Launch HN: Necto (YC W18) – ISP Starter Kit
We started our own ISP here in the underserved San Francisco markets of Bayview and Portola, with more neighborhoods to come. If you live in SF, we'd love to be your ISP (https://joinnecto.com). If you're interested in starting an ISP, we're looking for an initial batch of 5 operators. You can learn more about that here: https://nectolab.io .
Our product is a combination of a few important requirements for running an ISP effectively: a centralized Network Operations Center (NOC), a Operational Support System (OSS) to manage the subscribers and get visibility into issues, and an Operator's Handbook that covers the how-to's of running an ISP (both technically and our advice on the business side). Our NOC will handle things like BGP, routing, reachability, hardware issues, upstream connectivity, and distribution provisioning. The OSS supports managing subscribers, diagnosing common issues, and performing installations. Our handbook provides a list Standard Operating Procedures for day-to-day management of the ISP and, in combination with our community of ISP operators, strategies on how to effectively launch and grow an ISP.
We charge an initial setup fee and an ongoing percentage of revenue. The initial setup fee covers us designing your initial network, sourcing your backbone connection, and the cost of the core routing stack. The ongoing percentage of revenue aligns our incentives with our operators and covers monitoring, the NOC, and ongoing enhancements for the software and community. The exact numbers depend on the scale of the network the operators are building.
We're staunch supporters of Net Neutrality and increasing broadband penetration without sacrificing privacy. We don't sell personal information or throttle traffic (and our operators won't either). We believe that the future is in highly localized ISPs competing on service quality. We're excited to tackle this problem because we've had to deal with poor internet service before, and we now know that you can make a great business out of providing better quality access. Our backgrounds are in enterprise automation technology and the home services industry (air conditioning, plumbing, electric). We're happy to answer as many questions about any of this as we can! If you're at all considering starting an ISP in your neighborhood after reading this, let us know at nectolab.io and include your HN username!
Thanks, Ben & Adam
84 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 170 ms ] threadFull disclosure: co-founder of a Seattle-based startup that was invited into the Microsoft Ventures Accelerator and found it an incredibly valuable experience
[0] http://fortune.com/2015/11/16/microsoft-cheap-internet/
I won't mince words: you're asking customers to outsource the core pieces of their business (netops, backhaul, billing) that they should be competent in, which puts them in a precarious position if you exhaust your runway, decide to move on to another venture, or are acquired by a less-than-ideal org.
Full disclosure: Muncipal/coop broadband proponent.
Also, big shout out to Graham (the author of startyourownisp.com). We met, and he's super knowledgeable. I encourage anyone interested to read his guide, it's very good. We don't see our offerings as directly competitive, and share a common goal of increasing connectivity.
An alternative way to look at this is it's a "white label franchise" business where someone not steeped in the technology can do what they know best, likely acquiring and keeping customers. I don't know if it will work, but I'm interested to see.
> Full disclosure: Muncipal/coop broadband proponent.
Something like this could probably accelerate municipal, coop, and piggyback (e.g. local water district or other small, independent utility) to take advantage of local infrastructure without having to acquire skills in a completely new domain.
Worst case scenario, the core gets gutted and replaced.
I see that your own ISP relies on PPPoE... is that a decision you intend to rely on for the necto lab customers (other ISPs) or was that something you had to do specifically in your own case? Have you seen any downsides to that? I know as a consumer PPPoE is kind of a pain in the butt.
Nice catch on the PPPoE. Our gear didn't support Option 82 at the time, but now that it does, we're switching to DHCP. PPPoE is definitely a pain in the butt.
Is this still bay area only or are you ready to expand to other areas?
Quick question regarding your business model. Do you intend to charge forever, or is there any option for your customers to get out after the setup if they decide to grow their business with their own resources?
The really hard part is last-mile connectivity. You are either on someone elses lines (cable, DSL, etc), dealing with NIMBYs to bury your own lines, or working around line of site to do wireless. It isn't clear that you've solved this problem (or even from your website what you are using for last mile).
thanks again for sharing your knowledge.
