo to maintain and $24k
upfront. How could that ever be profitable at a competitive price point?

Am I missing a link here or something?

------
Rerarom
If one has their own ISP, can they pirate stuff without being caught?

~~~
elcomet
You'll receive emails from copyright owners of they detect torrenting. But
that doesn't mean you have to act on it.

------
r_singh
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16160394](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16160394)

------
psyclobe
I just want someone on the inside at comcast so I can figure out how to get
their gigabit pro package, they say I'm like 200ft too far from this magical
node.

------
techntoke
I always wanted to have an open access RADIUS server so that I can resell my
unused Internet. I personally think this should be allowed.

~~~
liara_k
The problem with this is that consumer Internet access is priced based on the
assumption that it will be "bursty". Heavy users are subsidized by light
users, both on a moment-to-moment basis and overall.

Reselling consumer-level Internet access to means you're taking away the users
that would otherwise be subsidizing your service (because they're buying from
you instead) while still expecting the local ISP to shoulder a large share of
the costs for bringing your packets to their final destinations.

That issue goes away if you pay for a dedicated line (IE, explicitly
contracted reserved bandwidth) to an IXP or place somewhere will sell you bulk
transit, and you're paying for that too. That's fine. The problem is with
expecting to make a profit by being the ISP to your whole block, based on a
$100/mo GBPS fiber drop.

Not to say that the ISP mono/duopolists aren't loathesome--excessive market
power is the root of... not all, but lots of socio-economic evil. The
economics of telecommunications is complicated.

------
emptysongglass
I’m starting a WISP in the Oslo area if hackers in that area want to join
forces. I could use a native Norsk speaker!

~~~
morphle
I would like to join forces and bring a Norsk speaker with me. Please contact
me. MerikAtFiberhoodDotNl.

------
stanzheng
This is from a broadband provider perspective but this company vetro is
enabling people to do lay smart fiber. This could help someone lay do a fiber
plan for their local municipality
[https://www.vetrofibermap.com](https://www.vetrofibermap.com)

------
colechristensen
Just last week I was wishing exactly this existed. There are so many
businesses where the main hurdle to get over is the basic institutional
knowledge.

I wonder how cheaply it could be done for 1 customer (my parents house has
terrible wireless internet and I'd like to move home and try doing a startup)

~~~
madamelic
>I wonder how cheaply it could be done for 1 customer

Depends on your definition of cheap. Your biggest expenses would be monthly
bill to your fiber provider, then any necessary rent for backhaul sites, then
the up-front cost.

I can't say for sure the monthly cost but it would definitely be in the low
four figures.

------
faitswulff
About how much money should you be prepared to spend if you were to follow
this guide exactly?

~~~
madamelic
About $30k up-front.

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jjUYOQMuZ4cRyTv1M5X8...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jjUYOQMuZ4cRyTv1M5X8HGtrKFiW96_gNlfG8BBzRN0/edit#gid=0)

------
parasanti
I found out the hardest part was finding the backbone or a provider. I am in
the middle of deploying a community WISP but finding a provider besides
Spectrum has been the biggest hurdle.

------
sansnomme
These days on some websites you can sometimes find "One Weird Trick to Cheaper
Rural Broadband" ads by Althea. The phrasing is certainly _interesting_.

@woah?

------
iamtheworstdev
Does anyone have thoughts on the viability of starting your own WISP
considering Musk has already done his first launch of satellites?

------
dboreham
Get yer money pit here! Roll up...roll up!

------
aprdm
This is awesome, thanks for writing. I have no interest in starting my own ISP
but still read all of it!

