Re: Guerilla Internet Service Providers (fwd)

[Steve Gibbons <steve@aztech.net>]

In Article: <v02120d01ad0fdd14e993@[192.0.2.1]>, shamrock@netcom.com (Lucky Green) wrote:
# At 22:51 1/2/96, Steve Gibbons wrote:

# >I had a similar thought about a month ago.  In particular, I was thinking that
# >skyrise office buildings would be a great market for ISPs to target.  Rent a
# >closet in the basement/top floor close to the telco demarc.  Run lots of
# >UTP to
# >the cients through the existing conduit, ceiling acces, air ducts, or whatever
# >and boom, lots  of clients, low overhead, telco bills cut to 1/2 of the
# >competitions'.  Up-front costs might (or might not be) higher, since the wire
# >installation would now be the burden of the ISP.
# [...]
# >FWIW, (and if anyone winds up doing something like this, I want a "finders
# >fee" ;-) )

# Sorry, I thought of this months ago :-) 

But did you post/publish?  :)

# But there is an even better
# business opportunity out there. Wireless T1 service covering a whole
# downtown area. I speced the whole system for the last company I worked for
# before they ran out of money. My calculations show that you can deliver
# close to T1 speed to corporate customers at fraction of the cost using land
# lines. In the best case scenario, you can produce the individual connection
# at below $200. No land line based ISP can ever touch that. The total cost
# for a land line based IPS is at least $395/T1. Set-up fee is lower too.
# Best, the whole thing can be set up self financing. If I wasn't so busy
# with other projects, I'd implement it myself.

I'd be interested in seeing your numbers and cost breakdowns.  I'd really be
interested in the up-front costs that would be associated with the equipment
and set-up time/training that will help "insure" data privacy over wideley
broadcast media.  The up-front costs for ~T1 capable tranceivers isn't
insignificant either.  I figure ~$10K up front (maybe half of that, maybe twice
when you include management overhead)  Amortize  over 3 years, and compare.

All of this is assuming that the bandwidth is available on the airwaves to
handle ~200 ~T1s.  (If we're talking $200.00/mo. for T1, sign me up tomorrow,
and my neighbor, and his, and hers, and...  *poof* no more bandwidth in a
"decently" populated metro area or even a downtown.  (Back of the envelope
calculations show that ~200 T1 ~= 1 TV station [although I might be off by an
order of magnitude.])

I apologize if this is off topic, but the crypto part still applies (moreso,
even!) to broadcast over the airwaves.  (Besides, I'm sure that this list has
enough subscribers that are shelling out $200-$500/mo. for 56K/Frac T1/ISDN
that they'd be interested in a less expensive alternative.)

--
Steve@AZTech.Net