The Natural Philosopher coughed up some electrons that declared:

Dave Liquorice wrote:
I'm confident that money will be available for community
based enterprises to install fibre or WiMax type systems. Money won't be
available (as always) to keep such a system running, the on going cost of
the backhaul could be crippling, income streams other than the end user
subscriptions are pretty much essential.


Why would backhaul be anymore crippling than for anyone else?

Ive dne te costings for all this, and becoming a 'village ISP' is viable
at the ongoing level. Its the cost of customer acquisition and fibre
laying that kills you.

What happened to mesh WIFI deployment?

I've experimented with meshing out in the fields and it works pretty well
and the nodes are cheap (like 50-100 quid plus any waterproof housing as
needed).

If you've got a fairly compact village, you might be able to serve a few
hundred houses with comparatively few nodes and one decent uplink.

That at least reduces the harder part of the implementation problem to "get
a decent uplink" and with a 100 or more customers, there's more of a chance
of being able to get something off BT. The mesh is totally DIY-able by a
couple of clueful people and you'd only need a few customers to volunteer
to house and supply the nodes depending on geography. The more adventurous
might be able to get permission to affix the nodes to lampposts including
taking a supply.

It's easy to show a proof of concept with a couple of nodes to persuade the
Parish Council to get behind it, should their political abilities be
advantageous.

Wonder if any village has done this?

I've heard of someone doing a DIY medium range radio link down a welsh
mountain to a mate who was in range of ADSL. Involved a couple of woks (yes
woks) as signal directors.

Cheers

Tim