Ask About Setting Up a Community ISP

The Ruby Ranch Internet Cooperative (RRIC) is one of the best-known member-owned ISPs around. It provides DSL service to the Ruby Ranch neighborhood in Summit County, Colorado. Carl Oppedahl, the RRIC "main man," has agreed to answer Slashdot questions about the possibilities and pitfalls of setting up something similar in other areas. Please read the RRIC FAQs before posting a question so that you don't ask something Carl has already answered a million times. Otherwise, the usual Slashdot interview rules apply: One question per post, we'll email Carl 10 of the highest-moderated questions, and post his answers as soon as he gets them back to us.

Slashdotting?

How did you website (which I assume is located on your ISP) handle the slashdotting you just recieved? Didn't expect that, did ya??

What is the first step?

What is the first step in creating a rural co-op?

Opposition from the Big Players

Dear Mr. Oppedahl:

Your ISP reminds me much of a credit union, which is essentially a nonprofit, member-owned bank. I recall reading about large, commercial banks lobbying to prevent credit unions from gaining some of the same priviledges enjoyed by regular banks.

In this age of utility monopoly abuse, do you have any concerns about any of the large, commercial telecom interests (ie Qwest) lobbying the government to make it difficult, if not impossible to set up or maintain ISPs similar to yours? Thank you.

How transferrable are the lessons?

It seems that a lot of the problems/issues related specifically to the Colorado Public Utilities Board and their laws.

What items/issues do you feel are universal to any broadband/ISP startup? [Licensing, incorporation, etc.]

Where would one go for the state/county specific issues for each particular ISP?

FAQ

The FAQ will probably be slashdotted real soon, so here's the list of questions, at least:

Frequently asked questions about the Coop

Why all this struggle with Qwest?
Why didn't you simply use a wireless solution instead of renting subloops from Qwest?
Why didn't you simply bury your own cable instead of renting subloops from Qwest?
Why don't you simply use a broadband satellite connection?
Why are the modem speeds provided on Qwest phone lines so slow? And why won't Qwest provide DSL?
Infrastructure
What equipment are you using?
What did it cost?
System design issues
Why are you using SDSL? Why are you not using line sharing?
Exactly what DSL technology are you using? What DSL chip are you using?
What line speeds do subscribers get? Do they get a dedicated IP address? Can they operate servers?
Why did you place the DSLAM at the cross-connect box rather than at the SLC (remote terminal)?
How exactly does your temperature monitor work?
Implementation issues
What exactly do you order from Qwest to hook up a new subscriber?
What quality of lines has Qwest provided?
How reliable is your point-to-point microwave link?
How do you monitor your system?
What do you suggest your subscribers use for lightning protection?
Financial planning issues
What were your startup costs?
What are the non-recurring costs associated with adding a subscriber?
What are your recurring costs?
What do you charge your subscribers to sign up?
What will you charge your subscribers per month?
How many subscribers did you need to decide to launch service?
Diagrams and maps
May we see a system diagram?
May we see a neighborhood map?
May we see a map showing the neighborhood and the telco central office?
Other Internet Coops and local broadband efforts
Are there other Internet Coops?
How have others set up local broadband systems?
From the first concept to launch
What was the time line?

Biggest Challenge

What is the most difficult part about starting a community ISP? Is it getting people interested, obtaining finances, finding people with the technical knowledge required to set up and maintain the system, licencing requirements, infrastructure, or something else? More importantly, how did you overcome this problem?

Expensive

$60/month seems relatively expensive for a 206Kbps SDSL connection when compared to other cable/satellite/DSL offerings. While this may provide users with greater upstream speeds, most users would benefit more from the faster downstream connections from the aforementioned providers than a better upstream rate.

What advantages does the co-op model offer to subscribers over a traditional ISP that would justify the added expense? How is the subscriber experience different from what would be expected from a large national provider?

Local Bandwidth Hogs?

Since you pay directly for your traffic, and you've said that you pay from 75-450$ per month (quite a stretch!) have you considered local caching of sites like yahoo, slashdot, etc to save on bandwidth? Also, since you do monitor your network, have you been in a situation where you've had to ask a subscriber to "please use less bandwidth." If not -- if you came to a point where a single household was putting undue strain on the network -- what would the Co-op do?

Vendor advice?

What advice would you give a fledgling ISP regarding dealing with vendors?

Getting people intrested.....

Dear Sir,
I have thought many times about this in my area. Only problem is most people are not intrested as it's too much work or too much money. Most of my local community does not even know what DSL is about. They have never had a broadband connect before. How were you able to unite the local community and show them the bennifits of doing this?

