On Fri, 09 Jan 2009 11:59:44 +0000, The Natural Philosopher wrote:

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.

IIRC our backhaul (5Mbps symmetrical with allowed bursts to 10Mbps no
useage limits) costs 10k+/year for 300 customers. £33/year/customer or two
months subs at our top rate. Trouble is most of our subs are at £8/month
not £18. After the backhaul cost there is about £30k to pay for the full
time admin and network maintenace staff (one of each) plus network
maintenance and all the other on going costs like site/office rental,
power, marketing, not forgetting a sinking fund to upgrade/replace the
network infrastructure after say 5 years. Though with fibre that might not
be so pressing, our network is now 6/7 years old based on WiFi and is
creaking both from increased traffic levels and equipment failure due to
age.

Of course if you have people volunteer to do the admin/network maintenance
for free from home that helps an awful lot but possibly with quite an
impact if the network dies and your volunteer is busy doing their paid day
job.

The chances are you would get grant funding for the capital outlay
associated with digging holes, installing servers, and possibly the first
12 months backhaul costs. What you won't get funding for is all those
ongoing costs, like the backhaul after the 1st 12 months...

Yes, a "village ISP" is viable, there are plenty of places with such self
help systems in place but the economics can be a bit border line.

--
Cheers
Dave.