In article ,
The Natural Philosopher wrote:
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.

I did this for real some years back. Supported 3 communities in
Devon & Cornwall via Wi-Fi. 2 companies went bust trying to make it
work. (fortunately I just staff/contractor) I only kept it going with
a grant before BT enabled the exchanges...

It really wasn't financially viable. Probably still isn't. Our biggest
hit was the installation because we did it properly with outdoor kit,
proper line of sight and so on. We had to pay farmers, and others for
the use of their roof-tops to put the kit on, then getting in a 10Mb
backhaul feed wasn't cheap. (Neither was the kit to send that signal
17.5Km via a 5.8Ghz link to the local head ends)

You can bodge it with mesh, indoor antennae and so on, but it won't be
reliable with no guarantees of service, limited bandwidth, and so on.

Ah well, those were the days. Money up-front if I ever had to do it again.

Gordon