Starting a WISP

And subscribe to this mailing list:

Various HowTo articles on WISP:

Intel Hot Spot Guide (read this for basics):

Airwire.net experiences:

I dunno about these, but they look interesting:

I'll retain my sanity by not listing equipment and services vendors.

all this first.................

I wouldn't do it. I started a WISP about 2½ years ago. There were no other choices for high speed internet in the area. Zero. Zip. Nada. That was really my only good reason for doing it. 5 months after launch, both cable and DSL were agressively marketing my area. Faster and faster, cheaper and cheaper. And keep in mind, this is Dogpatch USA. Seriously, small towns, lots of vacant farmland, very few people. And the big boys are duking it out here. Now there is fiber in the area too. Why do you want to start a WISP?

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To encourage the big boys to bring out cable and DSL??? In my case, I want to start a co-op for three homes with no broadband (actually two of us have

2-way satellite - but that _really_ doesn't count). If that's enough to convince the cable co. to extend it's range 2km I'll be happy.

Sounds like he's wanting to make a financial contribution to other people in his area to get broadband. Tempting the cable companies and telcos takes a bit more than a threat of "Me and my two neighbors are going to make our own broadband."

I would have thought you'd need a whole lot more customers than 3 to entice the cable co's to consider it financially viable to run cable the extra 2km.

Very much. We've had it extensively in the UK with the roll out of DSL. The cable co's came to the UK and rapidly cherry picked the best locations and then ran out of money. Digging up the roads and pavements in the hope that people would sign up was always going to be a long shot.

BT who are the dominant telco, delivered DSL to the highly populated areas and then similarly ran out of enthusiasm. Then the campaigns picked up and they switched to a registration scheme where they set a target threshold for exchanges and asked that people visit the website to register interest. Once that threshold had been reached, it then went into the pop for the next stage of the feasibility process.

Initially progress was slow but once it became known what had to happen things got much better. You can see what's going on here

I would have thought that there's more chance of getting a telco to provide broadband by getting a BIG list of people that are willing to seriously commit.

It's getting more entertaining now with more companies taking part in the local loop unbundling and offering much faster speeds than BT.

David.

I'm sure we will. But if we can grow a bit... If we get started with the three homes, it will pay for itself. There should be a subdivision going in here, soon, and if I can sign up a few of them - or just get them to yell for cable - maybe we'll get our own cable internet. I don't _want_ to compete with the cable co - I _have_ to.