All I can say is, Bandwidth is cheap, labor and time aren't. The problem is cheap equipment is expensive to maintain, and expensive equipment is cheap to maintain. Again, if not in control of the installation, design, and equipment selection, is it worth teh liabilty to flat rate a cost, to guarantee someone else's choices? Then you need to ask, what type and level of support is going to be expected? End user connecting and speed troubleshooting? Or fixing APs when they break? At the end of the day.... the best option is to convinece the tower owner to just give you the tower space free, and you do your thing as a commercial organization, and because your access to the tower will be free, you'll be able to offer more cost effective service to the subscribers via a discount of some sort. Or give a loss leader free service. For example 384k free, paid access for 2mbp, etc.
If they still want to offer it to the public for free, and be in control of it.... Thdn you do it like Staff posiitioning. I can give you a Network engineer for $50k/year, and you have can have him for 40 hrs pper week, or I can give you a network engineer for 20 hrs per week at $30k per year, etc. If you demand better support, we'll add techs, etc.. If there is low usage, you'll downgrade the number of hours needed. Or if out sources, thats $2 per month per user. So 1500 people time.= $3000/mon or $36000 per year. Then you can get realistic about how many people will really be able to be served.... closer to 100? :-) Tom DeReggi RapidDSL & Wireless, Inc IntAirNet- Fixed Wireless Broadband ----- Original Message ----- From: "RickG" <rgunder...@gmail.com> To: "WISPA General List" <wireless@wispa.org> Sent: Friday, August 14, 2009 11:11 AM Subject: [WISPA] Muni Broadband - Was: On-line back-up Your post reminded me of a current situation I have. Basically, I was slated to get the rights to a couple of water tanks in a nearby town. Recently, the major told me that he was going to provide FREE wireless access to his city (pop 1502). I told him it wont work unless he hit the lotto since the support costs will eat him up. So, he asked me what I would charge the city to maintain his wireless network. So, the question is: is anyone here doing this and what kind of costs should be considered. Obviously, the support is one of the largest costs of running a WISP. Thoughts? -RickG On Fri, Aug 14, 2009 at 10:16 AM, jp<j...@saucer.midcoast.com> wrote: > Back in the day, we used to pay $10000-12000 for VCR sized rackmount boxes > to handle > dialup users at $20/month. At $5/month, the economics are great for backup > infrastructure, assuming a $1000 box of computer parts and hard drives can > handle the > same quantity of customers. > > It's the tech support that is tough. I can't see how to make money > providing customer > support from helpful and smart humans for $5/month, and backup is easily > as confusing > as dialup if not more so. The customer must understand concepts instead of > memorizing > the steps needed to get connected. > > We offer backup, but not that cheap. Most of our business comes from a > computer shop > we work with who chooses online backup for customers when appropriate. If > you have a > computer shop along with your WISP, you could probably do well with it. > Otherwise, > it's a hard sell to make people worry about their data until they lose it, > especially > for residential use. > > On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 09:22:24PM -0700, John Thomas wrote: >> Are you willing to setup a server for their backups? >> For home users, Mozy charges $4.95 per month. If you setup your own >> backup server, you would have the initial expense of a server with big >> drive space, but you could charge $4.95 and at least save money on your >> upstream bandwidth. >> >> John >> >> Mike wrote: >> > In my heart, I know you are right. The nature of our business is we >> > buy bandwidth wholesale, and then resell it to others who can't >> > afford to buy dedicated bandwidth. We factor an oversubscription >> > rate, and count on bursty, short lived traffic from users that share >> > the bandwidth. >> > >> > If I could afford to add bandwidth so everybody could maintain a 500 >> > kbps connection for days on end, then I would. But the economics are >> > I pay $350.00 for my first MB and $250.00 for each additional. So a >> > person using the system for backup is utilizing a $175.00 resource >> > for $42.40 a month; IF the back-up software only uses 500 kbps, and >> > I've seen them surge way over that. >> > >> > So, two people running Mosy hog a Meg or more of a precious >> > resource. Four of them, and they've used a couple MB or more. I'm >> > sure you get the point. >> > >> > I do have a Netequalizer in place with fairness rules that will >> > penalize those packets, because they are long duration IF and when >> > the network gets near capacity. So, they get penalized, and grandma >> > downloading pictures from her grand kids also gets penalized, even >> > though her use is bursty and infrequent, just because there is not >> > enough overhead on the pipe BECAUSE of the long duration back-up users. >> > >> > Without the Netequalizer, just a few of these users would bring my >> > network to its knees. >> > >> > I am beginning to think Mosy and their ilk belong in the same camp as >> > Netflix and the P2Pers. >> > >> > Mike >> > >> > At 05:51 AM 8/13/2009, you wrote: >> > >> >> Mike wrote: >> >> >> >>> Seems wrong too that a company can make money off using MY bandwidth >> >>> for hours on end with no compensation. >> >>> >> >> You are getting compensated, by your customer, so now it isn't really >> >> your bandwidth, but theirs. The customer is paying you to transport >> >> data, be it pictures of kittens, a HDD backup, or something else. If >> >> the >> >> terms of your contract are such that you can't support this usage, >> >> then >> >> you should probably look at changing the terms of the contract. >> >> >> >> However, I would think that it would be pretty easy to look at the >> >> flows >> >> and put throttling rules in place that limit Carbonite/Mozy/xyz >> >> traffic >> >> when there is congestion. >> >> >> >> Josh >> >> >> >> >> >> -- >> >> Josh Cheney >> >> josh.che...@gmail.com >> >> http://www.joshcheney.com >> >> >> >> >> >> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >> >> WISPA Wants You! 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