I am going to start an ISP
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@bigbear said in I am going to start an ISP:
@nerdydad said in I am going to start an ISP:
Yes, that is correct. I am going to start an ISP.
In my town, we have a highway running through it. Half of the town has good Internet, and the other half is just terrible. The current BIG ISPs have had enough time to come in and either upgrade what is already there or to replace. It looks like they are not interested in providing rural people with decent Internet because of population density per sub. Its not economically advantageous for them to expand out that way.
Therefore, I am going to start a WISP. I have already been talking to other WISPs out there and have been getting tips. I am also going to take @scottalanmiller's advice on inappropriate coupling of services. Therefore, I will not be offering email, VoIP, AV, or storage for my customers. Just Internet and a side retail of products that the customer could buy from me in order to establish their own private network. I am also planning on expanding into consulting for the community after the ISP is already established and running.
Internally, I am going to go all Vultr for the servers necessary with Debian 9.1 and Fedora as appropriate and FreePBX.
I believe @JaredBusch said one time that WISPs are worth while if they are done right. I was hoping he can expand on that a little bit if possible.
While I just watched @scottalanmiller's video, and agree from the perspective of not buying bundled services especially where the ISP hosts a softswitch in their local data center, as a business you definitely want to bundle and sell Hosted PBX.
To be clear... If you like money, and want to make some as a WISP targeting commercial businesses, you have to offer Hosted PBX.
Right, what is bad for the consumer is good for the vendor. And loads and loads of consumers actually like being taken advantage of. Don't disappoint them.
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@nerdydad said in I am going to start an ISP:
@emad-r said in I am going to start an ISP:
Best of luck, if you pull this off, you will be your own boss.
Thanks. My only concern is I will be trading a much shorter commute for more working hours. Will I even see my kids during the week besides when they are already in bed?
I think at first you will be busy, but one bonus is that if you succeed, you can bring your kids to work, and they will mess with the employees and the employees will have to take it and be nice to them.
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@scottalanmiller said in I am going to start an ISP:
@bigbear said in I am going to start an ISP:
@nerdydad said in I am going to start an ISP:
Yes, that is correct. I am going to start an ISP.
In my town, we have a highway running through it. Half of the town has good Internet, and the other half is just terrible. The current BIG ISPs have had enough time to come in and either upgrade what is already there or to replace. It looks like they are not interested in providing rural people with decent Internet because of population density per sub. Its not economically advantageous for them to expand out that way.
Therefore, I am going to start a WISP. I have already been talking to other WISPs out there and have been getting tips. I am also going to take @scottalanmiller's advice on inappropriate coupling of services. Therefore, I will not be offering email, VoIP, AV, or storage for my customers. Just Internet and a side retail of products that the customer could buy from me in order to establish their own private network. I am also planning on expanding into consulting for the community after the ISP is already established and running.
Internally, I am going to go all Vultr for the servers necessary with Debian 9.1 and Fedora as appropriate and FreePBX.
I believe @JaredBusch said one time that WISPs are worth while if they are done right. I was hoping he can expand on that a little bit if possible.
While I just watched @scottalanmiller's video, and agree from the perspective of not buying bundled services especially where the ISP hosts a softswitch in their local data center, as a business you definitely want to bundle and sell Hosted PBX.
To be clear... If you like money, and want to make some as a WISP targeting commercial businesses, you have to offer Hosted PBX.
Right, what is bad for the consumer is good for the vendor. And loads and loads of consumers actually like being taken advantage of. Don't disappoint them.
As long as the services are not proprietary to the internet offering, network or connection I dont see the issue here. I see where scott is coming from but no serious ISP would leave out a voice offering. And I am talking about IP PBX not trunks or home service.
Even if you have to partner out to offer it, there are a million options. There are ways to do it where its not "coupled", even if you allow the customer to cancel internet and keep voice.
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I probably will do that as separate services, but none of that "bundle and save" bs.
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@nerdydad said in I am going to start an ISP:
I probably will do that as separate services, but none of that "bundle and save" bs.
I bundled my car, life and boat insurance and saved enough money to kill a tree!
