On Sun, Jul 08, 2007 at 03:34:02PM +0300, David Smith wrote: > (...) perhaps now is a time to consider an alternative possibility - > a community ISP.
I like the idea; I wouldn't actively participate myself because I don't live in Israel, but if it is n00b-friendly enough, I'd push my family to it :-) > One business model would be to function as a cooperative (...). The > open source development concepts could also be implemented (...) > Does anybody know of an existing project elsewhere of a similar > nature ? I've had a chat or two with some people from French Data Networks (http://www.fdn.fr/). They started such activities back when it was easy (Internet access meant dial-up) and then recently stepped up to ADSL. They have said multiple times they'd be happy to help a similar organisation get started, but the areas where they can help are not the hardest ones. Roughly, if you need someone to teach you BGP, they'll do it. But they can't negotiate a contract with Bezeq for access to the "last mile" copper loop for you. - they are not a cooperative, but a "no-profit association". - size: barely more than 100 members - they are *significantly* more expensive than cheapest commercial ADSL - roughly, they managed to get an acceptable contract for ADSL-ATM *only* because a prominent member works for their upstream ADSL-ATM provider. Not because he pulled any "favours", but because he knew which salesperson to bug to get things going, things like that. - main cost: ADSL-ATM. It costs more than IP transit to the other end of the world. I know (personally or through fame) people who have tried to do something similar in the Netherlands: - either they started a long time ago (back when easy because dialup), went commercial, became huge because/or were bought out by a big telco company. (The story of XS4ALL is a nice one there... Started as a hacker's club that understood they would get kicked out from every ISP if they were not their own ISP, grew to commercial provider, got bought out by incumbent telco but under an agreement that guarantees their independence (the *first* thing they did as newly acquired daughter company is sue their parent to refuse to send them customer marketing data!). Somewhere along the way they became the *biggest* ISP in the Netherlands.) - or the best offers they got had clauses like "must connect 200 new phone subscribers every year, or big financial penalties". So totally unacceptable, and never started. You hav > > David > > ================================================================= > To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with > the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command > echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
