Bring high speed access to a new

15 posts
I would appreciate the wise members of this forum opinions on a question I have. What exactly would it take to bring high speed access to a foreign country, more specifically a developing third world caribbean nation. One with both a large phone and cable line infrastructure already in place. What sort of hardware would I need? Just some recommendations on how to proceed would be appreciated immensely. Dont get me wrong though, I've got lots of knowledge in me, I just want diff views and opinions on the matter. You know what they say, 1 million heads are better than one:)
So, uhh, what exactly are you trying to do? Get cable internet access? a T1 for a business? Cable internet requires big infrastructure changes at the cable co. level, and I doubt their equipemnt is that advanced. What island is it, exactly?
Im actually trying to figure out what it will take to bring DSL access to the island nation in question. It has an extensive phone line infrastructure, and a smaller cable line infrastructure, so DSL would have more potential. Is there a lot of hardware involved(beyond servers and routers). Basically, I want to offer high speed DSL access to customers. If the phone lines in the US can support voice and digital signals at once, what stops the phone lines in any other country??
How big is the island. Would it fit in the back of a Volkswagon?

If the above requirements are met, I can help you.

Here's the few facts that I know.

DSL only works over certain distances. USWest for example won't offer us DSL because we're outside their 18000 foot range. From one of their router thingy's. There's only a 3 mile radius AFAIK...depending on how fast the DSL is going to be (that was for 256 up and down).

The other thing is that it requires phone lines capable of digital transfers (I believe...). This being the case, it might require you to upgrade the phone lines in the area that you are wishing to provide with service. IIRC, the way it works is by transfering data along the phone lines, but in a way that isn't noticed in the analog transfer (voice). The other requirements I know nothing of (how to create a backbone connected to the internet at massively high speeds so that you can dibby out the bandwidth to your customers..).

Third world solutions are typically leapfrogging the wire issue and going broadcast.

Sattelite is a good second choice.

On top of the range limitation I think that DSL requires that the phone line not be multiplexed or shared between the end user and the central office. I'd contact a company like Cisco to find more.

The other option to considers is wireless. You can look at either proprietary equipment from a company like Wilan or even standard off the shelf 802.11b equipment from Lucent.

Which Island is it ?

Now come on guys I cant give away what island it is, its confidential for now during the planning stages. Just know its the second or third(not sure) most developed island in the caribbean. The actual physical area I want to serve is no bigger than a US city, with not nearly as many people as a US city. So wireless solutions would work you think?? It would be able to supply a large area with bandwith? I guess the answer to my original question is far more complex than I thought. Guys, I basically have a problem and I want to fix it and make some $$ in the process. The problem is, I have people in this island nation who currently are relegated to 28.8 connection. Everyone knows that is horrendous, so I want to form an ISP and provide high speed access. The govt owns the phone lines so I would need to present them with a helluva business plan. Im still in the preliminary stages(obviously). All of your responses are highly appreciated, even though Im a Mac fan and this is a PC site:) The "island in the back of the VW "response was pretty funny I must say.
You may want to look at Pinnacle Communications - "case studies" and "spread spectrum".

They sell a RF network bridge system (2.4G spread spectrum, built-in RF packet encryption, guaranteed packet delivery, up to 15 mile range / radius) which can work in a radial structure - one omnidirectional antenna at the ISP central site, and individual directional antennas at customer's sites. For 10Mbps, the price per node is around $2,000.00, including antennas, feeder, and network interface, depending on the options. If the trafic is light, you could service 50-100 customers per central antenna, then upgrade the central site with multiple antennas, to increase capacity (for a 4x capacity increase, you need 4x equipment at the central site).

The price may be OK, by the time you consider the alternatives, specially that you have no monthly fees to worry about - just one time installation fee (plus service contract ). You can get up an running on the cheap (below $10K) and add nodes as needed. You can also look into a mixed approach, where you have one antenna for a whole building, plus ADSL or cheap 10Mbps plastic fiber (10BaseFX) for a couple of buildings nearby.

Considering that you'll probably start with less then 10Mbps link to the rest of the world, and that you can move from a shared hub all the way to a point to point dedicated connection simply by replacing the central antenna, when and if you need to upgrade, it may be a the best solution for what you described.

PS: If this works for you, could you please arrange for a vacation package discount ? .

[This message was edited by Luc on May 15, 2000 at 15:06.]

Luc, thats great advice you gave me. Wireless WANs are a promising method of getting high speed access to the areas in question. I would not have to deal with anyone that way cause im not using anyone's lines!! I will own the network completely. Pinnacle's link is quite informative. Please, if you can, provide me with more info and any links that will help. Im working on that vacation package for ya:)
I would suggest contacting Pinnacle directly. Their sales people are quite knowledgeable, and you are not the first one to ask for such a setup.

I would go with 2.4G spread spectrum, as it is the cheapest, and has the longest range. You can also get 23G equipment, which costs more, has a smaller range, needs a license (at least in US), but has significantly smaller antennas then 2.4G stuff (and this is the major issue with RF equipment - size and installation of antennas!).

