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Aussie Network Engineers Form Members-Only ISP

Posted by timothy on from the makes-me-want-a-really-long-ethernet-cable dept.

schliz writes "A group of Australian network engineers is planning to launch a not-for-profit internet service provider that will provide access to the nation's high-speed NBN fibre network for like-minded people. The cooperative, dubbed 'No ISP,' has no staff or add-on services to keep costs down. Members will be able to 'trade' excess download quota for a market-based price, depending on supply and demand."

21 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. I'd sign up in a second if I lived in .au by seifried · · Score: 3, Interesting

    All I want is reliable bandwidth and latency (what good is 50ms latency if it spikes to 1-2 seconds every so often? say good bye to skype and any online gaming) and ideally a static IP.

    $110 per month for a terabyte plan on 100 Mbps down and 40 Mbps speeds over the fibre network

    Is actually better than what I currently pay, I get 100 meg down, 5 up, 250 gig cap for $90 a month (Canadian duopoly, wheee). I hope they write up how they accomplish all this, might be time to start more of these co-ops. I also love the fact that with the trading scheme they encourage people to use the bandwidth, but intelligently. Right now since there's no real advantage of disadvantage to me when I run major downloads during prime time (and I notice that my speeds/latency are quite a bit worse during prime time), this co-op would result in me scripting most downloads it to run when bandwidth is "cheaper" (aka 3am). I suspect this is true for many other heavy users.

    1. Re:I'd sign up in a second if I lived in .au by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Just wondering though, what would one really do with 100Mbps, analyze all LHC data ?

      p0rn. Terabytes and Terabytes of pr0n.

    2. Re:I'd sign up in a second if I lived in .au by nine932038 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I'm really curious about how they solved the last mile problem. I've thought about starting a non-profit ISP in Canada, but the real questions is how to avoid paying Bell their pound of flesh. Until that problem is solved and you've got ISP-agnostic fibre being laid, it means that you're charging what Bell is charging.

    3. Re:I'd sign up in a second if I lived in .au by sortius_nod · · Score: 4, Informative

      Because I can see you live under a rock: http://nbnco.com.au/

      Most people will have 1Gbps capable fibre in Australia. The rest get fixed wireless (LTE), & very remote areas get satellite, all for the same wholesale price.

      It's actually cheaper to run FTTH these days with the polymer cables (what the NBN is using) than to run FTTN networks that rely on crumbling copper.

  2. I've seen this one before by David+Gerard · · Score: 4, Informative

    APANA part two?

    --
    http://rocknerd.co.uk
  3. It's just not economically feasible by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 2

    The project may be technically feasible, but economically I do not think it makes sense

    I hope the Auzzies do a thorough feasibility study before launching it, or someone would end up paying a lot for nothing

    I am not discouraging them from carrying it out, I'm just being practical
     

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
    1. Re:It's just not economically feasible by aaronb1138 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You must be kidding. Providing internet service is insanely high margin once the lines are in place. I seriously doubt they are planning to drop new fibre or any other high capital infrastructure investments. I'm sure they will be riding on mostly existing infrastructure, especially the last mile.

      These are a bunch of network techs, so they do have some clue what the costs will be.

      Not only that, but I'm sure for some of them, they will actually make money on the side from the service. Have a trunk link down, oh well, me and my buddy Jim will fix that right up at our normal contractor rate (without our boss taking a cut!). Not only that, but I am sure they will be buying a lot of second hand hardware that a corporation would never buy just because it is used and donating spares from their various work projects. Their infrastructure will be incredibly cheap. Not to mention, that they will be able to crowdsource a lot of the design and implementation. Usually, I consider crowdsourcing a way of making a crap situation crappier, but it works great when you are working with a group of experts in their field.

      What's that? The boss wants to upgrade the ASA 5500's at the South East branch, awesome. Hey guys, I just got a new gateway cluster for the secondary trunk line.

      Networking hardware is incredibly cheap if you take the time to shop around. Unfortunately, 9 out of 10 businesses just grab it at over inflated prices from CDW or whatever other rip-off artist they usually deal with.

      There are two long term challenges which they will have to face that could come back to destroy everything in about 8-15 years. First is any kind of crowdsourcing turning into politics or committees. Second is letting too many people do their own thing with the network with no documentation or oversight and creating a horrific mess waiting to collapse. Strong, well considered leadership solves both of these issues very easily.

      Taco, I respect you, but I think your idea of practical is not the same as the direction these guys are heading.

    2. Re:It's just not economically feasible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      me and my mate Jim

      fixedthatforyou.com.au

    3. Re:It's just not economically feasible by Kalriath · · Score: 2

      It's perfectly feasible. It sounds like they're relying on the fact that at wholesale, you're paying for CIR not bits. So they buy x CIR, then distribute that among the members, and operate some sort of trading program to let the members buy bits from each other. Interesting concept, really.

      --
      For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
    4. Re:It's just not economically feasible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You must be kidding. Providing internet service is insanely high margin once the lines are in place. I seriously doubt they are planning to drop new fibre or any other high capital infrastructure investments. I'm sure they will be riding on mostly existing infrastructure, especially the last mile.

      I think this is where a lot of European localities get it right: Layer 1 is owned by the government (municipal, province/state, etc.) or a neutral/non-profit third-party. The competition occurs at Layer 3 of the stack.

