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Starting a Cable Company?
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."
"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.
Nobodies Prefect
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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.