Oh, I can get it over there and around the island all right, but the biggest problem right now is getting a mainland location. This has been the biggest problem right from the start.
This is strictly non-profit, sort of like a co-op. If it breaks even, that's all that matters. Can't operate at a loss (at least not for very long!).
The highest monthly expense will be technical support (keeping the network working properly, building it, maintaining it) and if there's customer support involved that is also a cost. The 2nd steady cost will be the Internet access itself. Once we reach a certain number of users, the Internet connection will need to be duplicated (more than one connection) until we reach the capacity of the backhaul (45 megabits in this case), and at that time the backhaul will need to be either duplicated or upgraded to a larger "pipe". Otherwise, performance degrades and eventually we're no better than Verizon Broadband Wireless, and we all know how absolutely terrible THAT is!!!
But this is not really a big deal when you have a lot of folks all sharing the costs. I was owner/chief engineer of an Internet Service Provider, and once the costs were spread out over a lot of customers, we were able to keep the monthly charges quite low, provide outstanding customer support, and still eek out a small profit (small ISPs are noted for being unprofitable). In this case with the Island it's ok because the thing isn't designed to make a profit - just break even.
By the way, the RIA board supports this effort and is well aware of it.
We'll see.. We just have to get that mainland site!
Regards,
Steve
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