Originally Posted by EricTRA

Hello,

My first advice to you is to hire someone who has the knowledge you need. That should be your first concern in my opinion since you seem to lack the basic knowledge on how it works. For example you refer to operating systems as routers? You don't know how to setup (create) the network? Those are basic things you need to know before starting a company like that or you'll encounter yourself in heaps of problems in a very short time.

Apart from that, your servers will be business critical, meaning that without them you'll not earn any money. I suggest you buy the best support licenses you can get, for example from Red Hat, again because you lack the knowledge to administer them yourself nor do you have personnel to do the job for you.

Before worrying about billing software which should be the last step, I would make a lot of technical decisions first, plan it out, put it in a diagram, document it for yourself, check it for flaws and inform yourself.

Not trying to put you down but prepare yourself as much as you can before jumping into something that might become a bottomless pit very fast.

Kind regards,

Eric

Originally Posted by peter1234

hi whiteshark2012,

I Agree with what EricTRA said:

When you said “starting an isp company” did you imply

1)Cyber cafe like place, where you have a building with x number of PCs and you will share your satellite Internet connection, people will come and go.

OR

2)A place where you get a satellite Internet connection and people will either use dial-up/adsl
via a some sort of fixed/wifi/wimax connection to access Internet?

I assume you will be setting this up somewere rural were there is no Internet access at the moment?

Among how many clients can you divide satellite Internet connection so that each client get an acceptable speed?

Either case, did you do a approx costing to see if you are ok on the financial side?
Here are few thing on top of my head you should account for:

-Cost of your satellite Internet connection
-Electricity bills
-Phone bills, if needed.
-Getting permission/permit/licenses from your local authorities, if needed.
-Company setup costs (if any).
-building rent, ect. (if applicable).
-building and equipment insurance (if applicable).
-Staff cost, for startup and day to day running.
-Server(s) and equipment for providing Internet to your clients (router/switch/any other network devices).
-cables, wiring and electrical protection equipment (data cables and power), if needed
-UPS and/or generators (if needed)
-Interest rate (if you have taken a loan)
-Cost of legal advice (for agreement with your clients and other parties) if needed
-Any other cost(s)

When you add all the above costs and divide it by the maximum potential number of clients (assuming you will charge your clients a reasonable amount) how long will it take for you to recover your investment and your day to day costs, and become profitable? If it is going to take long time, then consider what will happen if a competitor (big or small) start to operate.

Consider the time required for you to do all the paperwork if-any and approval time, and getting your equipment and setup time.




If you want to have a central server for billing, your “ground stations” in other cities need to communicate with your central billing server on a regular basis to obtain/update client records....
questions that come to mind:
-How far apparent are the cities 10km,100km ?
-How will the “ground station” communicate with “central billing server” (one option is to use your
satellite Internet connection).
-What happens if the “central billing server” were to go down?


Whatever you do, don't get into this, without fully understanding risks and costs involved !

I hope this is helpful




..

Originally Posted by Lantzvillian

As per your last question - what happens when the billing server goes down? you will find your answers in material relating to high availability systems, RAID configurations, redundent systems, redundent networking and a safe location.

Then you also have to deal with the legalities of this business and insurence as forementioned.. this one is huge and requires some capital.. in fact its pretty much the start as you will need to get tax numbers (in Canada so I guess the USA would be similar), a business number or incorporate.. and then insurence for that business.