How do i start my own ISP?
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Garp said:
I think you'd still need something to differentiate yourself in the market.
Also a note, whatever else, don't use plesk, I've spent the last few days beating some sense into our installation and their support is hopeless (non existant/lost in the serberian wilderness)
bigredshark said:
From a support perspective I've had no issues with plesk.. provided its running on Linux. Windows one seems to routinely be a PITA.
I do like Cpanel that my webhosts use, so far as a general user, I couldn't say what its like as an admin; although I do recall some odd php5 / mysql5 issues a while back.
Webmin looks to be okay, but the initial programming was sloppy and you do need to make sure its kept up to date.
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Setting up an Internet Service Provider? As others have already said, forget about it. The market is already saturated, the potential profit margins aren't worth it and the general public have a tendency to go with companies they know well, or see adverts for all over the place. Even if you had a fantastic service with 110% uptime, negative response times for support queries and a free computer for every customer, you're unlikely to get a foothold in the market. Becoming an ISP means working with the general public, and no one likes that.
Of course, all of that is assuming you have the knowledge, expertise and pockets deep enough to start up a venture. You're going to need a lot of equipment, transit/peering and, most likely, a load of expensive software. You'll need branding, advertising, deals with hardware suppliers (ADSL filters, modems, support agreements etc.), people to man the customer support desk and drive around the country installing equipment for hapless users. You're talking millions of pounds of up-front investment, and it will take years (if at all) to recoup that investment and start turning a profit. You don't set up an ISP as a hobby (unless we're talking about a VISP, but as has already been stated that route is not even worth the time taken to research it).
Web hosting and managed services are another matter. You could sign up for a reseller account with any number of existing hosts and start turning a profit in a matter of months. There's plenty of potential to grow; you can advance on to a dedicated server, then two, three... and before you know it you'll have a private suite at Redbus Harbour Exchange. However, the market is still saturated (you will need to work hard, and find a niche to get customers), you will still need to provide support, deal with hapless customers and will need to take financial leaps of faith (investing in a dedicated server, for instance). Better still would be managed services, as Garp mentioned. £7k/year is a hell of a lot of money for a dedicated server, operating system and support - and that's precisely the point. Businesses will be willing to pay for piece of mind (although I digress, if you're thinking of moving into managed services you will need to know your stuff from back-to-front, be willing to pitch services to businesses etc. That is the whole point of managed services, after all!), and fortunately there is still money to be made there.
You can start a web hosting operation as a hobby (not a managed hosting company, obviously), but remember that your customers will not be treating it as such. Just whatever you do, don't go into game server hosting. Rude, demanding teenagers with unrealistic requests funded by their parents credit cards are not fun
Of course, all of that is assuming you have the knowledge, expertise and pockets deep enough to start up a venture. You're going to need a lot of equipment, transit/peering and, most likely, a load of expensive software. You'll need branding, advertising, deals with hardware suppliers (ADSL filters, modems, support agreements etc.), people to man the customer support desk and drive around the country installing equipment for hapless users. You're talking millions of pounds of up-front investment, and it will take years (if at all) to recoup that investment and start turning a profit. You don't set up an ISP as a hobby (unless we're talking about a VISP, but as has already been stated that route is not even worth the time taken to research it).
Web hosting and managed services are another matter. You could sign up for a reseller account with any number of existing hosts and start turning a profit in a matter of months. There's plenty of potential to grow; you can advance on to a dedicated server, then two, three... and before you know it you'll have a private suite at Redbus Harbour Exchange. However, the market is still saturated (you will need to work hard, and find a niche to get customers), you will still need to provide support, deal with hapless customers and will need to take financial leaps of faith (investing in a dedicated server, for instance). Better still would be managed services, as Garp mentioned. £7k/year is a hell of a lot of money for a dedicated server, operating system and support - and that's precisely the point. Businesses will be willing to pay for piece of mind (although I digress, if you're thinking of moving into managed services you will need to know your stuff from back-to-front, be willing to pitch services to businesses etc. That is the whole point of managed services, after all!), and fortunately there is still money to be made there.
You can start a web hosting operation as a hobby (not a managed hosting company, obviously), but remember that your customers will not be treating it as such. Just whatever you do, don't go into game server hosting. Rude, demanding teenagers with unrealistic requests funded by their parents credit cards are not fun
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Garp said:
Plesk is fine providing you don't actually want to do anything complex with it (in which case you need to know linux very well), the update functions are very dodgy and the migration manager doesn't really work properley. I tried to escalate a support call last monday and they called me back on thursday (their excuse - 'oh, i haven't checked my voicemail for a few day'), considering the amount we pay them it's simply rubbish service.