    5. Re:It's just not economically feasible by DeSigna · · Score: 2

      The vast majority of ISPs in Australia work on the VISP model, reselling various components of other ISPs' infrastructure. I work for one myself - we offer cloud, rackspace and WAN products tying in well with our traditional integration and support services.

      The margins are very good as long as you know who to talk to. Buying transit or backhaul capacity off one supplier may mean you can get local tails at far below base cost, if they're willing to take the hit for the volume of services you can push through. One particular supplier we deal with will quote a lower price for DSL or EoC tails every time we ring and gripe about the price. End result is pretty consistent griping with every new proposed solution.

      It is very, very easy to get enough capital together, some rack space in PoPs in capital cities and major population centres and drop in some redundantly configured layer 3 switches and routers. All you have to do then is purchase tails, interconnects and transit capacity/backhaul from whatever carriers you're best mates with at the time, plug some cables into switches and you're an ISP. Simplifying further, there used to be a couple of fully managed Virtual ISP providers that handled everything and you got a branded portal for customers to check usage and billing plus a number for technical support escalation.

      There's been a major explosion in wholesale bandwidth capacity and a lot of new players in wholesale network services over the past decade which has made scenarios like this possible. There's was aggressive competition and consolidation through the "credit crunch" but many pulled through and are primed to take on the NBN/FTTN however that pans out.

  4. Re:What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Except you're actually getting what you pay for. They plan to buy a terabyte of bandwidth wholesale for each user, unlike traditional ISPs, which typically use traffic modeling to oversell their infrastructure. With the new model, if you're under your cap and I'm over my cap, I can buy the extra from you at cost, and keep getting full speed service instead of getting capped at 1MBps.

  5. no staff? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The cooperative, dubbed 'No ISP,' has no staff

    I know not all countries have an established history of co-ops, but that's a completely disingenuous way of representing them.

    Everyone may own an equal share. Some people may only contribute money (e.g. UK's Co-op model). Or it may be that only those who contribute work may be members, as in a partnership (e.g. John Lewis model). But as long as work needs to be done, there are staff.

    Since these have been some of the most stable businesses in the UK through this recession, it's worth it for anyone who is intending to start up a new one to represent it properly.

    1. Re:no staff? by mwvdlee · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You give examples of several different co-op models yourself. Why couldn't there be another co-op model for this "No ISP"?

      It should be perfectly possible for them to automate ~99% of daily operations and only occasionally require human intervention, so when they say "no staff", perhaps they mean that all work can be done in a few hours a week from home.

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  6. I had this idea ages ago by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    No proof I did, and so what, I may have thought of the idea but these guys are actively pursuing it.

    Support costs are HUGE burden for the ISP, anything to save them money and bring the costs down. and let's face it most of our DSL connections are reliable anyway.

    My idea was slightly different though, I proposed that one of the peering exchanges (like WAIX or PIPE) allow DSL straight into a RAS on there network, and then you have a backdoor to your own equipment as an ISP. This will then allow you to reach your own equipment in the event you break something. Then you can use your own internet pipe if you so desire, this would save that ISP even more and be a great feature for their members.

    Anyway, Good luck to them and hopefully i can help out if they get stuck

    Kind Regards
    Peter John Revill
    Dual CCIE #18371 Routing and Switching, Voice
    www.ccierants.com

  7. How about removing the faux caps? by metrix007 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I suspect what essentially amounts to price fixing is going on with the ISP's in Oz.

    The cost to carry data is no where near the profit earned by instituting the caps and the charges for going over. Surely in a natural market the price would be lower, reflecting the cost and allowing for a profit, but not an obscene profit.

    For a 1st world country having the caps they do is pretty pathetic. There is little excuse for it, and "people in the know" should do something about it.

    --
    If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
    1. Re:How about removing the faux caps? by the_raptor · · Score: 4, Informative

      >There is little excuse for it

      Yeah there is, most traffic is to American sites and we have a limited international cable infrastructure which mostly relies on 2nd and 3rd parties in the link. On my last ISP I had connection problems on occasion because either SingTel or the US ISP at the landing in America would fuck with some settings. With the NBN I believe most of the international links and peering will be handled by NBNCo which should have more bargaining power then the small ISP's currently do (the big ISP's in Australia generally prefer fucking customers over).

      --

      ========
      CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
    2. Re:How about removing the faux caps? by hairyfish · · Score: 3, Funny

      For a 1st world country having the caps they do is pretty pathetic. There is little excuse for it, and "people in the know" should do something about it.

      I live in Australia. My current plan is $50/month for 30Mb/1Mb cable with a 50GB cap. I'm not sure what other people do with their internet, but even watching unlimited porn I've only ever gone over this cap once in the many years I've had it, and this was when I downloaded a ton of movies I never watched while watching a ton of porn. I really don't get why the average Joe needs more than this?

  8. FDN by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    In France, the oldest provider still in activity (FDN = French Data Network) is an non-profit association (and now an association of association). FDN was created in 1992. Maybe they can learn a lot from this long experience in assiociative service providing and they can probably collaborate to have something like a cross-borders ISP.

    http://www.fdn.fr/
    http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/FDN

  9. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  10. Boston's had one for 15 years by drwho · · Score: 2

    yes, since the late 90s, there has been a non-profit ISP for 'people with clue' in the Cambridge/Boston area. Things went well for a while, when we were able to get T1 circuits at a discount, colocation, peering, various telco services. But as T1s die, much of the value proposition is dying as well. Doing more VPN stuff these days. But we have way more IP space than we need. We're just a dozen low key people.