Starting up a WiMAX ISP

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1

Looking for advice...

I live in central / western New York state (think villages and farms). There are a good number of hills but no mountains. I have solid LAN experience and experience facing a smaller network to
the Internet. I was network admin for a medium size enterprise network (I.e. design and implementation including LAN, Internet connectivity, VPN, routers, DNS, mail, webservers, physical servers, etc). I would like to build a local ISP that can serve high speed internet access to the more rural areas whose only option is dial up access, well away from the CO. It would also be nice to compete with the cable company and DSL for customers in the villages.

I have been researching information for design / implementation of WiMAX, equipment suppliers, contractors to help with installation of tower equipment and acquiring tower space, but have been coming up empty handed.

What resources are available to help me bridge the gap from where I am to what I need to know to get started and what specific technologies would you recommend I bone up on? I know beyond the WiMAX specific information, I will probably need to cozy up to BGP, maybe MPLS for traffic between the core and towers? Also do you have any suggestions on where I can find suppliers and service vendors in this field? Networks are my passion and am willing to dig in, but I need some direction.

Thanks for you help an insight.

Charles Bronson

2

Recommend you look at www.wispa.org (Wireless Internet Service Providers
Association). Probably have loads of information and resources to get
you pointed in the right direction...

3

Charles,
That is not an easy journey. The radio part it itself is a dedicated
department usually in a wireless operator(planning, coverage etc).
Plus - how are you going to sustain this from buget perspective.
Wimax is not future proof technology. All major wimax vendors have
droped their support (alcatel - to name just one.).

br
Ovidiu

4

I live in central / western New York state (think villages and farms).

You might want to start by talking to Lightlink in Ithaca, which has
been doing fixed wireless for years.

R's,
John

5

Firstly, there's a lot of "WiMAX specific information" to learn, so don't skimp on that. Beyond the basics of the protocol, you need to be familiar with RF engineering, installation and troubleshooting, along with FCC rules and regs. I'm a WiFi engineer by day, and I've found that my understanding of it has greatly eased my introduction to WiMAX, so you may want to check out the CWNA primer if you're unfamiliar with things like EIRP, dB math and/or modulation/coding schemes. As for equipment suppliers, we're currently evaluating a product from PureWave. Two other vendors would be Alvarion and Huawei. As for towers, you may want to look at collapsible winch-based towers or similiar, if finding a climber in the sticks proves difficult.

Running an ISP is a little different from an enterprise net. You need to think about things like billing, CALEA compliance, your support model, and the basics of running a business. WISP margins tend to be rather low, so you may find yourself wearing many hats. If you're not comfortable running a business, you can try finding a local entrepreneur, preferably who can fund you, to run that side of the house.

The core network of your WISP should be as simple as possible while remaining robust. Think carefully about your needs and how to elegantly address them. This is critical to financial success.

If you're in an environment with hills and nice lines of sight to many customers, you really should look at WiFi-based PTMP systems instead. They offer you a significant throughput enhancement at much-reduced cost, but do require LOS. Ubiquiti Networks makes some very low-cost gear that works amazingly, and they have some knowledgeable people in their forums. Alvarion also has an offering in this sector (BreezeAccess VL) but it's older, rather cumbersome and quite 'spensive. You are more susceptible to interference with these systems, but you also have more channels to choose from.

Finally, if you're out in the sticks and dialup's really the only option, you need to know about the Rural Utilities Service - USDA.gov/rus/

Adam Henson
adam@nasa.gov

6

I have received a few responses along this line and figured I would pick one and answer all of them.

To determine if it is financial sustainable, I will take the information on design and implementation to create a configuration. This will let me establish the fixed and recurring costs required to set up the core and then incremental costs (fixed hardware and recurring leases) per broadcast area. Then I can calculate how many customers I will need per broadcast area to bring up a broadcast site. This will give me general startup costs and let me build a customer count / biling rate table. Once I have those numbers I can beat the pavement and find out what people will pay for my service and then I will know based on my table if there is a snowball's chance in hell of this working.

Charles Bronson

7

That is a good idea. I would definitely be interested in working with the right people to extend their service as opposed to reinventing the wheel unless I don't like the wheel they invented.

Charles Bronson

8

+ I have those numbers I can beat the pavement and find out what people
will pay for my service and then I will know based on my table if there
is a snowball's chance in hell of this working.

Don't forget that you're competing against rural ILECs that drink
deeply from the well of USF funding. My local telco (Trumansburg)
called me today to point out that I was paying $76/mo for a package of
phone, 3Mb/382Kb DSL, voice mail and caller ID, but if I added in
national long distance and a few other features, they'd give me the
package rate of $66. They offer 3MB DSL all over their service area,
even those long long rural runs. You think you can compete with that?

Lightlink does OK against Verizon in Ithaca in the relatively dense
area at the foot of Cayuga Lake, but with, as other people have noted,
the owners doing nearly all the work.

R's,
John

9

John Levine wrote:

package rate of $66. They offer 3MB DSL all over their service area,
even those long long rural runs. You think you can compete with that?

Of course what they offer over those "long long rural runs" and what they can actually provide are two different things. DSL performance decreases with distance rather dramatically..

10

Of course what they offer over those "long long rural runs" and what they can actually provide are two different things. DSL performance decreases with distance rather dramatically..

That's what I thought, but my friend out on the sheep farm in the next county says he gets 3Mb just like I do in the village three blocks from the CO. (Yes, he knows what he's talking about.) They must spend a lot on repeaters and concentrators.

R's,
John

11

> Of course what they offer over those "long long rural runs" and what they

can

> actually provide are two different things. DSL performance decreases with
> distance rather dramatically..

That's what I thought, but my friend out on the sheep farm in the next
county says he gets 3Mb just like I do in the village three blocks from
the CO. (Yes, he knows what he's talking about.) They must spend a lot
on repeaters and concentrators.

R's,
John

There is a great deal of relevant experience here:

12

Hi,

Based on what the markets currently offers and what your potential customers
need, you can figure out the packages that you could to sell (Internet,
voip, vpn, guaranteed bandwidth...). This would give you the resources that
should be considered per customer. It would also give you a hint to select
the CPE (wifi, POTS, firewall...)

Then, it is necessary to locate, physically the area with the greatest
potential of getting customers. This would give an idea of where should the
base stations be located, how many customers would be aggregated at one Base
Station (having in mind how many customers will be connected concurrently)
and how much downlink traffic is to be expected.

In case you go for a model where the ASN-GW is centralized, all the traffic
has to go from each base station to the ASN-GW. The backhauling could be
done using Ethernet RF point-to-point link, re-using the mast where the
Wimax antenna is.

The ASN site, aggregates all the backhaul links into a switch, which then
connects to the ASN-GW (BRAS like). This is where the AAA, (DHCP), DNS, NTP,
NMS/EMS are also located.

In my opinion, the critical point really resides on the radio part (license,
authorization, legal complains, interferences...).

Jean-Christophe VARAILLON