How a group of neighbors created their own Internet service

Zenaan Harkness zen at freedbms.net
Mon Nov 2 15:05:14 PST 2015


A recent example. Such projects are evidently affordable with
volunteer(s) doing the work. Same goes for any off-grid network.
Perhaps this story will inspire someone to kick off their own little
corner of the locally-controlled internet.
Zenaan


http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/15/11/01/2241241/how-a-group-of-rural-washington-neighbors-created-their-own-internet-service
"
> [rich people blah blah] In any case, this isn't a poor farming
> community - they can afford this sort of large expenditure.

Honestly it doesn't seem the expenses were that great, it seems the
primary investment is one man who did a whole lot of legwork to rent a
microwave link, find relay points, install equipment, do network
supervision and maintenance and so on for free. The numbers are pretty
much all there, initial investment was $25k that they need to pay back
in 36 months. Break-even was 25 users, subtract 25 @ $150 = $3750 in
sign-up fee = $21250 / 36 = ~$600 month in down payment. Running
income = 25 @ $75/mo = $1875 - $900 in microwave rental - $600 in down
payments = $375/mo for running the wireless grid and misc. other
expenses = ~$0 in wages. And now they're paying it down faster so they
can lower prices, with 50 users / $900/mo + a slightly bigger grid it
might drop to $40/mo after the investment cost is paid off in less
than two years. That's not expensive, it's super cheap for rural
broadband.

For comparison, we're paying ~$500 extra per household on top of of
the ordinary ~$300 sign-up fee and ~$100 monthly fee for the privilege
of getting a fiber rollout with Internet/TV at our cabin here in
Norway. On the bright side, after the first twelve months we don't
have to use it more than 4 months a year, but it's still ~$2000 for
year one and ~$400/year just for the summer. And they're not planning
to lower prices, they're planning to recoup the rest of the roll-out
costs, pay wages and turn a nice profit over the next 20-30 years. But
it's not like in the city where you can connect 100 people in an
apartment building at the time, distances are huge and customers few
so cost per subscriber will be far, far more expensive so I doubt that
we're a cash cow. Anyway to get back on topic, what this community has
that others lack is one very skilled volunteer working for free, on a
commercial basis it would be way different.
"


Original:
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/11/how-a-group-of-neighbors-created-their-own-internet-service/



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