Can someone break it down for me. Like the reach of the wifi or do i need to connect cables to everyone
Unless you go 100percent wireless service, youll need cabling or leases to use existing cable, poletop routers, client equipment, central networking, security, persons to run it, billing, customer support, youll need a backbone to a major carrier, your hosted dns. Then there are builing rents, taxes, business licenses, lawyer fees.
Expect lawsuits from existing carriers.
Then sign up enough people to cover it all.
If you have a bunch of copper, an excavator, loads of free time, and you have somewhere to connect upstream, it shouldn’t cost much.
Ideally you want to use fiber, though. The fiber itself is actually cheaper than the copper, but the equipment is magnitudes more expensive:
- OTDR
- Fusion splicer
- Termination tools
- Necessary switching and routing hardware
Sidenote: 25 years ago it was my dream to start a MAN - metropolitan area network. Think a LAN party covering an entire city. I even planned out the IP schema, routing system, and loads of other things for the city I lived in at that time. Too bad I was a broke NEET.
Well, costs differ, but with specialised equipment & fast track city bureaucracy (with the specialised equipment) they could be much less then they are.
Especially in rural areas one of them giant subsoilers could do miles a day next to the road & just fix things as they break.
This isn’t better than a proper maintainable shaft with working access points etc, but for a sort of community ISP it would do.
But proper networking equipment is hella expensive too, you need significant throughput, low lag, reliable service, redundancies, proper space, etc.… the real question would be why isn’t core infrastructure considered a pubic good & in hands of the gov (they get access to the data anyway). For profit internet access can get really tricky really fast.
You need to define what you want
“Set up an ISP” is meaningless
I could probably set one up tomorrow, that doesn’t mean anyone is going to pay me money or experience my (apparently meaningfully different from the competition) product
I’d have to first set up (or pay someone to set up) a load of infrastructure to handle the actual connections, but also all the customer support and initial sales stuff to get people signed up.
Assuming you figure all that out you just need to convince a load of people to go from their currently “no complaints” life to a new unknown
Remembering we’re in 2026 where a large percentage of people’s jobs happen via the internet
Basically, money isn’t really the problem
Walk into an existing ISP, wave a gun around and say HEY! HEY! I’m the captain now.
