Is this realistic? (Startup ISP)

[WhiteKnight]

link

The link is to a forum so you'll have to read a number of posts for the full story.

Here's the main idea:


Quote

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Ok here is the deal, I have started an ISP for the JHU, Loyola area. Basically what we are doing is providing a Resnet like service (but a lot better, faster, no filtering, port blocking etc.) to people living in apartment buildings in this area. We wire every apartment in the building for service (for free) and then you can plug your computer into the jack that we provide. The cost of this service is cheaper than what you currently pay for DSL or dial up (see http://www.lumennetworks.com/tenants.html) and our speeds are several times faster than DSL offerings (4Mbps standard). The only problem is getting the apartment building managers to sign up/ agree to have the service installed. So we are offering $200 (after 3 months of continuous service) to anybody who gets their apartment building manager to sign up.
There is no cost to the apartment building manager at all. Look around the website for complete details.

The website is not complete so if your apartment building manager wants to sign up, just email me with their contact info. I should have the website finished by the end of this week.

I think that is everything, please contact me if you have any questions. Go to www.lumennetworks.com and click on contact.
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Seems too good to be true. The guy is a former engineering student from Hopkins. He apparently plans to use dark fiber for a lot of this project, but I still am a little skeptical about the sheer volume of equipment he'll need in each building.

 

[randal]

That's a good idea, but you know, an engineer, even with a handful of very good people, would not be able to tackle such a problem. I personally don't give anybody any credence on near anything until there is more research, a white paper delivered or a business plan prepared -- that's the approaches that banks/investors take as well.

Congrats to Lumen Networks if it happens, but man ... being in the ISP business, I know that he is talking hundreds of thousands of dollars and thousands of man hours before he sees dollar one.

$.02
randal

 

[RedFox1]

My first thought after reading that is he's going to have trouble keeping people honest. That's a pretty cheap price for that kind of bandwidth, and he hasn't left himself too many options for dealing with gameservers, heavy P2P users, etc.

His prices are great, but I'm not sure whoever he's going to buy the internet connection from will give him such a good price.

-Russ

 

[Soybomb]

I see you posted it here now As I said though I still think its just big dreams. Sooooo much money for equipment and labor. Not to mention thats a lot of bandwidth hes thinking of offering for a cheap price. His internet connectivity is going to be quite costly and I don't think the pricing plans hes talking about would pay the bills let alone turn a profit. $200 a month bonus for signing people up is alot too. That customer might not be profitable for many many months because of that.