I'm sure we've all heard the old stories of a group of guys running an ISP from their garage back in the day. I suppose a lot has changes since then but is this still possible in principle and what would be involved? Would it be cost effective at all, say if you had a group of people pitching in and would it help in any way with regards to privacy issues?
An interesting thought experiment, if nothing else.
Cheers,
Aurenkin
P.S Thanks to all the tek syndicate guys for a great show and community!
I have no idea, but I've been interested in this as well for a while now, so I'll bump it. I'm pretty sure a lot of money would have to be invollved for something like this, but I could be wrong.
In most countries, there is a limited number of licenses that are sold in a kind of auction, because back in the day the telecommunications companies (that were previously often state owned) convinced the politicians that the internet is like a telephone line, and some other things that states find very inportant (yeah, that kind of things).
So it's probably not possible, unless you are backed by a government of some kind. Like for instance a university can be it's own ISP if it is politically powerful enough. Some universities move beyond the confines of the campus and succeed in creating a backbone that connects student homes or houses where students or staff lives in a neighbouring or surrounding city or town. One of the oldest universities in Europe, a large catholic university, has succeeded in providing an entire town with it's own glassfiber backbone 20 years ago and be it's own ISP for free use by students and staff. But back then, the common opinion on the Internet still was that it should be free... times have changed drastically since then, and as long as states can collect huge telecommunications license fees from large companies, they are not so inclined to allow small ISPs. Another problem is that every communications line, wherever it lies, is property of some company or state or organisation, and you have to connect to the grid somewhere, which means that if you want to be an ISP, you'll have to abide by someone's rule, and they will jump on just about any arguement out there to shut you down, too much torrents, too much voice communications, too much porn, etc...
I can imagine that it would invollve a fair sum of money, without providing any huge payoff if you don't already have a large company to support it in its small stages.
In the states anyone has the capability to create their own ISP if they have the funds and backing to do so. The issue is for the average joe that wants to do this, that creating one requires you to create your own infrastructure, meaning laying cables from street to street, town to town, city to city and having the servers to do this stuff. You're looking into the hundred million dollars at this point, and then you're liable to have other major ISP attempt to sue you for minor issues just to slow you down.