I am actually doing something very similar myself. I am currently a subscriber to a local ISP and hosting websites and other tech services for local businesses.
Its a huge benefit for the ISP, because it makes them look really good having these websites load fast. Literally nobody outside of my home town will ever visit the website for the local sporting-goods store, but having it load fast for the residents is awesome.
I am now starting to talk with the city about running my own fiber lines around, that way I can set up bigger pipes to the big data producers. For one example, there is one small company who wants a 10G uplink to me but neither of us wants to pay the thousands of dollars a month to the local ISP to make it happen. If we split the cost of pole attachments, after the initial installation costs we would be splitting about $100/mo.
I suppose the next step would be to get my own block of IP addresses and start a peering agreement, kinda like what you are doing.
So yeah, I suppose it would work, we are both just approaching it from different sides. You are doing ISP first with IT second, I am doing IT first with ISP second.
Ah yes, the old “If you want to become a Millionaire, begin with a billion dollars and start an ISP” routine.
There doesn’t seem to be much synergy between the two… One doesn’t help you sell the other. You might as well start a used car dealership to fund your ISP. Be sure you expect the first nine attempts to start a company to fail, and are okay with being broke. And don’t expect a successful attempt to start a company to make you rich, either…
Even Google couldn’t make an ISP work as a business.
To piggy back off this great comment (++) and keep going on MSP to ISP, I am also an “IT Solutions ~MSP~” Operator here, and much to the same I primarily operate in the tri-state region (mid-atlantic US), and have a wide offerings of “Private Cloud Services”…however it is definitely not all it is cracked up to be! haha It is a ton of work and by no means simple or straight forward. We have to work constantly to meet customer needs and adjust our solutions accordingly which means no job or service offered is just “poof poof I clicked the easy button” like AWS like things are akin to. So imo you’re not wrong by doing the Make a business to support a business, but I would not describe doing managed services as “simple or straight forward”. Strict limited private cloud offering…maybe “simple” but very limited on the market as public cloud is so big atm. Just food for thoughts.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the whole ISP thing again here lately. And I have another question? How do I get started with working my my city and county governments? My area is weird too, so I will end up having to work with 4 different cities (sometimes referred to as the Quad Cities) and 2 county governments. I do think that this fact, however, may help me avoid issues with the current duopolies of AT&T and Comcast trying to keep their duopoly. Plus my local area is really prideful about local businesses, culture, and history. This I think will also help me more than anything. I am sure I will need to do research about the specific requirements for my area, but I guess what I am asking is, “What should I expect when trying to get business licenses and construction licenses for laying the fiber and just overall dealing with the governments?”
For what it is worth I consider myself somewhat of a power user and would gladly pay USD 25 for 250 Mbps symmetric.
If you start to go too high, you will lose out on free marketing but to your point, the low price won’t matter if you aren’t sustainable and reliable (I understand redundancy costs extra money).
Tbh though, I am increasingly not wanting to do this, because Perseverance reinvigorated the Physics Nerd in me - thus rekindling the old spark of my dream career as an Astronomer. My freshman year in college, I was majoring in Physics. (I considered briefly double majoring in Physics and Computer Science, but a retired Professor from California Institute of Technology gave me a bunch of sound advice. Now I am glad I listened). I took a class that basically showed the various careers you can do with a Ph.D in Physics (because anything less is worthless). It also showed that, statistically, most Physicists become underpaid engineers. There’s only a 10% chance of getting a research career in a very competitive field. So I changed my major to computer science. Here recently, however, I’ve been considering implementing another part of said retired professor’s advice and getting my Masters in Physics (and subsequently a Ph.D - preferably one in Astronomy). I’ve always loved physics and astronomy. By the age of five I could name all planets in order, and list basic facts about them. Growing up near NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center meant that I was able to get a lot of opportunity to learn about space exploration. Finally, my uncle even worked for Marshall (he’s retired now).
I think that between starlink and amazon’s competitor, we might actually start to see some shakeup in the isp space. So now is either the perfect or worst time to get in. I’m not really sure how it’ll play out.
Well and also, Biden’s Infrastructure plan isn’t bad. I only say that because he’s got the AT&T and Comcast lobbyiests all worried. That’s the only thing that even remotely makes me believe he’ll do it. Plus, his central focus is Covid-19 and this is related to that.
If you think that infrastructure plan will actually do anything, oh boy. I’ve got a high speed rail in California from Bakersfield to Fresno to sell ya.
Don’t get me wrong. I hope we have something to show for the trillions we’re spending, but god damn if it doesn’t feel like grift.
If you want to get in on that program, you might want to consider working on something more municipality-based, rather than a private company? Go to the city council meeting and make a proposition? Maybe the city can get some of the Biden Bucks to roll out infrastructure?
That is, if not outlawed by the “local” Telco’s in State Law I think I saw some responses (here or on the LTT forums) that some/most states prohibited the founding/building of a municipality-based ISP/IT infrastructure. Of course, this legislation was paid for by the ISP/Telco lobby
Yeah I know. I’ll believe it when I see it. But tbh, I am slightly hopeful this time. However, he’s given himself 8 years - which is stupid. We better start seeing results before 4 most definitely - otherwise it doesn’t matter.
That’s most states - including Alabama (which is where I live). However, Biden’s infrastructure plan is to outlaw such laws at the federal level - which Trumps state law lmao.
He’d better pass that within this Congress, otherwise he’ll just be the lame duck #44 was. That is, provided his party unites behind him in full and that’s far from a certainty
I hope Biden gets his full 8 years in Office, but I’m afraid GOP voters who voted against Trump last year will not be so obliging next time, especially if Trump is not the 2024 GOP candidate.
I think I saw some responses (here or on the LTT forums) that some/most states prohibited the founding/building of a municipality-based ISP/IT infrastructure. Of course, this legislation was paid for by the ISP/Telco lobby 