In article ,
Tim S wrote:
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).

And that's the crux of the proble. It was costing us £200+ to do each
install and the punters would not pay that. You need people with insurance
and ladders - specially if you're going to drill into peoples houses. We
used local sky installers and they weren't cheap. Do it yourself, crack
some external render/plasterwork and you've suddenly got something more
to wory about than just putting a cable through the wall...

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.

And one p2p'er will kill the lot.

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.

We got just over 100 people (out of 1800 houses) to put their names on
a bit of paper in one town. This was after running an 18-month funded
project to raise awareness and research the effects of broadband in a
rural community. Then barely 50 committed to the install of £99, which
was less than half what it was really costing. Our first customers
cheque bounced on us. Then trying to get £25 a month out of them was
like pulling swords out of stone )-:

On paper, 50 customers at £25 looks good, but the running costs (without
staff) were close to £1000 a month - to buy the backhaul, pay for space
on the masts and farmers, etc.)

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?

Do yourself a favour and don't do it.

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.

You don't need woks - I recently did help a friend in Wales as it happens,
to get a link to his neighbour about a mile away - good line of sight at
roof-top level using older, but good outdoor kit with flat-plate antennae.
(smartBridges kit)

The longest wi-fi link we ran was 6.5 miles in Cornwall using a standard
12db omni at the access point and and an 18db grid parabolic antennae
at the client end. Good line of sight though - client was uphill from
the base.

Gordon