[asterisk-biz] VoIP and Internet connection

[David Ruggles]

Assuming you're in the USA:

I worked for an ISP back in the Dial-up days and we looked at
providing DSL as Dial-up was phased out, so I know a little bit about
this process. Basically the only way to offer DSL service is to either
bury your own copper or lease copper from the ILEC. Since you're
competing with the ILEC they won't lease you copper, or if they do it
will be at such a unreasonably high rate that you won't be able to
offer service at an affordable rate. The solution is to become a CLEC
which puts you in a different class and gives you some protections
under federal and state telecom laws, basically what this means is
that the ILEC or ILECs (depending on the area you want to service)
will be *required* by law to lease their copper to you at wholesale
rates. However becoming a CLEC, at least when we looked at doing it,
was a very expensive proposition so we chose not to go that route and
stopped offering internet access when our dial-up accounts went away.

David

On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 9:22 PM,  <jthomas at cequip.com> wrote:
> We are a 2-man company providing hosted PBX solution to businesses. So
> far we have done reasonably well, and got enough businesses to make a
> decent profit to pay our bills.
>
> The hurdle we are facing is getting decent Internet connection at
> reasonable price to our clients. A new company calls us, and say, they
> want 4 lines in their office. We ask them to get any kind of Internet
> connection at their premise. The problem is they cannot get DSL without
> a telephone connection, and Cox charges them a lot for cable! In fact it
> is cheaper for them to get both Internet and telephone service from Cox
> than Internet only. Outrageous but that is fact of life. We lose a lot
> of business because of this.
>
> We are exploring if we can become an ISP and provide DSL connection
> ourselves. We have about $100K at our disposal. We do not have much idea
> about what is involved in becoming an ISP and how to go about it.
>
> Does any one of you have any suggestion?
>
> Thanks,
> Jacob.
>
>
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