How a Group of Rural Washington Neighbors Created Their Own Internet Service (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader writes with a story that might warm the hearts of anyone just outside the service area of a decent internet provider: Faced with a local ISP that couldn't provide modern broadband, Orcas Island residents designed their own network and built it themselves. The nonprofit Doe Bay Internet Users Association (DBIUA), founded by [friends Chris Brems and Chris Sutton], and a few friends, now provide Internet service to a portion of the island. It's a wireless network with radios installed on trees and houses in the Doe Bay portion of Orcas Island. Those radios get signals from radios on top of a water tower, which in turn receive a signal from a microwave tower across the water in Mount Vernon, Washington.

Comments

Re:Answer: They spent a lot of money

[93 Escort Wagon]

Orcas Island is one of Washington State's San Juan islands. The "residents" tend to be rich people visiting their vacation homes. The actual original residents eventually will all be priced out of the place.

In any case, this isn't a poor farming community - they can afford this sort of large expenditure.

Re:Lightning?

[Anonymous Coward]

You have obviously not been to the area. When there is a lightening bolt, it makes the evening news - extremely rare...

Re:Answer: They spent a lot of money

[Kjella]

In any case, this isn't a poor farming community - they can afford this sort of large expenditure.

Honestly it doesn't seem the expenses were that great, it seems the primary investment is one man who did a whole lot of legwork to rent a microwave link, find relay points, install equipment, do network supervision and maintenance and so on for free. The numbers are pretty much all there, initial investment was $25k that they need to pay back in 36 months. Break-even was 25 users, subtract 25 @ $150 = $3750 in sign-up fee = $21250 / 36 = ~$600 month in down payment. Running income = 25 @ $75/mo = $1875 - $900 in microwave rental - $600 in down payments = $375/mo for running the wireless grid and misc. other expenses = ~$0 in wages. And now they're paying it down faster so they can lower prices, with 50 users / $900/mo + a slightly bigger grid it might drop to $40/mo after the investment cost is paid off in less than two years. That's not expensive, it's super cheap for rural broadband.

For comparison, we're paying ~$500 extra per household on top of of the ordinary ~$300 sign-up fee and ~$100 monthly fee for the privilege of getting a fiber rollout with Internet/TV at our cabin here in Norway. On the bright side, after the first twelve months we don't have to use it more than 4 months a year, but it's still ~$2000 for year one and ~$400/year just for the summer. And they're not planning to lower prices, they're planning to recoup the rest of the roll-out costs, pay wages and turn a nice profit over the next 20-30 years. But it's not like in the city where you can connect 100 people in an apartment building at the time, distances are huge and customers few so cost per subscriber will be far, far more expensive so I doubt that we're a cash cow. Anyway to get back on topic, what this community has that others lack is one very skilled volunteer working for free, on a commercial basis it would be way different.