[MLB-WIRELESS] Public internet access

[Rowan 2006]

On Fri, 22 Sep 2006, Zik Saleeba wrote:

> It's a good point you make Rowan. But if we need a carrier license to
> do this why not get a carrier license? It's not outrageously expensive
> if we have donations to support it.
>
> Ok, the awkward part is that the wireless infrastructure has to be
> owned by Melb Wireless. But think of this - you could get Melb
> Wireless to pay for all of your wireless setup. Donations pay for the
> equipment and you provide the time to set it up and run it. So
> basically other people pay for your hobby. Sounds ok to me...

If you're going to go to all that trouble then you may as well make it a
commercial operation. :)

Some stumbling blocks I can think of:

- A non profit organisation cannot apply for a carrier licence. MW would
need to become (or create) a Pty Ltd company or similar, which comes with
its own costs and administrative reporting requirements.

- The application fee is $2,200 and is non refundable. I presume if there
are minor issues they would let you resubmit, but if your implementation
is flawed from the start then it's possible this money will be lost.

- Yearly fees include a base component of around $1k plus a percentage of
gross revenue, which means someone needs to be good at balancing the
books. :)

- At some point (probably even before you apply) you would need to engage
the services of a lawyer to read over the act and supplementary
documentation to ensure your belt is holding up your pants.

- There are other costs such as the Universal Service Obligation.

In short setting up a carrier is probably not for the faint of heart - you
would really need to know what you're doing.

Let's play hypothetical and assume that MW would be exempt and would not
need to go through all this to legally provide internet access...  would a
$10/year membership fee even be sufficient to cover the real costs of
providing it, and if so will it leave other areas short? You can't raise
the membership fee in order to be able to offer "free" internet access!

As a former ISP I can tell you that the major cost for smaller operations
will be the bandwidth, not the communications infrastructure (although
with Telstra's consistent pricing increases lately it's not far behind).
Even if the wireless infrastructure cost MW $0 I doubt it would be
possible to provide a year's worth of net access for $10 per person...
unless everyone is downloading at 1kbyte/sec!

Cheers.