I'm surprised there are not mini boring bots. Maybe in a few years.
That said, I wouldn't say it's "easy." You still need to track your customers through their full lifecycle with you, you still need to provision/audit both locally and in concert with CLECs and you still need to monitor, backup and keep everything up.
Moreover, if you plan to scale out in any way, you need to be principled, lest you end up with enormous flat files filled with bespoke configs that no-one even understands.
Just digging into that piece, there are a lot of decisions. Burstable or dedicated? Why are they billing based on 95th percentile? How much bandwidth should I budget per subscriber? The typical uplink quote we've seen has 6 different tables with like 80 different prices on it. If you've bought it before, you know what the tradeoffs are. If you haven't, that's a steep hill to climb just for step 1 of the process.
We deploy fixed wireless here in SF, mainly 60GHz and 5.8GHz. They require line of sight, but something like Baicells could be a good fit for areas where that's more of an issue. It's not just the NIMBYs when you go to hang/bury your own lines, the incumbents will box you out on power poles and generally make things difficult for you.
I think it would be better to frame your business as a franchise opportunity. At the end of the day it really sounds like your customers are a capital source.
> We deploy fixed wireless here in SF, mainly 60GHz and 5.8GHz.
That would be probably not possible in germany where everything is highly regulated, right?
If, there is a relative fresh projekt around here in germany, where a guy bought an old horsefarm and creates small areas where different individuals can do their stuff (cooking, gardening, a music studie open to use for musicians who cant afford a real studio). This guys really struggle to get good permanent internet connection - but they recently got visited by the CCC so i guess they will hear from you guys and contact you if they like.
Really cool project!
Of course, Germany could still be more restrictive, I don't know the law there! But there must be a fairly simple licensing path for some microwave bands, or nobody would be able to sell wireless routers. This is the same general class of equipment, so unless there's too much restriction on broadcast power to connect at kilometer+ ranges (with a focused directional antenna, rather than the broadcast antenna of a router!) there should be a way to make it work.
Each of the cases can work, you just need to make sure you're running the right kind of ISP for the market.
What kind of bandwdith levels are you targetting with your product and hardware?
I think in the Bay Area you would want to be looking at near gigabit to be competitive.
If one cannot figure out how to solve all these problems himself or herself that ISP will go out of business in a matter of months.
It's interesting to see you list apartment complexes as one of the target markets - I've always wondered why more complexes don't just provide internet access as a perk instead of outsourcing to Time Warner, AT&T, etc.
I live in a rural area in Idaho, and we've got a pretty great WISP here. But, I know that the owners and employees are close to retirement age, and I've often thought of approaching them to see if they have any plans to sell the business.
How do you handle physical, local network management with your partners? Things like installing hardware customer homes and businesses, managing outages at broadcast sites, and all the rest. Is that totally up to your local partners, or something you provide training/management for on any level?
Let us know if you speak with them--we're interested in having an existing ISP in the batch.
- how do you provision the last mile? Copper? Fiber? or Wireless?
- Do you rely on the Local Exchanges? or is it on a case-by-case basis?
- Is your typical ISP customer selling to business? Individuals? or is best-fit an apartment complex/business building?
Thank you.
1. Do you mean Comcast/ATT i.e. is this only a last-mile solution that must connect to some hub of theirs?
2. "We don't sell personal information or throttle traffic (and our operators won't either)" - how do you know this is true now, will be true in the future, and if your operators are comcast/AT&T why did they agree to this? (given that they are hell incarnate and would sell a baby to satan for profit ;) )
Monitoring traffic and throttling it are both network-level interventions that we won't implement or support in a way that can be abused like that. We don't want to expose our operators to the liability of even collecting this type of info.
Next time you fly over the midwest, look at density. If you can see your neighbor, you're probably not underserved.
Despite that, I'm glad to see that you're doing this even if net neutrality does come back. I remember the days of Earthlink and Mindspring. Now the ISP companies have become "too big to fail" and I'd like to see alternatives.