Question on long range wireless

vict0r

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 11, 2005
Messages
1,027
Good day folks,

The island i am living on is a mess when it comes to communication. There are only 2 cellphone communication providers.
The are only offering their 4g plans which are very expensive + limited data. So if you are anywhere waiting on your turn and you go on youtube to chill a little and watch some videos, your data will get eaten like crazy!

So here is my plan.

First of all, this island is 171.4 sq miles ... which is NOTHING compared to where most of you guys live.
Is there any technology that can be used, either by placing some towers or whatever in some key locations in order to provide unlimited wifi access and charge a small sum compared to those telecommunication companies?

I mean something like the old days when we had dialup and you had to enter your username and password for it to dial in and get you on the network. Well now all you have to do wherever you are is search for the network, find it, enter your password and get on the unlimited data access wifi.

Pardon my english or my way of explaining myself but I don't know which terms to use. Is this something that is available? Is it even possible?

Any insight is highly appreciated, as this might be a lucrative business + helping the people out by avoiding bullshit prices.

Thank you very much!
V.
 
For something like that you would need MANY access points and it'd be expensive for the infrastructure.

What you are looking for is a WISP. Basically you mount a sector antennae on a tower or tall structure and on the home/business you mount a directional antennae pointing to that tower. You can many houses on one sector/radio.

www.ubnt.com is one of the, if not top manugacturer of devices for this type of setup.
 
I would think to do what you want to do properly would require many millions of dollars in initial investment cost. Certainly more difficult than putting up a hand full of towers with wifi APs on them. What is your background and how deep are your pockets?

Also, I am super jealous that you live in Curacao. I've been to Aruba and it was paradise.
 
thank you for the quick reply guys.

and yes, Aruba is nice too.. you should have come to Curaçao also mate!..

Well lets say if someone is interested in investing..what do you call many millions? more than 10million USD ?

It has to be something that you as costumer pays very low, you get your password and you login...it doesnt have to be like holyshitcow 100mbit/sec .. i'd say something like 4mbit-6mbit per person either on their phone,tablet,laptop or whatever! as long as they can stream and kill the waitingtime without having to worry with the data..since it'll be a fix amount for costumer per month.

is this something achievable or is it like "wtf is he talking about?"
 
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The population of Curaçao is only 150k, so if you were able to charge $10/mo to 10% of the population, your revenues would be $1,800,000/yr. So if your initial investment is $10m, you are talking more than 5 years to pay off the initial equipment NOT INCLUDING the ongoing costs of bandwidth and running a business.

If you are serious about giving this a go, I would try to get in contact with company (probably from North America or Europe) that specializes in municipal scale wifi installations. They would be able to give you a more accurate quote on initial rollout costs. From there you would have to figure out what your monthly costs would be and how much revenue would be required to make the system viable. It wouldn't surprise me if someone had already done this and discovered that it wasn't economically viable, which is why it hasn't happened yet.
 
my man, you are smart.

yeah, the $10m was just to throw something... because i have no idea!

thanks!
 
You should take a look at the forums over at www.ubnt.com, and this link: http://wiki.ubnt.com/Building_a_wisp

I doubt you would need anywhere near $10M, but it depends on where you live, what the terrain is like, and what the regulations are. If there are any schools or municipal buildings on the island, you may be able to strike a deal with them. We have given free access to town offices/businesses in exchange for rights to place equipment on their properties. For starters, you're going to want to see how much your backbone is going to cost. Are you going to utilize a connection that already exists on the island, or bring in your own from the mainland via a wireless backhaul. Its often cheaper and easier to use a wireless backhaul from the mainland, as there is typically more competition and better infrastructure there. Here is an example of a company doing that: http://www.gwi.net/policy/blog/three-ring-binder-fixed-wireless-to-speed-up-broadband-on-islesboro/

You're going to want to start slow, find a group of customers that are willing to shell out a substantial amount of cash, and figure out how to get access to that point. Then branch out from there. Raising $10M in capital and trying to roll out access to the whole area at once, without regard for customer need, is how wireless companies go broke.
 
thank you wizdum

your name does go well with you:)

thanks a lot.. ima go read a lil on them.
 
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