[MLB-WIRELESS] Public internet access

[Zik Saleeba]

My understanding of the regs is that the carrier license applies to
the entire company, not each node. The capital equipment already
exists in the Melb Wireless network and could be moved on to the
company books in some clever way. There would be no staffing since the
service would initially only be provided to members by members. Total
startup costs come to around $1000 for the company setup plus $2200
for the carrier license application plus "under $1000" for the first
yearly fee.

So around $4000 between 30 people rather than quarter of a million. If
you want to shoot for the sky that's cool by me but personally I can
only afford the cheapass option.

Cheers,
Zik

On 9/22/06, David Ashburner <d_ashburner at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> hmm, what would a ballpark for cost look like?
>
> capital equipment say 20 nodes at 1K / node
> carrier license say 2K + 1K / year
> bulk bandwidth ?? I have no idea
> some hosting for the onramp equipment
> there's probably about 50k of startup cost at least.
>
> well that's all kind of OK  but where your costs go through the roof
> are staffing. You have to assume if you are a carrier you have service
> levels to guarantee
> so even if you only have one technician to install, test, maintain and
> monitor you nodes there's another 50K + 25K on costs ( I think I'm
> being cheap here)
> add in some administration, accounting, legal, marketing ( who's going
> to tell people about you fantastic ISP ) and web admin.
>
> uh, so your free service has a cost of something in the order of
> 100-150K a year. Now that's a lot of donations.
>
> Even if the existing MW membership ( 350 odd people) all ditched their
> existing ISP contracts and switched over you would probably not get
> enough to seed it.
> 350 * $50 month * 12 months =  210K
>
> my guess is the uptake would be 2-3% not 100%
>
>
> >
> > 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...
>
> um, no. some company uses your premises and power to run their network.
> Do you think that a business with service obligations to meet would let
> you tinker with their kit? Unless every node operator is an employee
> and therefore has some accountability you wouldn't be letting them
> touch it - oh, then you have to pay them ......
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Melbwireless mailing list
> Melbwireless at wireless.org.au
> http://wireless.org.au/mailman/listinfo/melbwireless
>