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Al Vallario said:Setting up an Internet Service Provider? As others have already said, forget about it. The market is already saturated, the potential profit margins aren't worth it and the general public have a tendency to go with companies they know well, or see adverts for all over the place. Even if you had a fantastic service with 110% uptime, negative response times for support queries and a free computer for every customer, you're unlikely to get a foothold in the market. Becoming an ISP means working with the general public, and no one likes that.
Of course, all of that is assuming you have the knowledge, expertise and pockets deep enough to start up a venture. You're going to need a lot of equipment, transit/peering and, most likely, a load of expensive software. You'll need branding, advertising, deals with hardware suppliers (ADSL filters, modems, support agreements etc.), people to man the customer support desk and drive around the country installing equipment for hapless users. You're talking millions of pounds of up-front investment, and it will take years (if at all) to recoup that investment and start turning a profit. You don't set up an ISP as a hobby (unless we're talking about a VISP, but as has already been stated that route is not even worth the time taken to research it).
Web hosting and managed services are another matter. You could sign up for a reseller account with any number of existing hosts and start turning a profit in a matter of months. There's plenty of potential to grow; you can advance on to a dedicated server, then two, three... and before you know it you'll have a private suite at Redbus Harbour Exchange. However, the market is still saturated (you will need to work hard, and find a niche to get customers), you will still need to provide support, deal with hapless customers and will need to take financial leaps of faith (investing in a dedicated server, for instance). Better still would be managed services, as Garp mentioned. £7k/year is a hell of a lot of money for a dedicated server, operating system and support - and that's precisely the point. Businesses will be willing to pay for piece of mind (although I digress, if you're thinking of moving into managed services you will need to know your stuff from back-to-front, be willing to pitch services to businesses etc. That is the whole point of managed services, after all!), and fortunately there is still money to be made there.
You can start a web hosting operation as a hobby (not a managed hosting company, obviously), but remember that your customers will not be treating it as such. Just whatever you do, don't go into game server hosting. Rude, demanding teenagers with unrealistic requests funded by their parents credit cards are not fun
you're assuming an ISP targeted at commercial customers rather than business, one of our recent aquisitions did well for a small ISP by selling L2 connect services between london datacenters (among other services obviously - transit, hosting etc..). They were making a reasonable profit from it all told.
Web hosting and managed services are an interesting one, we provide managed services to a very big property group (millions a year we're talking) and it's quite an overhead to support and requires huge amoutns of infrastructure.
But web hosting still seems to be dominated by lots of little companies, fasthosts are the big player but they play on cheap mainly and nobody trusts them very much. It's probably possible to make something here if you can work out a marketing strategy
the other area that interests me in hosted storage (probably based on iSCSI), if you could work out e-provisioning for this it's a new and relatively uncrowded market with a lot of potential. You'd need to *really* know your stuff though. By nature it'd also be expensive for bandwidth bills.
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Noxis said:
This guy speaks the truth. There realy isnt much else to discuss.
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Curiosityx said:
see my last post, this is only true for the consumer market (a low margin one you'd be mad to target anyway)
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The Deuce said:hehehe is this thread for real
i want to start a new bank...can anyone help me
it'd help if you had a constructive comment, or knew something about the market. his question is perfectly valid and there are a great many very small ISPs about.
bigredshark said:
it'd help if you had a constructive comment, or knew something about the market. his question is perfectly valid and there are a great many very small ISPs about.
my comment is constructive, CRITICISM...i have my own business so before you judge people THINK if it isnt too hard
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The Deuce said:my comment is constructive, CRITICISM...i have my own business so before you judge people THINK if it isnt too hard
your comment was merely undirected sarcasm, and it was also wrong.
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the best ISPs are run by non technical people, the director isn't doing support or designing the network core, he running the business.
you're original comment attempted to compare it to starting up in a industry dominated by big companies which is also highly regulated. neither of which apply to the ISP industry.
whereas there is little scope in the consumer market, the business and hosting market is still brilliant ground for small ISPs, there are a large number of successful ones around.
running a virtual ISP isn't technically demanding and the hardest part is marketing, given a good business plan and a bit of sensibility i see no reason why someone couldn't get capital.
you're original comment attempted to compare it to starting up in a industry dominated by big companies which is also highly regulated. neither of which apply to the ISP industry.
whereas there is little scope in the consumer market, the business and hosting market is still brilliant ground for small ISPs, there are a large number of successful ones around.
running a virtual ISP isn't technically demanding and the hardest part is marketing, given a good business plan and a bit of sensibility i see no reason why someone couldn't get capital.
You say you have your own business? Well wasn't there some point before you started that you needed advice? I'm thinking yes as everyone who has their own business had to start somewhere. So instead of practically laughing in this guys face, maybe give him some credit or maybe some advice from personal experience?