Community / Commercial Wans

yellum

Rymus said on IrelandOffline Forum

perhaps I should have made myself clearer when I said the dreaded word 'commercial'. I didnt want to frighten anyone What I meant is that there will be a body 'company' assigned to deal with the running of the network on a day to day basis. These arent going to be people that want to be paid £600+ a week to do this. It would be people involved personally in the project and doing it for the 'love' of it basically.

Im of the opinion that if this thing wasnt setup like a 'real' ISP it wouldnt gain any real momentum in the long run. I'm aware that profit margins will be very low and indeed the only money that will be made from the service will in all likelyhood be ploughed back into network upgrades/installations etc. There would have to be some kind of hierarchy involved, otherwise no companies/professionals like Esat or this guy I know would touch us with a barge pole. The more professional and organised the better. All ISP's have departments, this should be no different. I'll end the mindless waffle now cos I've got to go to work.

Yellum; We'll have to speak about this in great detail and hammer out a solid plan to get it off the ground. The sooner the better as far as Im concerned. Getting a trial going quickly is a top priority. talk to y'all later

Chaos-Engine

I think u should use the word "non-commercial" in place of "commercial".... As for getting employees and setting up organised structures this will led to a rift in the community between MODs/Employees and PLain users... I think keeping the communities small and mangable would make it uniquly different to any other ISP around.
P2P style.

Saying all that i am now about to contradict myself.
I do agree that we need some people to run it(dedicated). And yes we will have to pay them. But i don't think it could be on a full-time basis as this is too complex and formal. Seen as it would in reality be a community WAN then i think the members should take turns at running different parts(it would be an excellent learning experience).

ON Corparate Sponsorship:
No. Sponsorship leads to loss of control.
What happens if we have a beautiful WAN with 500+ ppl and the company wants a particual task or objective??? If we refuse we risk lossing investment and the WAN might have to fold. IF we give into demands we succumb to essentially outsiders...

Donations or welcome. But i think a simple 6 month fee should do. As long as control is in the hands of the community then the price can be very high as far as i am concerned

[end rant]

yellum

I think theres a place for both a commercial wan and a community one. A commercial one should be aimed at a business audience. I think Internet Ireland might be doing something like this for Dublin.

I'll devote my time to the community one. That'll be hard enough work besides one that you are trying to sell to a business and will have more legalities and everything else.

As for sponsorship for a community wan I'd be for it. The sponsor will be told in advance that they will have zero influence. They can suggest things that might make the network better but thats it. Also the wan should try and be self sufficient from donations from the community for bandwidth and general upkeep. Corporate sponsorship would be to add in extra luxuries to the network (computers to act as big caches, better equipment etc )

Generally sponsors would want something in return. What they'd get is advice on how to set up a wan and the communities experiences in ironing out wrinkles, how to secure systems, what hardware we found worked best, what to stay away from, what worked in reality compared to theory, etc. Maybe also help in installing from the wan "experts"

The community would always be in control or it wouldn't be a community wan any more.

DM

rymus

I like the idea of sponsorship as opposed to investors. As chaos said, if u have investors, they generally take ownership of a certain percent of the venture, meaning we loose total control.

sponsorship is a nice clean and trouble free way to go about this. Community should definately be setup and working perfectly first, otherwise no business user with a tack of common sense would touch any 'business package' we threw at them. All we have to worry about now is where to put all these loverly base stations so everyone can get access

Chaos-Engine

I'm not totally against sponsorship. I just think we need to look else where for funds first. As if we relie on sponsorhip funds and they pull out then it is DIRECT influence.
I think Yellum's proposile of sponsorship funds as a means to equipment and once-off services is the only real type of sponsorship we could accept.

Running costs would have to be payed by "US-> the users", as otherwise we r at the mercy of the sponsor.

Shouldn't be too hard if we can get the base stations in place in exchange for free conn. And maybe the Solar source option too....

BTW Don't forget wind. These things r going to be up high