Edit: because of the huge ass paper bill that they send you. . .
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I wonder if you could only supply paperless billing, or would you have to give people the option?
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@dustinb3403 said in I am going to start an ISP:
I wonder if you could only supply paperless billing, or would you have to give people the option?
I would try to keep the business itself as paperless as possible, but would give the sub the option either way.
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@nerdydad said in I am going to start an ISP:
@dustinb3403 said in I am going to start an ISP:
I wonder if you could only supply paperless billing, or would you have to give people the option?
I would try to keep the business itself as paperless as possible, but would give the sub the option either way.
So then you'd need a way to print their bill, once received scan and record the payment, mark it as paid and then recycle the bill. Which means you'd likely want to shred the bills to protect customer information.
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@nerdydad said in I am going to start an ISP:
@dafyre said in I am going to start an ISP:
@nerdydad said in I am going to start an ISP:
and email (again, internal to company only).
Why not just go ahead with O365? It's cheap enough.
That's definitely a possibility as I don't want to put all of my eggs in one basket.
Going back to thinking about this, I would need to do a dedicated email server because I would have too many email addresses needed to make O365 worth while, such as DMCA complaints, sub questions & issues, my email, outages, notifications, etc.
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@dustinb3403 said in I am going to start an ISP:
@nerdydad said in I am going to start an ISP:
@dustinb3403 said in I am going to start an ISP:
I wonder if you could only supply paperless billing, or would you have to give people the option?
I would try to keep the business itself as paperless as possible, but would give the sub the option either way.
So then you'd need a way to print their bill, once received scan and record the payment, mark it as paid and then recycle the bill. Which means you'd likely want to shred the bills to protect customer information.
And I'd be looking at a NextCloud instance to manage all of the companies bills & other important documents along with sub's bills.
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Which if you were going "paperless" you'd likely want to arrange some kind of recycling program with your paper supplier.
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@dustinb3403 said in I am going to start an ISP:
Which if you were going "paperless" you'd likely want to arrange some kind of recycling program with your paper supplier.
Definitely as privacy/security would have to be a priority.
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@bigbear said in I am going to start an ISP:
@scottalanmiller said in I am going to start an ISP:
@bigbear said in I am going to start an ISP:
@nerdydad said in I am going to start an ISP:
Yes, that is correct. I am going to start an ISP.
In my town, we have a highway running through it. Half of the town has good Internet, and the other half is just terrible. The current BIG ISPs have had enough time to come in and either upgrade what is already there or to replace. It looks like they are not interested in providing rural people with decent Internet because of population density per sub. Its not economically advantageous for them to expand out that way.
Therefore, I am going to start a WISP. I have already been talking to other WISPs out there and have been getting tips. I am also going to take @scottalanmiller's advice on inappropriate coupling of services. Therefore, I will not be offering email, VoIP, AV, or storage for my customers. Just Internet and a side retail of products that the customer could buy from me in order to establish their own private network. I am also planning on expanding into consulting for the community after the ISP is already established and running.
Internally, I am going to go all Vultr for the servers necessary with Debian 9.1 and Fedora as appropriate and FreePBX.
I believe @JaredBusch said one time that WISPs are worth while if they are done right. I was hoping he can expand on that a little bit if possible.
While I just watched @scottalanmiller's video, and agree from the perspective of not buying bundled services especially where the ISP hosts a softswitch in their local data center, as a business you definitely want to bundle and sell Hosted PBX.
To be clear... If you like money, and want to make some as a WISP targeting commercial businesses, you have to offer Hosted PBX.
Right, what is bad for the consumer is good for the vendor. And loads and loads of consumers actually like being taken advantage of. Don't disappoint them.
As long as the services are not proprietary to the internet offering, network or connection I dont see the issue here. I see where scott is coming from but no serious ISP would leave out a voice offering. And I am talking about IP PBX not trunks or home service.
Even if you have to partner out to offer it, there are a million options. There are ways to do it where its not "coupled", even if you allow the customer to cancel internet and keep voice.
If I had businesses want some other services as well, I'd have to look at my resources (hint hint wink wink, looking at people here on ML) about such things as web design, marketing, hosting for businesses, etc.
