And what are the costs associated with it? I imagine it's much more expensive than anything you could find, otherwise everyone would be doing it.

8/4/2008 3:50:07 PM

Back in the day just about every small town had a local ISP before AOL and Prodigy squashed or bought them all. I guess you just needed a leased line for internet connection, a bunch of phone lines, and a server with a bunch of modems since everything worked off dial-up back then.

Now you'd have to get some sort of agreement with time warner or the phone company to provide a high speed connection from you to the customers. That's probably what makes it not very feasible. Wireless that spans the city would be ok, but there are already plenty of companies offering it at a reasonable rate now and the customers would not be limited to use within a small metropolitan area. I don't really see how an independent could compete.

[Edited on August 4, 2008 at 3:55 PM. Reason : l]

8/4/2008 3:53:48 PM

Yeah friend of mines mom used to own a local one.. basically she had a T1, a shit load of modems, phone lines and a server or two.

one of the other local companies started offering DSL service and the owner told me they basically had to technically become a telephone company to do it--something about leasing the lines or something. I'm not real sure how it all worked but I know he had the equipment for about a year and it took him that long to get through all the bullshit to get it going

[Edited on August 4, 2008 at 4:38 PM. Reason : asf]

8/4/2008 4:19:23 PM

Back in the 90s there were tons of mom and pop ISPs because dialup was easy to get started with and of course it was the only option.

Nowadays, independent ISPs are not really viable for serving mass markets like they used to be, only niches.

If you want to sell dialup (yes there are people in rural areas who still use dialup because its cheap and/or the only thing available), you can sign up for an account under one of the national dialup networks and start selling without owning any infrastructure. Obviously this is the easiest thing to get started in, but dialup is not a booming business and there is plenty of competition from people who have been in the business a long time.

If you want to sell broadband there are 4 main ways to do it:

1. through the phone network. without getting into tons of details, the incumbent LECs (local exchange carriers) who control the phone lines like Verizon and ATT are obviously selling Internet on their own so they don't want to share their network with you. 10 years ago, after the 1996 telecom act, congress basically forced the ILECs to open their doors for all kinds of access to CLECs. since then, legislation and rulings have swung back in the favor if the ILECs since they had the most money and political influence.

2. cable network. All of the major cable operators TWC, Comcast, etc, are trying to sign up as many broadband customers as possible and they don't want to share any of it with anyone else. they want to 'own' the subscribers so they can sell them other services (like digital phone) so they do not really use a reseller/wholesale channel. earthlink may be the only exception since they have been around awhile and i'm sure they helped some of the cable operators jumpstart their broadband subscriber count. one potential way to get in the door is to buy or start a cable franchise for a small town, this will give you access to install fiber and cable.

3. wireless. in rural areas there are mom and pop type wireless isps popping up like weeds. the technology is still so crappy and there are tons of issues with getting clean spectrum. the hardware is constantly evolving and a lot of the technology doesn't live up to the hype (remember how 3-5 years ago, the media said wimax would give everyone 30Mbps of bandwidth from a tower 30 miles away?). the biggest wireless operator is clearwire and its not really clear that they are a success. billions of dollars have been pumped into clearwire. their net income for 2006 was -284 mil and 2007 was -727 mil.

4. captive audience. some companies make money by selling internet access in apartment complexes, vacation spots, business parks etc where they can install equipment to service a relatively dense area where the customers don't have many other options.

8/4/2008 5:32:00 PM

What if I just want to serve me? ^_^

8/4/2008 6:48:15 PM

^ Just figure out how to get a connection from the internet to you.

8/4/2008 7:07:11 PM

Haha, ok. I remember reading about a guy in Germany who hooked his mom up. I've gotta find that article.

8/4/2008 7:25:24 PM

the guy was in sweden and it was 40 Gbps fiber

8/4/2008 8:55:23 PM

^ Cool.

8/4/2008 9:37:02 PM

you can't afford this.

8/4/2008 10:16:09 PM

solid post by mellocj!

Agreed that imho costs would vary, and it's not a particularly lucrative venture for an entrepreneur.

8/4/2008 10:24:39 PM