Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 17:58:53 -0600 (CST) From: Joe Greco <jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com> To: lqaz@ssd.dawsoncollege.qc.ca Cc: freebsd-isp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: info Message-ID: <199602062358.RAA18316@brasil.moneng.mei.com> In-Reply-To: <1388495818-343881@ssd.dawsoncollege.qc.ca> from "lqaz@ssd.dawsoncollege.qc.ca" at Feb 6, 96 05:11:18 pm
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> Please send me any info on becoming an ISP. Thankyou > Jamie Fambios To paraphrase the answer a friend of mine often gives when asked about starting an ISP... Take about $50,000. Invest in some office space, installation of several dozen phone lines and good 28.8K modems, a T1 Internet connection, a CSU/DSU and router, a terminal server, a general purpose UNIX box, an answering machine, and some advertising, and you have yourself the basic beginnings of a (very) small ISP business. "Still interested?" :-) Next you need to think about larger problems like support staff, insurance, security systems, news services, Web services, POP servers, preconfigured "install-ready" client configurations (winsock-on-a-disk), and other value-added ISP services. That will take you well past that first $50,000 burp. "Still interested?" Once you're doing all of that, you find that your business isn't half as good as you thought, your competition is undercutting you because they've already paid off their start-up expenses, and you still have lots of bugs and problems to work out. Suddenly you're really not making any money because it's a no-margin business. "Still interested?" My friend tells me that his experience is that those who have to ask about becoming an ISP are rarely aware of the requirements and are generally not qualified to start an ISP business. I don't know if he's wrong or if he's right, but many of the points are good. I've seen lots of fools try to start up ISP businesses on next to nothing, and they just don't work out. Fun. ... Joe ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joe Greco - Systems Administrator jgreco@ns.sol.net Solaria Public Access UNIX - Milwaukee, WI 414/546-7968
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