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@nerdydad said in I am going to start an ISP:
@bigbear said in I am going to start an ISP:
@scottalanmiller said in I am going to start an ISP:
@bigbear said in I am going to start an ISP:
@nerdydad said in I am going to start an ISP:
Yes, that is correct. I am going to start an ISP.
In my town, we have a highway running through it. Half of the town has good Internet, and the other half is just terrible. The current BIG ISPs have had enough time to come in and either upgrade what is already there or to replace. It looks like they are not interested in providing rural people with decent Internet because of population density per sub. Its not economically advantageous for them to expand out that way.
Therefore, I am going to start a WISP. I have already been talking to other WISPs out there and have been getting tips. I am also going to take @scottalanmiller's advice on inappropriate coupling of services. Therefore, I will not be offering email, VoIP, AV, or storage for my customers. Just Internet and a side retail of products that the customer could buy from me in order to establish their own private network. I am also planning on expanding into consulting for the community after the ISP is already established and running.
Internally, I am going to go all Vultr for the servers necessary with Debian 9.1 and Fedora as appropriate and FreePBX.
I believe @JaredBusch said one time that WISPs are worth while if they are done right. I was hoping he can expand on that a little bit if possible.
While I just watched @scottalanmiller's video, and agree from the perspective of not buying bundled services especially where the ISP hosts a softswitch in their local data center, as a business you definitely want to bundle and sell Hosted PBX.
To be clear... If you like money, and want to make some as a WISP targeting commercial businesses, you have to offer Hosted PBX.
Right, what is bad for the consumer is good for the vendor. And loads and loads of consumers actually like being taken advantage of. Don't disappoint them.
As long as the services are not proprietary to the internet offering, network or connection I dont see the issue here. I see where scott is coming from but no serious ISP would leave out a voice offering. And I am talking about IP PBX not trunks or home service.
Even if you have to partner out to offer it, there are a million options. There are ways to do it where its not "coupled", even if you allow the customer to cancel internet and keep voice.
If I had businesses want some other services as well, I'd have to look at my resources (hint hint wink wink, looking at people here on ML) about such things as web design, marketing, hosting for businesses, etc.
You've already gone from "I won't be bundling" to "I'll offer whatever the client wants"
In like 2 hours. . .
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@dustinb3403 said in I am going to start an ISP:
@nerdydad said in I am going to start an ISP:
@bigbear said in I am going to start an ISP:
@scottalanmiller said in I am going to start an ISP:
@bigbear said in I am going to start an ISP:
@nerdydad said in I am going to start an ISP:
Yes, that is correct. I am going to start an ISP.
In my town, we have a highway running through it. Half of the town has good Internet, and the other half is just terrible. The current BIG ISPs have had enough time to come in and either upgrade what is already there or to replace. It looks like they are not interested in providing rural people with decent Internet because of population density per sub. Its not economically advantageous for them to expand out that way.
Therefore, I am going to start a WISP. I have already been talking to other WISPs out there and have been getting tips. I am also going to take @scottalanmiller's advice on inappropriate coupling of services. Therefore, I will not be offering email, VoIP, AV, or storage for my customers. Just Internet and a side retail of products that the customer could buy from me in order to establish their own private network. I am also planning on expanding into consulting for the community after the ISP is already established and running.
Internally, I am going to go all Vultr for the servers necessary with Debian 9.1 and Fedora as appropriate and FreePBX.
I believe @JaredBusch said one time that WISPs are worth while if they are done right. I was hoping he can expand on that a little bit if possible.
While I just watched @scottalanmiller's video, and agree from the perspective of not buying bundled services especially where the ISP hosts a softswitch in their local data center, as a business you definitely want to bundle and sell Hosted PBX.
To be clear... If you like money, and want to make some as a WISP targeting commercial businesses, you have to offer Hosted PBX.
Right, what is bad for the consumer is good for the vendor. And loads and loads of consumers actually like being taken advantage of. Don't disappoint them.
