Truly grateful, thanks a lot for all of this insight.
I have recurring daydreams of booting up a fiber ISP or WISP or (thanks to this post) a micro cell network, but peeking at the real-world implementation of those is a good way to remind myself that there's a ton of complexity that I shouldn't underestimate :-) i.e. it helps to keep those dreams "grounded".
I've built temporary 500-people ethernet + wifi networks and I'm always curious to read what it's like to do it at a larger scale. Thanks again!
There is complexity in this, but remember here you're talking to people who chose to get deep down into the tech in every component out of a desire to learn, do it themselves, and save money!
What I didn't mention was I built and ran that network effectively by myself (modulo mast climbing), with support of a few others who wanted to learn the ropes.
A fibre ISP is absolutely achievable and there's been a few posts about those on HN recently. Depending on how you go about it, it's absolutely feasible to build out your own fibre GPON network. Heck I know people doing this who have absolutely no background in networking, but have learned the practical skills of splicing and hired in the networking knowledge to support them.
A WISP is a bit simpler to get going than a cellular network, but you can also build one using cellular (that costs more). The big issue WISPs encounter is scaling their business and customer base up - it's easy to do lots of little point to point links in "customer obsessed" mode where you set out infrastructure to reach each rural customer. It's far harder to deliver a great service to these customers, especially as you start to distribute service from these points to multiple customers. A lot of WISPs end up with pretty messy flat networks they can't then scale up, and can't easily augment with fixed fibre to give themselves more capacity.
You absolutely can start your own ISP or WISP. I won't go so far as to say you should, because to evaluate "should" you'd need to understand the local offerings and competitors and regulatory landscape, but it's definitely possible. In the UK, I believe from memory that something like 2 in every 3 kilometres of fibre to the premises has been laid by "non traditional" providers or new entrants, independent of the big telcos.
Your own cellular operator is not impossible, but the scale you need to get to before you have a sellable product is the issue. You need to be (or use) a fibre ISP to get backhaul in. You need to understand site leasing and access arrangements. You'll need to be able to do radio planning and get spectrum access. You'll need billing and customer support and fault resolution. Managed services can help, but you'll rapidly see your revenues drain that way.
In the US there are a number of smaller state-level cellular operators, who effectively do all this themselves. I wouldn't recommend trying to run a mini mobile operator as a business just yet until the supporting ecosystems get better able to serve smaller scale customers though - the rise of private networks will change this, but everyone is still thinking of national scale for now.
Really grateful for your answers and encouragement.
For context, I’m in Canada where the ISP competitive landscape is dire. In the province of Quebec where I am, there are “debates” as to who should manage the government-installed electricity poles and be allowed to run any cable on them.
Actually, it’s the main national telecom giant who ended up managing those poles… Many small towns’ high speed (i.e. dsl) projects are stalled because of this.
I’ll stay on the lookout for an opportunity. :) Thanks
If you are trying to do something about it, get some people together and look at the UK's approach to this - it sounds like you could bring a lot of this to Quebec.
Not saying it would be easy - these sound like deeply entrenched problems to resolve - but often showing precedent for how it's done better elsewhere can help spur Commonwealth governments on.
In the UK the "national telecoms giant" has to give equitable wholesale access to ducts and poles, and this is being used to lay fibre to the premises in rural and urban areas.
> I've built temporary 500-people ethernet + wifi networks and I'm always curious to read what it's like to do it at a larger scale.
If you’ve done this, you could do the WISP / private LTE network. Will you likely need to do a lot of research and reading? Yes. Will you occasionally make potentially costly mistakes? Yes. But will you be successful if persistent? Yes!
As someone who owned a small WISP back in the earlier days of the Internet when finding guides was hard to do and has done a private 3G network for fun, it’s definitely doable if you set your mind to it.
I’ll do more than encouragement, I’m happy to be an advisor who can offer suggestions/research areas/additional people to talk to as you go through the process. I don’t have the time to be an active participant in your project, but if you email me (contact info in my profile) issues you get stumped on or want a second opinion about into, I’ll always do my best to be helpful.
I have recurring daydreams of booting up a fiber ISP or WISP or (thanks to this post) a micro cell network, but peeking at the real-world implementation of those is a good way to remind myself that there's a ton of complexity that I shouldn't underestimate :-) i.e. it helps to keep those dreams "grounded".
I've built temporary 500-people ethernet + wifi networks and I'm always curious to read what it's like to do it at a larger scale. Thanks again!