How do i start my own ISP?

regulus

regulus

regulus

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I hope Im posting this in the right section. If not, please move. :)

Firstly, Im looking to get a steady and reliable income since Im emigrating to czech republic in about 2-3 years time and my command of the language breaks down after asking for 2 beers. Ive played with a few ideas but none can be done without me being in UK all the time. It will only need to be a small income since the missus and I have everything and everything paid for.
With our savings we can easily survive for 10 years without working but I will need to do something eventually.

So, I know its a long shot, but does anyone know how to go about setting up your own ISP? Costs involved, regulations etc etc. I´ve googled around but can only seem to find advice for doing this in the States.

thanks guys!
 
you need to start looking into becoming a VISP for an alrdy exisiting ISP, There are ISP's out there that will give you a nice front end, online provisioning, order tracking, whoosh testing etc if you can say give them a certain number of connections per month (the amount of connections per month depend on what ISP)

thats where I would start
 
ruffneck said:
you need to start looking into becoming a VISP for an alrdy exisiting ISP, There are ISP's out there that will give you a nice front end, online provisioning, order tracking, whoosh testing etc if you can say give them a certain number of connections per month (the amount of connections per month depend on what ISP)

thats where I would start
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I was just reading up on that! Im starting this up with someone else. Now we just have to figure out a way to offset the running costs until it starts to make money. will probably try and market it abroad in smaller countries where internet arent so widespread.

As always, you guys have been excellent for advice.
 
I think you'd be entering an already saturated market. The ISP industry has already evolved to the point where the little man cant enter the market.

You may as well try to open a supermarket chain and compete with Tesco's. To be honest while I admire your ambition the very fact that you have to ask how to start a ISP means that you are not qualified to run one which would mean no customers.

Running a VISP is next to useless as there is no profit in it. The company you are reselling can ALWAYS undercut you - which means all other ISPs can as well. If you try to sell to businesses they are going to want the big ISPs that will still be around in 12 months. If you sell to the home market be prepared to need a telephone support department for all the questions that may seem easy to the likes who frequent OCUK, but I have worked in 1stline support at an ISP and you get questions ranging from "how do I connect my scanner" to designing a small home office network.

I've worked in the industry for 5 years now and can assure you there are better ways to make money on the internet.

Unless you have several Cisco qualifications (or at least extensive experiance with them) know networking and internet topology like the back of your hand, know about routing and peering and transit..... modem racks, dsl home gateways, DNS, Radius, Web, Mail...... its not a "quick fix" and would cost a HELL of a lot to get started.
 
HangTime said:
Are you talking about setting up an ISP in .uk or .cz?
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Does this matter? It would be really hard anyway because if he had the knowledge to set up his own isp he wouldnt be asking. Because hes asking he doesn't have the knowledge to even start. I suggest in maybe just a few more qualifications first ? then see .. ;)
 
i virtual isp set up is really your only bet, setting up an isp (depends on what you market it to) is complex and expensive. it demands real experience and even relatively small ISPs take a lot of capital expenditure, turnover of 10 million after 5 years running is possible, but that company had 15 million of up front capital, it'll be a fair while before it repays investment and you'll never raise that kind of capital.

EDIT: experience wise, i'd say the minimum would be a CCNP and 5 years + experience in the industry with another *good* ISP.
 
How about setting up a hosting and reselling business? I would presume they would be a lot easier?
 
Amp34 said:
How about setting up a hosting and reselling business? I would presume they would be a lot easier?
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Again, you can either be a reseller or require upfront capital and experience. Even with knowledge, funding, experience and a lot of luck you're still competing in a massively saturated market.

If you want an easy, hassle free money spinner, I'm afraid this isn't it.
 
regulus said:
will probably try and market it abroad in smaller countries where internet arent so widespread.
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So you are now looking to be a multinational (V)ISP with all the problems of language barriers, no industry experience, and no idea about the market here or in any of the smaller countries you are thinking of operating in ? All this is to be a part time thing just to keep you occupied in your spare time while not in the UK ? You've either got a very large set of spherical brass things down your trousers and a whole wealth of knowledge (and pocket) that you haven't eluded to or you're day dreaming.

The VISP service market is amazingly difficult to make money in at this point in the UK/US, the mom and pop cable co's are still making it in the US but it's only a matter of time, they are continually getting squeezed, the golden age of every man and his dog making a few quid from Y2k consultancy, site design, hosting, visp services, government training grants and 'other' on line industry is unfortunately over unless you operate in a niche market or can adapt and change with and ahead of the industry.

The industry you are talking about operating in is totally saturated in the UK with ISP's let alone VISP's - a quick check on the likes of adsl guide reveals hundreds I and the majority of other people on here have never heard of. If NTL/TW are making roughly £3.33 a month on average from each punter on a possible four services then you are very unlikely to be able to make even as much as that on one service you re-sell, your cost is dictated by your competitor's - who's service you re-sell.

Due to the small margin's involved they have to have tens of thousands of customers to generate a positive cash flow and eventually profit, you'd need hundred's if not thousands to make it worth while, that's assuming you aren't paying daft ammounts out for card transaction charges, technical help calls - i don't think you'll be doing them in house but if you are then you need to factor in costs for lines, people, equipment etc). the list goes on but i'll not.

I'm sorry to shoot you down in flames but the fact that you have to ask the question in here of all places makes it clear you probably aren't ready to do this sort of thing yet.
 
Amp34 said:
How about setting up a hosting and reselling business? I would presume they would be a lot easier?
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That idea is a hell of a lot easier than starting out as an ISP. The market is too well established to make it easy to be entered unless you've got serious market presense already being a known brand.

Starting out as a hosting business is a little easier to manage, but it will take some work to get an initial market built up. Off the top of my head we (the ISP I work for) sell managed server hosting for about £7k a year. That would get you a brand new leased server, with support for the OS reducing virtually any need for you to get at the server. Using something like Cpanel, webmin or plesk would enable you to manage the server without having to know much about Apache. I wouldn't be able to guess off the top of my head how many sites you could host on a server for that package, but you'd get a resonable number on it. Even just a hundred sites at that cost would only take £5 a month to cover your costs. I do know we have a number of customers that have chosen that kind of route as an easy way of doing web hosting themselves.

Another vague possibility would be to run a games server of some description that you could sell to gaming clans, or a Teamspeak style server.
 
Garp said:
That idea is a hell of a lot easier than starting out as an ISP. The market is too well established to make it easy to be entered unless you've got serious market presense already being a known brand.

Starting out as a hosting business is a little easier to manage, but it will take some work to get an initial market built up. Off the top of my head we (the ISP I work for) sell managed server hosting for about £7k a year. That would get you a brand new leased server, with support for the OS reducing virtually any need for you to get at the server. Using something like Cpanel, webmin or plesk would enable you to manage the server without having to know much about Apache. I wouldn't be able to guess off the top of my head how many sites you could host on a server for that package, but you'd get a resonable number on it. Even just a hundred sites at that cost would only take £5 a month to cover your costs. I do know we have a number of customers that have chosen that kind of route as an easy way of doing web hosting themselves.

Another vague possibility would be to run a games server of some description that you could sell to gaming clans, or a Teamspeak style server.
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Can I ask who you work for? Just curious, I'm surprised how many 'ISP people' there are on this forum.
 
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