Building a Wireless ISP Network... The Opportunity

In the US, most of the people have one or more broadband access services to choose from - variations of DSL from multiple vendors and cable. That is if you're in a metropolitan area. For more rural locations your choices are limited.....if you have any at all. Therein lies an opportunity for those willing to pursue it.

In the rural areas of the country, the selection is limited. Satellite is available to anyone (at high cost), but between dial up and T1 there are no options for many residents. Satellite suffers from latency, making it unsuitable for VoIP and some other real time Internet services. Some applications that should not be sensitive to latency (email, Web forms) will perform poorly or fail due to the increased packet time.

The traditional carriers (RBOC) and resellers face a cost issue in bringing broadband service to outlying areas. Without a concentration of users the per user cost at published rates causes either a poor or negative margin. The way cost accounting is done in larger corporations makes the business case worse for a large carrier. Cost allocations between departments for such things as floor space, personnel, and backend support end up as added costs rather than leverage opportunities. Traditional wired service will not reach outlying residents unless mandated by law, and the trend is against this happening in the near future.

So the opportunity is open for a business offering Internet broadband access service to outlying residents.

Therein lies a tremendous opportunity.

Now....just how do you go about taking advantage of this opportunity, filling a need, and building a wireless ISP network?

To assist you with working through the planning and execution of this effort here are some insights and resources you should consider:

* Business Continuity Planning - This isn't the technical side of the business, the backup systems, redundant pathing, fail-over and restore, or alternate location stuff. Here you're looking at subjects such as Legal Structure, Personnel Insurance, Asset Insurance, and Process and Procedure.

* Revenue and Profit - Covers where and how to create your income including installation, basic monthly service, custom access service, volume or corporate pricing, other services, business partnerships, usage based service, civic service, and tower leasing (or you could build and provide your own).

* Security Issues - There's much to consider in this arena. Don't overlook it.

* Bandwidth issues - The access line to your tower(s) is likely the critical factor to success. Whether it's a T1 or a DS3 line. First off, it probably represents your single largest operational cost. Next, it determines the maximum quality of service you can provide.

Quotes you receive for bandwidth will probably be very different in terms of cost and performance guarantees, and should cover Performance Standards, Service Availability, Mean Time to Respond, Mean Time to Repair, Latency, Packet Loss, and Jitter. To help you search for the best match provider for your bandwidth requirements....I recommend utilizing the services of an unbiased independent broker by submitting a RFQ request to DS3-Bandwidth.com.

Here are some additional resources that may be of benefit to those developing a WISP....or thinking of it.

StartAWisp.com

WISP Centric

There's also an excellent forum for discussion of ideas and issues between WISP owners and potential developers at DSLReports.com.

Final advice.....think strategically taking care to consider the business areas hilighted above. Do make use of an independent unbiased broker for the bandwidth decsion. Also, apply the resources shared here as well as any others discovered from your own research.

Michael is the owner of FreedomFire Communications....including Business-VoIP-Solution.com. Michael also authors Broadband Nation where you're always welcome to drop in and catch up on the latest BroadBand news, tips, insights, and ramblings for the masses.

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The Dublin Port Tunnel

The Dublin Port Tunnel is the first project of its kind in Ireland. While there is a tunnel in cork, The Jack Lynch Tunnel, the Dublin Port Tunnel is on an entirely different scale. There is a budget for the tunnel of 752 million euros, and it is estimated by the completion date, over 7million man hours will have been spent building the tunnel. The project is one of the biggest being currently worked on in Europe.

The tunnel is aimed to bring heavy good vehicles from the M50/M1 to the port, and remove them from the roads in and around the city. There are two tunnels being constructed, one will take traffic in to the port (south bound) while the other will take traffic out of the port (north bound). The total distance of the tunnel is 5.7 kilometres and it is estimated that the journey will only take 6 minuets.

Safety is always a major concern on projects like this, and the planners have been careful to include a number of safety features such as pedestrian paths between the tunnels and emergency phones every 250 meters. There are massive fans which will improve the air quality in the tunnel and remove smoke if a fire did erupt. There is also a gradual lighting effect at the exits so that drivers won't be blinded driving from dark to light.

Among the criticisms for the tunnel is the fact that it are that it is not high enough to take super trucks, those which are higher than the normal container trucks. There is also criticism during the building of the tunnel because of rising costs and due to noise levels from the huge boring machines which were working under many residential areas. Other arguments against the tunnel include, more roads lead to more traffic and there were less expensive options available to the government to link the port with the M50.

The benefits that the tunnel will bring to Dublin according to Dublin City Council are the removal of HGV from the roads around Dublin, and the knock on effects of better environments and better traffic movement, the reduced travel time for HGV travelling to and from the port and safer roads. The tunnel is expected to open during the summer of 2006, and only then will the benefits be able to be truly measured.

Ronan Menton is the webmaster for a number of travel related websites and has been for some time in Ireland, associated with search engine optimisation in the Irish travel industry. He spends two months a year in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and now sees it as his second home. Among the many sites he is currently working on are the following: Car Rental in Ireland and International Car Rentals.com.

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