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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."

3 of 58 comments (clear)

  1. Post University? by HRbnjR · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is the goal for your post-university life?

    I suggest staying in business school until you understand why this probably isn't going to work. :-)

  2. 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.

    --
    Nobodies Prefect
    Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
  3. Suggestions for your Terms of Service by orangesquid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you start a cable company, *please* let home users run web servers, peer to peer, etc., without griping. (You can always get some linux boxes to do Quality-of-Service routing, and put things like peer to peer and customer port 80 connections in the low priority partition or something.) Also, Don't send the Feds after people who uncap their modems (fix your SNMP system, dammit! also cap at the router! etc.) And don't put ridiculously low upload caps on (10k? Man, I could do better with two 57.6k modems!) Don't forget that you're just an ISP, not the network police! Your job is mostly to make sure things get from point A to point B on time without getting lost.

    That's my 2pence, anyway. [Stupid Comcast.]

    --
    --TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive