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by adamcharnock 1592 days ago
Sure! I saw startyourownisp.com on HN years ago, and once I moved here I remembered that starting an ISP was actually a thing. I started a wireless ISP (WISP). The rough process is:

- Find the customers*

- Find somewhere to broadcast from*

- Find a wholesale fibre provider*

- Register with your country's regulator & read a bunch of laws

- While you are doing the above, learn about networking. Get this right before you launch, then forgot about it. Post-launch all problems will (hopefully) be non-tech related.

And also lots of good old-fashioned business cash-flow spreadsheets.

I really like enjoy it (even though it can be stressful) because:

- I like geekery

- I like business (even thought it can be stressful)

- I like being in nature, and this one of the few lines of work that combines the OSI model & chainsaws.

- I like having a reason to meet people in my area. Great way to make friends.

- This area really needs it. There is fibre in the villages, but lots of people live & work on remote patches of land. The service I provide really makes a difference to their lives.

It don't think it'll necessarily make you rich, but it may give you a meaningful livelihood if you have the market for such a service.

* You kinda need to do these three simultaneously, because they all need to be in the same location. At some point I just had to commit to one of the three and hope that everything else fell into place.

2 comments

BTW, I really like the coverage checker at your website. Clever! So simple...
Ooh, I also spun this project out of making the coverage checker:

https://github.com/adamcharnock/python-srtm

Thank you! It took some iterations, but we got there :D
Thank you so much! Another question if you don't mind - how difficult was the bureaucratic aspect? Registering with regulator etc... what would you consider the biggest hurdle?
Well this is going to vary hugely by country. I think that got easier in Portugal from 2017, so I was a little lucky in that regard. I think it is also fairly straight-forward in the UK/US too. We had to pay a €700 one-off fee, and we need to fill in a report (i.e. spreadsheet) once per quarter with our total customers (and various other bits).

We also need to log netflow data due to the EU counter terrorism directive, and keep it securely. Last I heard it had been deemed unconstitutional by the EU courts, but the law had yet to be revoked.

The hardest part BY FAR, was getting the fibre connection. My advice for this is to do your research to find the available providers in you area/country. There is no fibre map for Portugal, so this was tricky. Reach out to actual people and ask for contacts at telecoms companies in your country. You are looking for Direct Internet Access (DIA). This comment of mine is a bit relevant [1]

The WISP facebook groups [2] [3] really helped me with this, and in figuring out what I need to go and learn about. Don't let those groups stress you out though. I've un-followed them now.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30128418

[2] https://www.facebook.com/groups/249134358750920

[3] https://www.facebook.com/groups/2167897793237945

Data rétention directive, France does not want to obey the CJEU ruling because of 'national security' jocker card. And they make fuss about Poland not respecting EU law.