As long as the services are not proprietary to the internet offering, network or connection I dont see the issue here. I see where scott is coming from but no serious ISP would leave out a voice offering. And I am talking about IP PBX not trunks or home service.
Even if you have to partner out to offer it, there are a million options. There are ways to do it where its not "coupled", even if you allow the customer to cancel internet and keep voice.
If I had businesses want some other services as well, I'd have to look at my resources (hint hint wink wink, looking at people here on ML) about such things as web design, marketing, hosting for businesses, etc.
You've already gone from "I won't be bundling" to "I'll offer whatever the client wants"
In like 2 hours. . .
They won't be bundled though. They'd all be separate line items.
"You're going from a hosted PBX to an on-prem PBX? Okay. We can turn that off and I'll continue taking care of your emails, web hosting, etc."
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@nerdydad said in I am going to start an ISP:
@dustinb3403 said in I am going to start an ISP:
@nerdydad said in I am going to start an ISP:
@bigbear said in I am going to start an ISP:
@scottalanmiller said in I am going to start an ISP:
@bigbear said in I am going to start an ISP:
@nerdydad said in I am going to start an ISP:
Yes, that is correct. I am going to start an ISP.
In my town, we have a highway running through it. Half of the town has good Internet, and the other half is just terrible. The current BIG ISPs have had enough time to come in and either upgrade what is already there or to replace. It looks like they are not interested in providing rural people with decent Internet because of population density per sub. Its not economically advantageous for them to expand out that way.
Therefore, I am going to start a WISP. I have already been talking to other WISPs out there and have been getting tips. I am also going to take @scottalanmiller's advice on inappropriate coupling of services. Therefore, I will not be offering email, VoIP, AV, or storage for my customers. Just Internet and a side retail of products that the customer could buy from me in order to establish their own private network. I am also planning on expanding into consulting for the community after the ISP is already established and running.
Internally, I am going to go all Vultr for the servers necessary with Debian 9.1 and Fedora as appropriate and FreePBX.
I believe @JaredBusch said one time that WISPs are worth while if they are done right. I was hoping he can expand on that a little bit if possible.
While I just watched @scottalanmiller's video, and agree from the perspective of not buying bundled services especially where the ISP hosts a softswitch in their local data center, as a business you definitely want to bundle and sell Hosted PBX.
To be clear... If you like money, and want to make some as a WISP targeting commercial businesses, you have to offer Hosted PBX.
Right, what is bad for the consumer is good for the vendor. And loads and loads of consumers actually like being taken advantage of. Don't disappoint them.
As long as the services are not proprietary to the internet offering, network or connection I dont see the issue here. I see where scott is coming from but no serious ISP would leave out a voice offering. And I am talking about IP PBX not trunks or home service.
Even if you have to partner out to offer it, there are a million options. There are ways to do it where its not "coupled", even if you allow the customer to cancel internet and keep voice.
If I had businesses want some other services as well, I'd have to look at my resources (hint hint wink wink, looking at people here on ML) about such things as web design, marketing, hosting for businesses, etc.
You've already gone from "I won't be bundling" to "I'll offer whatever the client wants"
In like 2 hours. . .
They won't be bundled though. They'd all be separate line items.
"You're going from a hosted PBX to an on-prem PBX? Okay. We can turn that off and I'll continue taking care of your emails, web hosting, etc."
But do you see where that becomes tricky? If you are offering additional services, the client would likely expect a bundle price.
And it would be incredibly daft of you to not bundle, as you can up-sell the customer on items they likely don't use.
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Start with 1 job.
Offering internet service.
Leave everything else out of it.
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@dustinb3403 said in I am going to start an ISP:
I wonder if you could only supply paperless billing, or would you have to give people the option?
Meh - make them a bot to mine Bitcoins...
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And more importantly what kind of bandwidth would you have to setup, support and maintain those other services?
I'd think your time would be completely taken up with just your primary role.
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@dustinb3403 said in I am going to start an ISP:
Start with 1 job.
Offering internet service.
Leave everything else out of it.
That's the plan. Instead of becoming a "jack of all trades", I'll become a "master of one". Let others that have mastered other fields become consultants and divvy out work as it comes up.
