I recently, well pre-vacation anyways, recieved some emails from some folks asking for more information on WiMAX setup and how to create an ISP based around this concept.
As I previously stated there are a few requirements to getting your own little wireless broadband provider up and running.
The joy of the current wireless revolution is that the big players (Rogers, Bell, Telus in Canada) have not truly established themselves so there is still room for rural players and smaller city based operations.
First off you need to move quickly the big telcos/cablecos are not sitting still. They are planning massive country wide rollouts but they are focussing on the big metropolitan areas (rightly so) as they have the most penatration and ability to cover large numbers of people with equivalent tower counts. For instance, two towers in Vancouver would cover much more potential subscribers than two towers here in Whitehorse.
Yesterday, or the day before, I received an email from a friendly fellow asking: How can I start a WiMAX ISP
Now, assuming this isn't clever Turing level Spam that I am responding to, I figured I would slam together a business plan for this person in 300 words or less as Venture Capitalists are busy people with money to spend.
Read this article then read this article before moving on.
While at the Yukon IT Conference there was an interesting panel on VoIP and how this is affecting the unique telecommunications structure in Yukon (btw, you just say "Yukon" not "the Yukon", it sounds strange but there you go). They discussed the fact that competition is not allowed up here and the general direction to be taken with VoIP (911 issues, cost savings, location independence, the usual VoIP discussion).
I couldn't help but feel that they were missing the point. VoIP is not a big deal! Most Telco's are already using VoIP to move data around once it hits their switch. It translates into massive cost and infrastructure savings so it makes good business sense. The part that I believe they are having difficulty accepting is that other companies, higher up the value chain, can simply write some software and then take advantage of their infrastructure with zero cost to digging the trenches for it. I am digressing here, but the general gist I am conveying is that we are moving to a point in society where the we don't care about the method used to link to the internet or their bundled services, we just want a fast, responsive pipe.
