mini-ISP

[Recrudescent]

I'm a civil engineer currently working on building the infrastructure for a new subdevelopment of ~50 houses, and we've run into a problem: the houses are supposed to be pretty high end houses, so we want to make sure they have broadband access and cable TV access, but none of the local broadband or cable companies will cooperate. We even offered to lay the cable, but still no go.


Then it occured to me that we might be able to start our own mini-ISP/cable TV provider just for the development. The problem with this is that not only do I have no idea how to do this or much it will cost, but I don't even know where I can look to find out. If anyone knows of a place I can learn about setting up a broadband-only ISP or has any advice, your help would be appreciated.

 

[CTR]

In cases like this, depending on the infrastructure and population growth in the area, DSL or cable internet service might be available in a year or two. The best thing to do is for the residents who are interested to get together and petition a small/medium local ISP to setup wireless coverage for them. If they pool some money together to cover the initial equpiment costs, that will usually get the ball rolling. ISP's aren't all that interested in empty houses...they will be more cooperative when actual people are begging to give them money.

 

[TMPadmin]

I guess you could setup your own network but the price my be prohibitive. You would also need to setup an onsite centralized "house" for your equipment. Just a thought. Not even well thought out.

 

[Recrudescent]

As for the idea of a peitition, if I lived there, I would completely agree. However, the idea is that we need to be able to market the broadband access - people that are willing to pay $500,000+ for a second house tend to want a number of amenities when they visit. We don't need broadband access after we've sold, we need it to sell.

As for a place to put the equipment, there are already several maintenance buildings in the site-plan, so it wouldn't be a big deal at all to expand them a little bit for a server room and an office or two.

I think some sort of networking solution could be feasible, but I don't know a lot of things. If we give everyone a 300 kbps connection, we're going to need 15 m/second * some fraction representing the fact that people don't use 100% of their bandwidth 100% of the time (maybe 1/5?). Where can we get that kind of bandwidth? How much would that cost?

Also if anyone happens to know about starting a cable TV provider....

 

[CTR]

Contact a competent datacom consulting company in your area that is also a Cisco reseller and they'll put together a package for you. I predict something in the 40-50k range, with about 1k or 2k in monthly recurring costs. This is just for the equipment and 'net connection.

Then you need to build a Central Office where you can have an air-conditioned, fire-suppressed, controlled-access room for all of your expensive equipment. You'll need extensive power work done here, so get a good electrical contractor to help.

Hire a couple of people, or even consultants, to run your equipment, do installs, and troubleshoot problems.

If your company is determined to throw money at this, then keep us updated. Good luck!

 

[ITJunkie]

Is it possible to bring in an OC3 to the community?

Would be a big pipe that everyone could use. Just bring in good network engineers to set it all up and spread out the monthly cost as part of the CCR's or whatever.

Just another thought.

 

[cmetz]

Recrudescent, talk with your county and your PUC about your utility companies' level of cooperation. Around here, connecting new homes for cable and telephone is not something they have a choice about.

http://www.gatehousenetworks.com/ did a community a friend of mine's in. I won't say that the whole setup is well done, but most of that is because Verizon is part of the picture and couldn't resist the opportunity to $!%$#% everything up. The Gatehouse folks themselves seem reasonable though.

There are other companies that specialize in this, it's becoming common. Just beware that most of them sell to developers and builders, who haven't got a clue about the difference between a good network and a bad network. As a result, most residential community setups I see are mediocre to poor.

 

[titanmiller]

A single T1 line would probably be sufficiant for 50 houses (unless there are a few bigtime downloaders) but the problem is how to get the connection to the houses. If they are close enough together a wireless network might work, but that probably isnt the best situation. If you could get CAT5 or some other kind of wire to each house that would be optimal.