I'm going to put my hand up and say I have absolutely no idea how an ISP works. He runs cables to each house in the area... now where does the other end go?
replies(8):
https://startyourownisp.com/posts/fiber-provider/
If you just Google then it's usually called leased or dedicated internet
Just some (US) examples
https://www.business.att.com/products/att-dedicated-internet...
https://business.comcast.com/learn/internet/dedicated-intern...
https://www.verizon.com/business/products/internet/internet-...
1. Buy a 1G/1G or 10G/10G whatever link to a building you own.
2. Resell that link in parts to customers.
Or you can get yourself into a POP (point of presence) somewhere that multiple providers are also in, and get transit that way. Depends on where you are and what you can get access to.
Or if (technically/financially/legally) possible, even run your own fibre to a PoP housing an IXP on your own.
Once you're in multiple PoPs and on multiple IXPs and with multiple upstreams/peers you're pretty much independent from the whims of a single ISP.
But also because once you're in a single location, you can pretty easily get multiple providers to that location for a Price, so there's really no point. Even small rural towns usually have multiple internet connections from different companies, and if they don't you can pay to run fiber if you really wanted to.
People find it hard to believe, but Comcast et al are actually businesses, not Satan's marketing department; and they happily take money even from "competitors".
I'm not an expert but afaik you can't just be a Tier 1 network member https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network
Even Tier 2 very limited https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_2_network
In this guide's case yes you will be akin to an MVNO, you won't peer but just buying transit traffic. That's why most of these guides are also focusing on making the network wireless only (easier to build infrastructure)
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/05/how-t...
You still had to build-out the last mile though, and thats what will get you. You either need private easements, or be a registered telecom utility to use public utility easements. That last mile is $20k +/-, depending on your circumstances. If your semi-rural or less, there's ROI sucks. Hence, many smaller ISPs are wireless.
At least in area, there are already a number of wISPs, 5G is rolling out, Starlink eventually. and lots of gov't funding going to the big players to expand their networks (and drive the start-ups out of business.)
There some other business models out there too that look interesting. Underline in Co Springs, for example. They provide a basic tier of service, in order to qualify as a telecom, install the fiber and then allow multiple competing ISPs to use their network.
IMHO, any utility that has the benefit of government privilege should be required to allow competors to use the infrastructure that the taxpayers funded.
I'm waiting on one of you brilliant folks to defy the laws of physics to create a decentralized, wireless mesh internet.
Something like Seattle IX is a good example of where lots of peering sessions could be established (although I haven’t looked at Jared’s ASN in any detail to see where it’s present).
https://www.seattleix.net/home
Any traffic you’re able to offload via peering you wouldn’t be paying an IP transit to haul, so it’s worth seeing if networks like Netflix are on the Route Servers (https://www.ams-ix.net/ams/documentation/ams-ix-route-server...) at any IX nearby your network, seeing if you can negotiate a session over the IX even if they don’t participate in the RS, or seeing if you can do PNI (sling a cable between your networks in a facility you’re both located in).
Edit: Jared’s on Detroit IX. https://www.peeringdb.com/net/20268
Comcast would much rather sell a dedicated fiber to a business with capital and guarantees.
Selling to the individual consumer doesn't make a lot of sense business-wise, because of the deployment costs and continued support costs.
Comcast is also abusing their status as oligopoly to gouge costumers financially and qos-wise, but if they're selling to a business that buys large quantities and has staff who's job it is to handle network problems, they actually like that (right up until that business threatens to compete with them in areas where said oligopoly is in place, of course)
Gameplay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Foa34qoRzjs
https://web.archive.org/web/20150317144142/https://cisco.edu...
There's good chances there are Internet eXchange Points around where you live where for a small maintenance fee anyone can come and place their router and cables to interconnect with others.
So the likely steps are:
1) Find a transit provider, that will serve your trafic to any other network, and where to connect with this provider 2) (Optional) If you don't have the necessary infrastructure, find another provider to get from your last-mile network to your transit provider 3) (Optional) Find other networks to peer with so that you can significantly reduce your transit bill and provide better routes (therefore better service)
Some non-profit ISPs take the problem from the other side, and build a core network without necessarily owning any last-mile infrastructure, which is leased from other operators (opérateurs de collecte) with whom they interconnect at some datacenter/IXP. The most famous example of that in France is FDN.fr which has been operating since early 90s. That approach is more cost-effective in high-density area where the local infrastructure is already quite good, and construction jobs to lay new cables is very costly, but will still set you back 10-30€/month/line.
Basically everyone out there (including me) is on starlink now. Turns out the subsidies were not only inefficient, but pretty pointless.
Also another great plug for ArsTechnica (even though the main article is them as well, and I'm sure most of this audience is well aware of them) and the excellent technical writing they do.
The difference in divisions/people/tech/resources doesn't explain anything for me. They're both the same company with the same CEO, whether it's one business unit or a dozen. It's not like the executives are oblivious to how much money each unit is making and whether another unit could make more in place of it. If you're the CEO and see you could charge twice as much by doing retail instead of wholesale then you'd obviously try to do that.
Rather, the explanations I'm getting from the other comments seems to be that (a) regulators require some kind of reasonable wholesale to exist to third parties, (b) the big ISPs aren't planning to serve those markets anyway, so they're not missing out on any income by taking money from the last-mile ISPs. And as long as those last-mile ISPs don't try to compete for the same customers then they're fine.
(N.B. — This is what has worked well for the WISP I cofounded, but YMMV depending on headend infra).
Most of the equipment you can buy, you can even get a lot of the needed things as a service. You just need to organize all those hardware and software things, and get the economic and legal part right too. And in the end it needs to tie together in a way, that your earnings are bigger then your expenses.
I think it’s not so different to opening a car repair shop for example. Just more nerdy.
If I have 1Gbps line for example and 10 users each are using equal amount 100% of time, it shouldn't matter they send the data to Alaska or Russia or Australia ? Or does it?
Do you buy the pipe and the data itself also?
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
When you're small enough, the difference in price between transit and what it takes to get you to an IX is likely to be pretty small. But, you probably want to be at an IX sooner or later anyway (easier to get multiple transit offers at an IX than on the side of the road), so might as well peer while you're there.
These guys have dark fiber right in front of my neighborhood. They service cell sites for Dish Network near me as well. It's interesting to look through their services. For example, you can get fiber service with layer 2, where you're responsible for adding your IP stack over top of it. Or you can buy at layer 3, where Segra is already running a stack, and establish mesh connectivity. So if a fiber is cut, you'll get another working path. Build your network over the top.
Pretty interesting to understand what's available.
Then you've not worked in large B2B companies before. Eg Apple pays Google money and Google pays money to Apple, any perceived public rivalry goes out the window as far as business between the two is concerned.
If you're the CEO of Comcast, you've never even heard of this small time ISP, you have far bigger things to spend your time on, and the "upstream" business unit of Comcast really doesn't care what you're doing, so long as your money's green. It's all business. See also: Netflix using AWS despite Amazon having a streaming video service of their own.