Launching a new ISP ? Business scheme and planning .

[Nikhil Soni]

Hi, First of all the topic seems to be inappropriate , well I know but at the time of writing this post I was not able to figure out what it should be called ! Okay , Lets come to the point .I met a person few days back. He was saying that he provides Leased Lines(Airtel,BSNL etc) and Raw Bandwidth(may be wrong term).He told me that we can launch a new ISP or may be a local ISP which will broadcast or share the bandwidth to the user/ subscribers. In brief, he told me that we can become an ISP (like tikona or whatever) by distributing the available bandwidth to the user on wireless like Wi-max and Tikona Wi-Bro. He also told me that it does not require any special efforts or qualification to do the same. According to him, we can purchase certain bandwidth say 20MBPS (Mega BYTE/sec) at a price X/month and we can make our own rental plans like 1mbps or more (mega bit/sec) at Y/month . We only need to pay the rental of purchased bandwidth and nothing else. The plans can be made as per user need and we have the right to allocate bandwidth/FUP and speed required.The bill which the user will play as rental will come to our pocket. As per him, since the communication medium is Wireless, we would require equipment like Transmitting antennas, cpe, routers etc which may cost from 2 lacs or above (he was not sure). The setup can be implemented in a small area. Overall I thought the idea will be great, as in my area(Jabalpur) their is no good ISP. We only have Airtel,BSNL and Tikona(50% Coverage) as a broadband providers and rest are 3G. Now what I want to ask is :-Que. 1 : Is this legal/legit business ?Que. 2 : If it is legit, what will be the estimated cost of equipment ?Que. 3 : Is their any maintenance required which may require more investment ? Que. 4 : Average turnover per month if say we have 500 Subscribers ? Kindly revert with your precious comments. I am very new in this field and require knowledge.P.S. - Currently I am pursuing BE with EC Stream(Final Year) and looking for some job/business opportunity in the communication field. If you guys know some, then please share your views ! Pardon grammatical mistakes if any . Thanks and Regards,Nikhil

 

[Weir]

I am also customer of such kind of ISP which you mention...and I am getting full 2 mbps speed at 900 Rs per month without any FUP
the owner rent 45Mb bandwidth from airtel and they install some of kind CPE or repeater on my terrace and I am getting smooth connection since then..and what your frnd is talking about is infact real
hope others give answer to your question

 

[Nikhil Soni]

I am also customer of such kind of ISP which you mention...and I am getting full 2 mbps speed at 900 Rs per month without any FUP
the owner rent 45Mb bandwidth from airtel and they install some of kind CPE or repeater on my terrace and I am getting smooth connection since then..and what your frnd is talking about is infact real
hope others give answer to your question

Thanks for reply ! Could you tell me the procedure by asking your ISP ? I mean installation cost, bandwidth rent etc .

 

[rj27]

Almost all of the information is correct I can confirm. Regarding investment the leased line is gonna take the thick chunk of it and if you are thinking of putting up your own tower that's some expense though you may have a chat with the existing network towers etc for renting in the initial stage.

Very good Antennae, routers and customer cpes today are not that significantly costly today. Ubiquity makes one of the best performance WISP devices which are pretty low budget. Still the initial investment will surely be quite a few lakhs all in all but mind you if bsnl is the only option in the area the uptake is gonna be really fast. Only one advice just don't compromise on the main Access Point in the area and put a robust one as the overall experience depends 80% on it and 20% on the client side cpe.

Only thing I am not quite sure is that the licensing thing is still there or not. I think you'll need to do some sort ISP license sharing with either the upstream bandwidth provider who charges some fee. Not quite clear about the legal thing here.

 

[Nikhil Soni]

Almost all of the information is correct I can confirm. Regarding investment the leased line is gonna take the thick chunk of it and if you are thinking of putting up your own tower that's some expense though you may have a chat with the existing network towers etc for renting in the initial stage.