You may want to ask for prices on both 10 and 11 Mbps equipment; the 11Mbps has been around longer, and it may be cheaper (and 10Mbps stuff was not on their web site a couple of weeks ago).

I would advise stearing away from 2Mbps equipment - it is getting obsolete, while 45 and 100 Mbps equipment is much more expensive. Looking at their price list, 11Mbps looks like the sweet point, with 20Mbps (10Mbps full duplex) as the best alternative for a high bandwidth point to point setup.

I would need a lot more info before I can elaborate further - you are better off writting down all the data and send it to Pinnacle sales, and follow up with a phone call. They will ask a lot of questions you may not have answers for at this time: number of nodes, traffic patterns, visibility (you want to have clear path between the central tower and any remote node), timeframe for deployment, etc. but they will get you a list price with no issues, and you can work from it to wrap up a business plan.

You will need some local help with setting up the antennas - look for the guys installing and servicing cell phone towers, or local ham operators - it is not as simple as it seems, and you need to be aware of a lot of local regulations, wind patterns, access rights for service, etc. You may also need help to import the stuff into your country. RF equipment generally needs licenses and approvals, even when it operates over a free and unlicensed RF band, such as 2.4G ("free and unlicensed" only applies to US, your mileage may vary greatly).

Once you have your costs more or less figured out, you need to find out how to connect to the rest of the world. This may be the most expensive part of your budget. I know of ISPs servicing hundreds of 28.8 customers off a single 384K satelite link (true, not in US!). Even if you sell your customers "up to 10Mbps internet connectivity", you do not need to have more then a single T1 (1.5 Mbps) or even 56K link to start rolling, and you can increase the bandwidth as revenues allow. You need local fast servers mirroring some content, news, and mail, even a caching proxi, to cut down on traffic. You may also want to take your ideea and run it by one of existing ISPs, maybe you can work together - setting everything up when you have no prior ISP experience can drive even a very sound business plan into the ground. Good luck!

Some more comments:

Not all users will use that 11Mbps at all times; you can get them better service then they currently have, even if you have 50+ of them on at the same time. 200Kbps per user is NOT a bad deal, when you currently have 28Kbps, specially since your burst rate can go much higher. As long as they do web surfing, you are OK. Now, if you have 10 users sucking binary newgroups from your local server, performance may drop, although Pinnacle bridges have a lot of intelligence built into them - they are NOT your normal off the shelf bridge. They do things like Ethernet packet assemby/dissassembly into larger RF packets, have their own error correction and RF packet retransmit protocol, deep buffers, and other neat stuff. I do not know if you can program them directly to throttle output, but you can allways attach your local servers using a throttled data link, to avoid overloading the RF link with local content. Your gateway/router at the central station, where most likeley you will have a much narrower data pipe to the rest of the world, will take care about the fairness in service issue, and degrade the service gracefully for the internet data stream (outside you local net).

Do not worry about overloading the 10Mbps RF link due to collisions! Even under heavy use, RF collisions will not matter much, as the bridge at the central site will pick up one request at a time and service it. This is one of the nice things with spread spectrum - you have virtual independent data streams (you may have the very same spread spectrum phone as your neighbour, but you cannot dial on his dime or listen to his conversations). On the main data path, you cannot have collisions - all radial nodes listen only to the main station, as they cannot see each other (directional antennas, remember?). Because of this, data output from the central station to the nodes is close to the maximum possible. On the return path, you may have "collisions", but due to spread spectrum, the central station may pick and chose which request to listen to at any given time, even if they hit its omnidirectional antenna at the same time.

You may want to look at a full duplex 11Mbps station for the main ISP location, and half duplex for the nodes, to maximize available bandwidth.

Pinnacle also sells a "remote node" package where you have your own PC, and the kit only has the antenna, feeder, and RF card, which is cheaper then an external bridge. You save about $500.00 USD, but have to provide your own PC.

You may also want to look at NAT boxes - Linksys BEFR41 for example; they may be included as part of a Internet Access Package you offer to business, next to the kits from Pinnacle (antenna, feeder, RF amplifiers, Ethernet bridge). Pinnacle also has software to do NAT and routing functions, but I think that BEFR41 is cheaper and easier to work with.

Great info so far Luc. Im definately going to look further into Pinnacles solutions. Do you work for them or something:) When I gather more info about Pinnacle I will definately bounce it off this forum!! Some of the things you are talking about im not quite up to speed on but I can fix that. Also youre right that I have no ISP experience, maybe aligning with an established ISP is a good idea. But then I AM willing to take the financial risk if the perceived returns are good. If I can get contracts from businesses that are willing to sign up for the service it would help. I currently reside in the US, south Florida to be more specific.
Nope, I do not work for them, but I do sell networking solutions, and Pinnacle is my preferred vendor for RF
Start a petition. If you got like 1000 names, there's no doubt in my mind that your cable provider wouldn't start their own cable service. Of course they would have to support 2 way.. to make it feasible.
15 posts