I was just forwarded your thread from a friend who keeps up on the BAWUG site (my first time here) - I started a Santa Clara based WISP back in 1997 (this was before 802.11b - when 900mhz proprietary cards were the in thing) and have been running and growing it ever since (using essentially Matt's idea of getting 20+ people at $50/mo). Note however that T1's at $550 are usually hiding something to get that pricing (like bandwidth metering, limited IP address range, non guaranteed bandwdith, or some other surprise on the bill) It's not possible to sell T1 at 550/mo including local loop without loosing money - it's either being oversold at the DS3 level, or has some hidden charge.
My base of operations is in Santa Clara near Benton/Kiely (santa clara high school and Kaiser are the nearby landmarks) - from here I can service a good portion of santa clara directly - but back in 1997 that wasn't the idea. >From the start, I targeted mountain communities who had no high speed solution. I don't use the web as my primary advertising, but instead send direct mail postcards to the addresses that fall within my service area. Word of mouth is the most effective advertising out there - neighbors ask each other how to get internet service, and find out about what I offer, signing up shortly thereafter. People living in the mountains around the south bay get to know each other pretty well and word spreads fast among them. I started off as hmmwv.net providing service to Redwood Estates (off 17) that can barely get telephone service (and data at 18-20 kbps due to the line problems) - forget cable, dsl, or much else - but santa clara is visable from most of the south bay mountains, and makes an ideal base of operations because the links are all line of site. A single directional antenna here can service 200+ customers living on a mountain road who can't get more than just dialup (or satellite with 3000 ms ping times and < 100 kbps net bandwidth). Had I tried to service just nearby people, I could not have competed with the "3mo" or "6mo" specials that cable/dsl sell to attract customers at a low rate then jack it up after the special is over, or they get sold out. It was important to target the service to a group of people who were certain to want the service and didn't have any other options except satellite. Otherwise, wireless is not cost effective compared to DSL/cable. When we started the network - we threw in any way to generate revenue to pay for the T1. Microwave links, colocation (I have a 2000 sq ft datacenter with 2 ea. 6KW UPS's to run everything) etc. Later I bought out uwave.com and added their customer base and a second T1, a 1/2 rack cage in a 4xDS3 serviced colo facility offering 10/100/Gig-E connections, plus a single IP business DSL with 1.5/384 service and bandwidth guarantee. (Business rate DSLs differ from residential in that you have a special support number that has knowledgable people, service guarantees, and a TOS that specifically **ALLOWS** the reselling of service, whereas residential DSL and especially cable companies go out looking for people who are reselling and send them nasty letters in the mail about violating their TOS, stealing service, etc.) I've also built a full router and repeater on top of one mountain to allow me to go 14.5 miles down to south san jose where A/B cable doesn't run and DSL is out - it adds 1ms to the hop, but I'm only about 8-10 ms from the major backbones, so it's still fast going from my core router up to the mountain and back down to the customer. One S.J. house has a public block of 32 IPs routed to its location where cable/DSL are not available, and a server farm hung off it. From that mountain, I have 3 directional antennas aimed into cities with groups of people not serviced by landline links. These include parts of San Jose, Santa Clara, Cupertino, Sunnyvale and parts of Los Altos. Although everything is 802.11b, I maintain security on the net to not be visable unless you are using promiscuous cards and a packet capture program - the network requires directional antennas carefully pointed to access it and doesn't show up in netstumbler. What's nice about Matt's concept of having 20 or more people is that once you can afford to pay for the monthly recurring charges, you are able to gain the advantage of having a critical mass of clients and install redundancy (a network that has more than one route out) via NAT. We also have an internal proxy server with a 50G cache disk that catches about 80-90+% of the trafic and drops pop-up ads and blinking obnoxious banners from the data stream. This means that downloading 20 or 30 MB windows updates usually takes just a few seconds at 5.5 Mbps (the 802.11b data rate) from the proxy instead of 1.544 Mbps from one of the 3 lines into the net. Also, should a line fail, the NAT and Proxy server are multi-homed and can select any 1 of 3 routes out, making the failure invisable to the end user. Our firewall also allows assignment of either fixed private addresses for servers inside the network or DHCP. With fixed IPs, we can setup dedicated port numbers for ssh, etc for people who want to have a server inside the network that they can get to from work. We also offer public IP routing via wireless for people who want that connectivity. Right now there are 2 class C blocks available to customers (either colocated or wireless) This allows servers to use 2 IPs on two different routes, then use our DNS servers to implement failover, improving overall uptime. We have also expanded into business friendly features like offsite network backup to our DLT tape system, a 36" wide inkjet network printer, a highspeed laserjet postscript network printer, and a network photo printer - even a networked internet postage meter system for bulk snail mail. Each are available on the internal net for just the cost of supplies. Now we are experimenting with VOIP systems that offer better quality phone lines to remote mountain areas, and phone + data service to homes that do not even have wired phone service. Once the wireless infrastructure is installed and robust, it's amazing what is possible. One community that shares a common water tank has a networked water level sensor and a webpage that shows how much water they have in the tank. If anyone in Santa Clara is interested in trying a link to my Santa Clara site directly, email me privately and we can arrange a time to try out a directional link from my site to yours. You need a good compas (lensatic type with 1 degree marks) and an outdoor directional antenna (the 24 dB bent grill works well), plus a laptop or equivalent to connect to it up on your roof while fine tuning it for elevation. I calculate the magnetic heading based on your longitude and latitude either from a map page or GPS. Most people permanently install a workgroup bridge and an outdoor weatherproof box with a voltage regulator to run power over ethernet so that the only cable going to the box is a single cat-5, which can be plugged into a house hub. This makes a clean, neat install. With low cost bridges from senao, it's almost cost competitive with dsl installs, which has long been the problem selling wireless - the entry cost! Everett Basham -- general wireless list, a bawug thing <http://www.bawug.org/> [un]subscribe: http://lists.bawug.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless
