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Wireless Internet Co-Ops?

Posted by Cliff on from the tough-tasks-in-today's-broadband-market dept.

einstein asks: "How many other geeks out there are purchasing high speed commercial net connections to the remote areas they live, and then selling access to their neighbors to help cover costs? I know of a remote area with about 20-30 house all of which could access a wireless lan connection to share a 1.5 ADSL connection. I'm planning on bugging the neighbors to see if there interested soon, and I'd like to have some idea if this has worked for other people. So, who's doing this in a Co-Op fashion, and how is it working?" This probably won't be possible with most residential DSL providers, however would they let this fly on their commercial lines?"

4 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. You need to be able to re-sell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you plan to do this, not only does it have to be a business/commercial class, the TOS will also have to allow you to resell the bandwidth. Just one more thing to check into.

    And you might want to make sure the 1.5 ADSL has a good upload speed, because if it's something like 90k, that's going to fill up really quickly. (One person uploading could bring the speed down for everyone quickly.) If you get DSL, I'd probably look into SDSL.

  2. not in a remote location, but apartment. by dada21 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I recently did this with a DSL connection to my condo. I have mostly ghetto neighbors, we can only get IDSL here (144K up/down), and I only need it for e-mail and casual newsreading.

    It's $120 a month, a bit pricey, so I talked to a few neighbors, and told them as long as they won't leech or kazaa or download massive amounts of porn, they can jump in with me.

    I have it as a commercial account, asked if there is a limit to the number of users (no), and let about 10 of my neighbors on.

    Built a simple gateway that keeps track of ONLY the number of bytes take by each user (in order to see if anyone is abusing it). 3 months, no problem.

    I dunno what exactly I'd do if someone DID start leaching, since I have no real contract, but then again, I have the switch in my condo, so all I need to do is pull the plug.

    You'd be surprised how far a low-ping quality IDSL can go for as many people as are on it. Its definitely far and away better than ISDN or dial-up, even with 6 or 7 people browsing the web at once.

    Oh, and when I need to download something big, I remote access a client who has a few T1's worth of bandwidth, and download it there, then dribble download it to my PC at home.

  3. Co-op DSL by RapterOfParadox · · Score: 4, Informative

    Check out Ruby Ranch Internet Cooperative Association at http://www.rric.net/

    there was also a story on /. a few months ago about ruby ranch.

    --
    As the power flows in, the screen grows warm, another day starts, I'm at work again...
  4. There are some cool providers... by mumkin · · Score: 5, Informative
    The Personal Telco Project maintains a list of ISPs' wireless policies. It may not be necessary for you to purchase a commercial connection or set up a corporate shell etc. if your service is through one of the wireless-friendly ISPs.

    Of course, there are loads of wireless community groups out there, with varying methods of deployment/philosophies/etc. You might look here and start browsing the different groups to see how they run things.

    NoVAWireless might be a place to look at -- they seem to be involved with organization of clusters of small, neighborhood-based WISPs.