Prospects for open space wireless

When I was in Westcliffe, CO on vacation, I loved the environment so much I considered quitting my job and starting my own business, providing internet access for the acres of sparse plots of land connected only by dirt roads. However, it seemed fairly unfeasible -- since there's no power grid to fuel wireless repeaters and no public roads or conduits to piggyback -- so it was back to the grindstone for me.

How were you able to overcome the conditional sensitivity of high speed data in a rugged area with little or no public utilities? More importantly, how were you able to offset infrastructure costs for such a risky and inherently profitless venture -- did you receive any grants or did you simply float loans?

Cutting costs?

In today's tight economy, what are some of the ways you've cut costs?

Re:Competition.

this isn't informative it is a repeat of the FAQs. Modders, please read the FAQs before modding posts up to make sure we get original questions.

This is NOT A FLAIMBAIT!!! I just want to make sure that He gets good questions.

Understanding the pains of leadership...

Did the co-op ever encounter a point in the planning stage where they wanted to toss everything in the air and just say screw it? If so, what pulled you out of your misery and kept you moving towards your goal?

How do you handle the legal issues.

There has been a lot of talk in setting up similar systems (wired and wireless) in Northern Virginia* one of the topics that always comes up during the discussions is "How do you handle issues like people using the line to hack other systems or spamming or sending threats or (insert bad thing here) ?"


*Despite the fact that I live 10 minutes from WorldCom and AOL headquaters my ONLY choices for broadband are IDSL [speakeasy.net] (which I chose) or a T1 (which I'm willing to pay for on my own)!

Feds wanna take a look

Since the Fedral government may now put a 'tap' on internet connectivity without a warrent, ISPs are required to let feds put taps on the ISP's system. As member of a co-op would you be contacted if the feds put a tap on the ISP? Who gets to know when the feds come in?

Co-ops for low income communities

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like Ruby Ranch is a fairly well-to-do area that can support the costs of running an ISP. Do you think it is possible for community groups in low income areas to run co-op ISPs? Any advice pro or con?

Barriers to co-ops

Are there legal or regulatory barriers to setting up an ISP co-op that you feel should be addressed by legislation?

Disciplining "Customers"

As mentioned in your FAQ, if someone hogs too much bandwidth, you'll charge that user for the bandwidth they use. What do you do in the case of complaints against a user for spam, pornography, or other less than desirable uses? Since it's a co-op and the costs are shared, what about the responsibility? What if the ISP was targeted as a spam host or if one of the people under your ISP was serving illegal MP3s or something more sinister like child pornography? Does the entire Co-op suffer or are you able to target and remove the offending person (and avoid any legal costs that might be brought against the ISP)?

Equipment Location

IIRC, the DSLAM and other relevant gear was stored in a barn. How do you keep the animals from messing with it?

Local Phone service

Since the SDSL equipment you are using does not use the voice bandwidth, have you thought of getting a PBX and supplying telephone service? You could at least have intercom service between subscribers

Cooperatives inherently better utilities?

I'm served by a telecom cooperative in my community (Souris River Telecom [srt.com] in Minot, ND). I couldn't be happier: local and long-distance phone service is very inexpensive, they've set up an all-digital cellular network in their coverage area that's $20/month for basically unlimited talk-time, and I get 1 megabit (bothways) DSL with a static IP and no limits on servers I set up for $40/month. Oh, and here's the kicker: when I call them with a question or for service I get a real, live person on the other end and am routed to someone who can actually help me the first time!

I used to live in an area that was served by an electric co-op. It was the same situation with great service, great value, and they were constantly pushing at the edges of the state-of-the-art. The investor-owned electric utility that serves me now couldn't care less about me as a person, my needs, or future plans for my home or business. They just want to see the check at the end of the month and they will keep operating the way the do (utility wise if not business wise) until they are forced to change by regulatory changes.

So to get to my question: as advantageous to the customer as the cooperative principles [coop.org] are, why aren't more utilities set up this way?

What advantages to being user owned?

I work for a small ISP that went through all the same issues as you. We had to become a CLEC, install our own DSLAM in a Qwest central office, and are currently going through IMA. So what I'm saying is your internet setup looks totally independent of whether it's an Internet Coop or a for profit company. Is there a technology advantage to making it a coop, or is it purely financial?

Different approaches?

Based on the FAQ, it looks like you considered a lot of different possible options, and really did your homework. Are there any aspects of the project that weren't perhaps as optimal as you'd like, that you would have done differently? (Not counting things not under your control, like having to contend with Qwest.)