Wireless Internet Co-Ops?

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?"

Comments

Tasmanian Public Airwave Network

[saveth]

A few of my friends in Tasmania are working on this sort of thing. It's meant to be a public access wireless network that allows users to be on the same network as everyone (theoretically) else in Tasmania. It doesn't have an internet access point, yet, and from what I've heard, when an internet gateway is established, at some point in the future, there will be a small fee for access. The URL is as follows.

http://www.tas.air.net.au/

ADSL and Remote Are Mutually Exclusive

[John Hasler]

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.

If you can get ADSL there it isn't remote.

Wireless in Silver Springs

[rawg]

I am getting ready to do this in Silver Springs, Nevada. Right now I have a Omni-Directional antenna on my roof and one connection about three miles away. We get about 5mbits/sec on the connection to my server. We are using Linksys WMP11 cards, a cantenna's at the client site. So far its working perfect.

We have about 70 people interested in joining. I'm going to charge $35 per connection. The T1 is going to cost me $1313 a month with a $1200 setup. I have a 32 mile loop (included in price). I have all the server equipment to get started. I figure it will be about $150-200 for the customer to get hooked up. The linksys WMP11 is about $65-80. The Dish is about $45-60. The cable is about $20-40. We can setup cantenna's for most people. Since this is the desert, no trees. All I want is about 100 customers. That is about all I can handle.

So far everything is working out great. I have a few more tests to do with more people on the line and if everything works, I'm ready to start.

The main problem I'm trying to figure out right now is how to have user logins. I can go VPN or PPPoE. I am leaning to PPPoE right now. All I need is a login with password to verify people and not allow free rides. I think this is going to be the hardest part.

I am going to write all the plans on how to get things going when I get things going so that other people in other places can do the same.

I'm not the only one?!

[suwain_2]

Quite a while ago, I grew sick and tired of my crappy cable modem, and learned about Cogent. Wouldn't it be cool, I thought, to have 100 Mbps at home? But then it dawned on me that, even as a geek who could probably find a way to fully utilize 100 Mbps, $1,000/month is just too much.

Then it dawned on me... I've been thinking for a bit that I want to install a wireless LAN in my neighborhood (even using 802.11a, so I get 54+ Mbps, as opposed to the usual 11), and be a sort of ISP for the neighborhood. Places like D-Link offer "Turbo" modes that can do 72 Mbps; wouldn't you pay $75/month or something for a 72 Mbps "broadband" connection? Even if you use the $3,000/month figure for an "ISP" Cogent line, I'd only need to find 40 customers at $75/month, and I'm breaking even. And I bet that the actual bandwidth usage would be VERY small; even Slashdot doesn't pull 72 Mbps sustained.

The nearest Cogent-served city is almost 100 miles away, and a lot of my neighbors are the "No thanks, I like my AOL" type, but if Cogent ever comes to town, this is something I'd very seriously consider.