Very good Antennae, routers and customer cpes today are not that significantly costly today. Ubiquity makes one of the best performance WISP devices which are pretty low budget. Still the initial investment will surely be quite a few lakhs all in all but mind you if bsnl is the only option in the area the uptake is gonna be really fast. Only one advice just don't compromise on the main Access Point in the area and put a robust one as the overall experience depends 80% on it and 20% on the client side cpe.

Only thing I am not quite sure is that the licensing thing is still there or not. I think you'll need to do some sort ISP license sharing with either the upstream bandwidth provider who charges some fee. Not quite clear about the legal thing here.

I appreciate your deep and honest review. I guess the licensing is not required in my case(I will ask further). It will be great if somehow I get the average investment (including all devices) required. Is their any way where we can find the cost of actual instruments ?

 

[rj27]

Although I don't own any ISP though I try to gather as much as knowledge as I can despite my non technical background (I wanna pursue this venture somewhere down the line just not right now due to other priorities).
1.) A main Access Point CPE on your tower- 6000-7000rs (ref - Ubiquity Rocket M2 or M5 depending upon your network whether you want to serve in 2.4 GHz or 5.8 GHz band). Cities have more spectrum noise due to condense population and high number of standard wifi routers operating in 2.4 GHz hence 5 GHz is better. But if there are no other ISP in the area it'll be allright since customer are going to have a rooftop CPE anyway.
2.) These AP-CPE don't transmit on their on own but they need an antenna. Now these are of 2 types - Omni Directional or Sectoral antenna (90/120 degree). A single omni directional antenna can cover an area of 3-5 Kms easily depending upon the output power but serious ISPs focused on performance delivery prefer 3 sector antenna covering different direction. These sector antenna cost around 10000 rs / antenna roughly same to an omni directional antenna. But the sectors gives you far superior blanket coverage plus a very long range ~ 12-15 kms round coverage with a higher end customer cpe like NanoBridge. Hence target area is larger.
3.) Consumer CPEs - Now these varies a lot in terms of cost since they are available from as low as 1000-1500 bucks for smaller distance to 5000-6000 rs for far distant customers.
Apart from that an authentication server of your own or you may take services of ISP solution providers for billing and quota management functions and traffic logging for legal purpose.
Investment for decent power backup is a must among all. Best would be if you can get the backhaul bandwidth on wire but wireless backhaul would also do.
Now the most important part is you need to research quite a bit more before you venture into it. Since your friend is into all this he might guide you further so read and get into the details with him.
Check this for an idea of equipment prices - http://www.kc-india.com/Site/ They are n number of device providers so these vary depending upon your preference as even cheaper solutions are available in the market.

 

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[Sushubh]

What about the license thingy?

 

[rj27]

That what I am myself not quite sure about but I believe you are required to either have your own license or share it with the upstream provider on a negotiated fee.

 

[Sushubh]

Righto.

 

[Nikhil Soni]

Thanks for the prompt response !
I will try to gather more information from other sources as well. The license thing needs to be focused. Do you know how much it will cost ? and is it on rental/subscription base or purchase base ?

 

[Snehil]

Hey bro did you find out any information on ISP licence ?
Information will be appreciated .
Thanks

 

[wavenet]

Hey bro did you find out any information on ISP licence ?
Information will be appreciated .
Thanks

Hello There! All out there for your kind information you can't provide any kind of Telecom/ISP related services in India, without acquiring license for this. Doing this is strictly illegal and you could easily caught in a big trouble. So don't go for this ISP business blindly without knowing Telecom service related business ethics. Thanks.

 

[Snehil]

LOL :rofl::rofl:

 

[madhusudhan7]

Better option would probably be to get into an agreement with companies like Railwire, Metronet etc [if available] who would provide all the infrastructure and all you have to do is manage the local area connections - run fiber from your office to the customer premises. *This is what most cable operators in Bangalore do

*P.S: I'm mostly relating to my knowledge while dealing with out local cable operators. Further & in depth research is required

 

[Soumendra Jena]

Yes ISP license is must. Dont even think without it. It's strictly illegal. We have just applied for it and hope it reaches quickly: