[Commotion-discuss] A Business Model for Neighborhood Wireless

Tue Apr 1 10:51:47 UTC 2014

HI Matt,

As an operator of a small, mesh-based micro-WISP in St. Louis which
supports itself (barely) using a Freemium model, thank you for sharing
this.  Off-hand, I can offer these comments.

- The biggest factor to establishing a WISP, clearly, would be who is your
upstream ISP.  It's fair to assume cable and DSL providers won't sell to
you, leaving fiber.  Depending on the availability of lower cost aerial
fiber (it's not available in St. Louis, for example), your uplink may
likely cost single-digit $1000's per month.  Cheaper, i.e. below $2000/mo,
can be done if you have a relationship with a nearby data house who is
willing let you mount something like UBNT AirFiber on their roof
inexpensively for your backhaul.  But don't see surprised by expectations
of ~$1000/mo roof rights.

- The figures for subscriber equipment (i.e. the CPE) and installation
labor are spot on.  I'd recommend adding whatever fractional of the ISP
cost for each subscriber to better gauge the business' sustainability.
E.g. $2000/mo uplink cost spread across 100 subscribers = $20/mo raw ISP
cost per subscriber.

- I would also recommend adding a line item to your spreadsheet for some
3rd party portal / payment handling service like
GateSpot<http://store.wisp-router.com/GateSpot>,
e.g. invoice generation, credit card processing, etc.  It is possible to
run your own portal and payment gateway via freeRADIUS / Drupal / Ubercart
/ Paypal / Dwolla / etc, but there's a steep learning curve.

- I'd also recommend making an estimate on subscriber attrition / loyalty.
Not everyone is going to pay their subscription fee, and your small
business' ability to follow-up with each and every person who falls behind
is very finite.  Estimating, for example, 15% non-paying subscribers as
part of normal operation (and scaling expected revenue to cover that gap),
could allow for much more efficient operation.

- Insurance for installed equipment is a good idea, especially if this
business is otherwise unable to roll trucks to repair damage after a large
wind storm.  For example, a previous list member mentioned getting $1M
liability on their rooftop gear for $425 annual premium from this carrier:
http://www.techinsurance.com/default10.aspx

- In an urban environment, using mesh transport over 2.4GHz is just not
going to work reliably beyond the scale of a single block or so.  This is
made ever more frustrating by the proliferation of consumer WiFi routers
that hop channels (especially those distributed by the millions by the
cable company), ensuring there will never be a consistently free channel.
I can confirm this from operating UBNT Nano M2s that have difficulty
maintaining adequate signal just down a single neighborhood block, despite
both units being shielded with RF Armor.  Also, there isn't really a good
solution yet for meshes to channel hop reliably, although someone will be
making a presentation about draft implementation at this year's Battlemesh.

- Pretty much all WISPs, along with some of the larger mesh network
operators on this list (myself included), thus use 5.8GHz for backhaul over
distances greater than a block.  However, this band is also getting much
much noisier, and I'm expecting the noise level that renders the 2.4GHz
band largely unusable for me here in St. Louis to transition over to 5.8GHz
in a couple years.  (Thanks again, in part, to the cable company who is
selling dual-band WiFi routers preprogrammed for full TX power to every new
subscriber.)  Non-meshing WISPs are gradually switching their backhaul
operations over to the DFS bands, which require active radar detection for
legal operation.  That same Battlemesh presentation mentioned above will be
for a draft Open Source implementation for DFS compliance, but to my
knowledge, no FCC-approved option exists yet for running adhoc over DFS
channels.

- Finally, White Space, or TVWS, is clearly an intriguing option for
wider-spaced rural areas (although still very pricey, ~$10k).
Unfortunately, my understanding is that can not handle the typical user
density for urban areas.

On Thu, Mar 20, 2014 at 10:20 AM, Matt Richardson <matt at smartwave.biz>wrote:

> This is a long story, but I am putting out this outline of a business
> model for community wireless in the hopes that we can actually implement
> this somewhere at a scale, and replicate the model to really start making
> access to global information an inherent right of all people.
>
> I have been working on this for a while, and have not published it until
> this point. But the model has come to a theoretical point where it won't
> move without more help or more information. Thanks to all that have helped
> on this: Nitin, my Milwaukee geek friends, and Georgia, Greta and Andy from
> OTI
>
> START!
> I followed a Human-Centered Design process to figure out the details and
> cost-recovery opportunity in response to a problem I found in my other
> community work: Why do close to *50% of families* in Milwaukee have
> computers/phones but *don't have access to the Internet*? Turns out some
> families have to choose between food and Internet, so they turn it on and
> off or just leave it off.
>
> So I wanted to develop a model that created opportunity but wouldn't be
> completely beholden to the whims of a single funding source or shut down by
> politics. That means a self-sustaining cost-recovery model. So I got a few
> folks together and we did a pilot in Milwaukee. I am proud to say that the
> antennae has survived an entire summer and winter thanks to planning
> efforts with the OTI technical staff. :)
>
> Here it goes.
>
> DETAILS!
> *Position Statement: The best way to empower people is by making sure they
> have the information they need and the know-how to use it to improve the
> lives of their family and neighbors.*
>
> *This is a validated model with a pilot in place, so we already have lots
> of feedback that shows this can work and what is needed to make it work.*
>
> TREND
> In Milwaukee, many families struggle to get access to information that can
> keep them informed. In addition, many families in the Milwaukee area have
> access to technology but not regular access to local information and the
> Internet.
>
> PROBLEM
> Lack of regular, affordable access to information and Internet technology
> creates a huge digital divide for struggling families. This puts their
> children at a disadvantage in an economy where technical education is key.
> In addition, lack of regular access to updated information on the Internet
> does not allow residents to take control of their block and neighborhoods,
> which would be more possible to organize using technical tools.
>
> SOLUTION
> Provide neighborhood-level information technology infrastructure that
> connects residents to the Internet and each another and gives them a
> private information portal to organize. Support this infrastructure by
> teaching neighborhood teens and adults to support those systems through a
> training and internship program that provides technical training.
>
> The icing on the cake is to incorporate a cost-recovery model that allows
> the program to flourish without demanding ongoing operational money from
> local and national foundations.
>
> WHAT IS THE POTENTIAL IMPACT
> With regular access to the Internet, families can save money. The
> neighborhood information portal not only allows local community activists
> to better organize people to increase public safety, it allows them to more
> easily distribute information that helps residents be safer and smarter
> about economic, political and social challenges in their neighborhood.
>
> Training local residents to support their neighbors not only helps build
> community, it provides essential technical training to areas where those
> programs are not readily available.
>
> HOW IT WORKS
> We implement a neighborhood portal (using an open-source version of
> nextdoor.com called Anahita) to build neighborhood level information
> portals. These portals are private and only accessible to local residents
> who have a login, allowing them to discuss public safety concerns without
> fear of monitoring or scrutiny.
>
> As many households lack regular access to the Internet but have computers
> and mobile phones, we would place a wireless mesh network in the
> neighborhood using the open-source Commotion platform. A local community
> partner would be our access point to the Internet.
>
> To help support and steward the technology, we will roll out a training
> and internship program with our neighborhood community partners to train
> neighborhood residents to be the Level 1 support team for the mesh and
> information portal. In neighborhoods with block watch programs, we work
> with those local block watch captains to populate and promote information
> on the portal.
>
> FINANCIAL NUMBERS
> Here is a link to the proforma. It basically shows that this kind of
> effort can sustain its cost, but can't afford to sustain the administrative
> cost of someone to run the whole thing. That means (to me) we need to
> partner with an organization which has that kind of people power (or wants
> it). They provide the administrative persons, the model makes sure there is
> no financial drain on the parent organization. My numbers are thought out,
> but maybe not as easy to decipher, so please ask questions.
>
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjfFZOKkzR4wdE9rcFFnN2VLenFyazFPYXByM2RrX2c&usp=sharing
>
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>
>

-- 
Ben West
http://gowasabi.net
ben at gowasabi.net
314-246-9434
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