Re: How do I become a tiny ISP?

["James W. Kilgore" <eMail@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tom,

Evan's post just sparked a thought about this.  I don't have your original post
to refer to, but if I recall there was something about the cost of local ISP in
the equation.  I think that there was also an issue of reliability.

Funny that you should mention that because just yesterday I had to deal with a
client that had a remote site that used AOL as an ISP and for some reason they
were all messed up and could not connect.

Not a good thing when you are trying to perform your month end closing.

But I have to beg the question, if they can get an ISP dialup account for
$19/month, and you have to charge back the cost of a commercial phone line at
~$45/month they can sign up with two ISP's (redundant backup) for less money
than it would cost you for the phone lines alone much less the equipment.

By the time that you became a "tiny ISP" and made no profit, just passed along
the cost, they could have service for 3 or 4 ISPs.  But then again, that is
factoring in that your time has no value.  And we both know that that's not
true! ;)

Just because you can doesn't mean that you should.  Stay focused on the business
that you are in.  From what I gather, being an ISP is not the business that you
are in.

J. Kilgore
"Opinions for free and worth every cent"