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Starting a Cable Company?

Posted by Cliff on from the if-you-want-something-done-right... dept.

prec asks: "One of my goals for my post-university life is to start my own High Speed Internet provider. The plan is to find a decent sized residential area that does not currently have such a service available and start my business there. However, one major problem presents itself - How in the world could I start my own cable company? Would I actually have to lay my own cable lines and everything or do the big companies (such as Comcast) have services set up for people to start their own 'Comcast Franchise' type businesses? All feedback is appreciated."

9 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. WiFi by HughsOnFirst · · Score: 3, Interesting

    from rooftop to rooftop.

    Cables?

    ecch!!

  2. HBCI did it. by KittyTheCat · · Score: 2, Interesting

    http://www.hbci.com/

  3. You would need a lot of capital by Pengo · · Score: 3, Interesting


    It costs the cable companies crazy money to lay the cable, because of construction costs, etc. Your business plan would have to have a 5-10 year return on that cable. But, at that point, why lay cable when you can run fibre?

    I would say that wireless is your best bet, if your not deep pocketed. In an industry where there is intense compitition I would guess it would be hard to pitch yourself to a VC for money. Wifi you can almost throw something together for under 30-40k dollars. Problem is, WIFI service is sub-par to what you get with cable. And where you can get cable modem for 39 dollars a month, will you see a return on your investment?

    Cheers

  4. In my best Foghorn Leghorn by toygeek · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "No no no son you're going about it all wrong". Think Orinco wireless equipment. Secure, inexpensive. Now all you need is some space at a repeater site, and a high speed connection to service your customers with. A guy I know persnally is doing this in the Reno, NV area and is doing quite well. The setup fee is around $250, but its only $50/mo. All on 2.4ghz with rooftop antennae and big collinear (sp?) arrays on the towers. He has a T1 in Reno, shoots that over the mountains (two repeater sites with line of sight) via 5.8ghz, and drops into Fernley, which is a small town w/ nothing but 56K. V'oila, high speed ISP.

    His website is fernley.net, but I don't think he uses that site anymore.

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  5. wireless is the way by avoelker · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If you are serious about this, build a wireless infrastructure, not cable.

    You'll notice new phone service, like in China, are being built-out via cellular network, not wire-line.

    -avoelker
  6. This might not be what you are looking for... by dasunt · · Score: 4, Interesting

    But have you considered wireless?

    From what I know, you need a deal with the cable company for cable modems. Same with the phone company for DSL. But consider wireless....

    You need a T1, and the wireless hardware. You also need access points, but considering the topography of the area, you might be able to get by if you offer free service to certain businesses/homes if they allow you to keep a WAP there. Seems cheaper and easier then cable or DSL... Of course, you need to keep a small variety of wireless pci/pcmia NICs on hand, but you'll be able to sell those at a fat profit and charge more for setup.

    Sure, there are security concerns. You could *try* to limit it to mac address, and ppp-over-ethernet. Just pay close attention to the logs. :)

    Just think of the benefits : internet access anywhere as long as you are in range. Great selling point.

    However, I'm not a networking or wireless guru. So double check all of this and run the numbers, get permission, etc. Look for 'success stories' with wireless in the non-profit or commercial sectors. Not sure if latency is better/worse or the same compared to cable or DSL. However, for bandwidth, assuming each sector is tied to a T1, that's a max of 1.54 mbps, so I believe that the cheaper (older, slower) wireless standard should be able to take that speed. Else (depending on the size), tie the backbone together with a private high-speed ethernet connection (say encrypted to protect this tempted target) between the region WAP and the main office. Then the WAP can convert from the new fast expensive standard of your choice to the old slow inexpensive standard of your choice.

    Oh, and do you have the knowledge? Maybe you should try to get a job at an ISP first, learn the ropes, then move to littletown, USA, pop 10k, and setup your broadband service.

  7. Another Wireless solution: by Zapper · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Depending on how far you want to go there's always RONJA.

    --
    So much to do, so little bandwidth.
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    Try Mozilla
  8. There was a company by Karrots · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There was a company here in Utah that was doing somthing just like what you are asking about. They were running cable of their own design to the houses etc... Now I think they are doing regular ethernet and using some sort of Fiber to the home thing. I havn't looked into them in a while because they weren't in my city. They became a utility so they could use the easments and other things like that to get to the neighborhoods. Last I looked they were offering 10mbit connections for like $40 a month but that was 3 years ago.

    Here is their website if you want to see what they are doing now. http://www.airswitch.com

  9. Another Option by Zapper · · Score: 0, Interesting
    I seem to remeber reading somwhere about a guy who set up an ISP from an ex-security firm premises.
    Seems they had a dry pair to a lot of buildings in the town. Add a DSLAM and it sounds like xDSL.
    Sorry can't remember where I read this, must have been on /. tho' , there's no time to do anything else.

    Free chocolate fish for the first to Google it!

    --
    So much to do, so little bandwidth.
    --
    Try Mozilla