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Becoming a CLEC?
eric76 asks: "It finally happened. DSL has come to the town where I work in Texas. While most would see that as a plus, the problem is that I work for a small ISP offering dialup and fixed wireless. The $26.95 / month DSL could drive us out of business. So I'm looking at what it takes to become a CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier). That is, we'd become a local telephone company purchasing telephone service, particularly DSL, at wholesale from the ILEC (SBC) and reselling it at retail prices. Has anyone else gone through this? What did it cost? How long did it take? Is there a minimum size to make it worthwhile?"
https://clec.sbc.com/clec/
And then calling up some of their existing CLECs?
The rules and procedures vary by ILEC, state, and time of day. You need to get information from a local source.
A good researcher uses all of his resources. I don't see why it's somehow <b>bad</b> to use the experience of other Slashdotters when you undertake something big. Maybe some of the input is valuable.
Anyway, what does it matter do you? Go to your preferences and get rid of Ask Slashdot and you'll never see it again.
You might start here, assuming you'd be working w/ SBC: CLEC Handbook
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there'd be a shortage of sand". -Milton F.
Over $500k to become operational.
First step: Get a CLEC consultant to help with the ICA.
Second step: Get a lawyer.
Third step: Spend all your money on what the consultant says.
The large portion of the technical end is the switch (most likely a softswitch if you're worried about money) which are around $300k. The rest will be in facilities and personnel.
Good luck. Most of them just go out of business.
Get paid to code OSS
I don't believe you need to be a CLEC. My friend's ISP offers DSL service. There are two parts to the DSL service, the line itself (provided by the LEC), and the internet connectivity for it (provided by the LEC or a 3rd party).
Qwest provides the lines in this area, and by law, when you sign up for one, they have to tell you all of the 3rd parties that offer internet service over it. Any ISP that wants to provide internet connectivity for Qwest lines simply pays for a Qwest WAN circuit to their ISP (T-1 or larger). The CPE's have an ATM PVC which terminates at the particular ISP they signed up to be with. I think Qwest calls this a Megapop or Megacentral line.
In any case, it's not expensive. One can support about 200 DSL customers off a single T-1 because not everyone is using it at the same time. This sounds like a lot, but I've seen it done and the line is very rarely saturated.
So, unless you want to actually provide the physical line too, there's no reason to become a CLEC.
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I'd actually just call covad and have them do your DSL for you. It will save you the headache of becoming your own phone company. It's not like providing DSL service is all that hard either. You can have that setup through your phone company. There's no reason to go off and be your own CLEC when your local phone company should be able to provide DSL to your customers.
Look at it this way. Earthlink DSL == Covad
MSN DSL == Qwest (at least here)
I would take the covad route though. It will mean you will have to setup a redback server to take care of the authentication, but it really saves a lot of headaches.
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
First, the FCC is undergoing quite a bit of change of policy right now in regards to forcing ILEC's to provide access to unbundled products, as well as relaxing the need for artifically deflated pricing on products for those with Interconnections.
Second, lets examine a quick price scheme here. I'm not positive what the prices are like down in SBC land, as I'm over in Qwest land, but for me, a standard xDSL capable loop (UNE, not UNE-P) costs around 23 dollars. So, the loop itself costs almost as much as you will probably need to charge for DSL service. Add bandwidth and administrative costs, and you find why dedicated DSL service isn't all that popular. Well, what about shared-line services you ask? IMO, you might as well resell SBC DSL, as it will be more profitable.
CLEC's are dropping like flies. It's actually quite impressive how many go bankrupt every year.
If you are seriously interested in becoming a CLEC, I'd recommend looking into providing more than just DSL. You would have the ability to offer Voice along with the Data. Some even go so far as to do the triple play packages, Voice Video Data.
Two points: One, if the ILEC JUST arrived with DSL in the area, it's not likely that Covad has a presence here. Nationwide coverage does Not mean that they are in every CO out there - it's not commercially feasable. You can check with Covad and find out if they have a presence in your area.
Two, no, you don't have to set up a Redback server. You can have Covad provide that for you one one of their existing servers. Essentially, this means that Covad is providing Layer 3 in addition to Layer 2 for you. It's called DSL+IP.