You’re tired of your local cable company. Everyone is. The prices hike every year, the customer service feels like a scripted fever dream, and the speeds? Don't even get me started. It’s usually right around the third time the internet drops during a Zoom call that people start wondering about how to become an internet provider themselves. It sounds like a massive, impossible undertaking reserved for multi-billion dollar titans like Comcast or AT&T. But honestly? It isn't. Small, independent Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs) and local fiber startups are popping up all over the country because big telecom has left a giant, gaping hole in rural and underserved markets.
Building an ISP is basically just buying bandwidth in bulk and reselling it. Think of it like a Costco for data. You buy a massive pipe of internet at a wholesale price, then you chop it up into smaller pieces and sell those pieces to your neighbors. Simple, right? Well, sort of.
The First Step of How to Become an Internet Provider is Finding the "Backhaul"
You can't just plug a bunch of routers into your home Comcast connection and start selling Wi-Fi to the street. That’s a one-way ticket to getting your account banned for violating Terms of Service. To start, you need a dedicated, enterprise-grade connection called Dedicated Internet Access (DIA). This is your backhaul. It’s the umbilical cord that connects your local network to the actual backbone of the global internet.
Where do you get it? You look for "carrier-neutral" data centers or "meet-me rooms." If you’re in a city, this might be a nondescript brick building downtown owned by Equinix or Digital Realty. In rural areas, you might have to pay a company like Zayo or Crown Castle to run a fiber line to your "headend"—which is just a fancy name for your central office or server room.
Price matters here. If you’re paying $1,000 a month for a 1Gbps DIA circuit, you have to do some math. How many customers can you put on that before it slows down? Because of "oversubscription"—the fact that not everyone is using their full speed at the same time—you can actually sell that 1Gbps to about 20 or 30 households at 100Mbps each. It’s a bit of a balancing act. If you oversubscribe too much, everyone's Netflix starts buffering at 7:00 PM, and your phone starts ringing.
Wireless vs. Fiber: Choosing Your Weapon
Most people starting out choose the WISP route. It's cheaper. Way cheaper. To do fiber, you have to dig trenches or hang lines on telephone poles. Hanging lines requires "pole attachment agreements," which involves begging the power company for permission and paying "make-ready" fees that can cost $5,000 to $20,000 per mile. It's a bureaucratic nightmare that can take years.
Wireless is different. You put an antenna on a high point—a water tower, a grain silo, or a mountain—and beam the signal to small dishes on your customers' roofs. Brands like Ubiquiti and MikroTik have made this incredibly affordable. You can get a high-end sector antenna for a few hundred dollars.
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But wireless has enemies: trees and hills. If there’s a giant oak tree between your tower and your customer’s house, they get nothing. This is called "Line of Sight" (LOS). If you don't have it, you're dead in the water unless you use lower-frequency gear (like 900MHz or CBRS), which is slower.
The Paperwork Nobody Mentions
If you want to know how to become an internet provider legally, you have to talk about the FCC. In the United States, you need to register as a "Telecommunications Reporting Entity." You'll get an FRN (FCC Registration Number).
Every year, you have to file Form 477 (now replaced by the Broadband Data Collection or BDC). This tells the government exactly where you provide service, down to the specific house. Why? Because the government hands out billions in subsidies through programs like the BEAD (Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment) program. If you don't report your coverage, a competitor might get a grant to build right on top of you using taxpayer money.
You also need a rock-solid Master Service Agreement (MSA). This is the contract your customers sign. It needs to say things like "we aren't responsible if your internet goes out during a lightning storm" and "don't use our connection for illegal stuff." Hire a lawyer who knows telecom. Don't just copy-paste something you found on Reddit.
The Hardware Stack: What’s Actually in the Rack?
You’re going to need a "Core Router." This is the brain. It handles BGP (Border Gateway Protocol), which is the language the internet uses to talk to itself. If your ISP has two different backhaul providers (which you should, for redundancy), BGP decides which path is faster.
Then you need a way to manage your customers. This is called a Billing and OSS (Operations Support System).
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- UISP (by Ubiquiti): Great for beginners, mostly free if you use their gear.
- Sonar: The gold standard for growing ISPs. It handles billing, mapping, and scheduling installs.
- Splynx: Very flexible, popular with the tech-heavy crowd.
You'll also need IP addresses. These are getting expensive. IPv4 addresses are basically "sold out," so you'll likely have to rent them or buy them on a secondary market for about $50 per address. Alternatively, you can use Carrier Grade NAT (CGNAT), which lets multiple customers share one public IP, but it can break some online gaming and VPNs.
Marketing: It’s Not About Speed, It’s About Trust
When you're the new guy, people are skeptical. They've been burned by the big guys. Your best marketing isn't a billboard; it's being the local person who actually answers the phone.
Go to the local diners. Join the town's Facebook group. Offer a "pioneer" discount for the first 50 people who sign up. People will leave their current provider not because you're 10 times faster, but because you're the person who lives three blocks away and fixed their neighbor's Wi-Fi on a Saturday.
The "Middle Mile" Problem
A lot of people think they can just grab a Starlink dish and resell it. Don't do that. It’s a violation of the Starlink TOS, and they will catch you. To be a real provider, you need a "wholesale" mindset.
If you're in a truly remote area, look into microwave backhaul. This is where you bounce an internet signal from a city 30 miles away across a series of towers until it reaches your town. Companies like Siklu and Mimosa make gear that can push multi-gigabit speeds through the air. It’s expensive, but it beats digging a $500,000 trench through granite.
How to Scale Without Losing Your Mind
Starting an ISP is easy. Running an ISP is hard. When you have 10 customers, you can manage it from your laptop. When you have 500, and a storm knocks out a primary tower at 2:00 AM, you're the one climbing that tower in the rain.
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You need a plan for "truck rolls." Who is going to the customer's house to drill the hole in the wall and mount the dish? If it's always you, you'll burn out in six months. Find a local contractor who does satellite TV installs or security system wiring. They already have the ladders and the drills.
Practical Next Steps for Your ISP Journey
If you’re serious about this, stop reading and start doing these three things:
1. Check the Topography
Use a tool like https://www.google.com/search?q=Link.UI.com or TowerCoverage.com. Drop a pin where you think you can put a tower and see which houses have a clear line of sight. If the map is all red (meaning blocked), your business model just changed from wireless to fiber.
2. Hunt for Bandwidth
Go to PeeringDB or Infrapedia. Look for fiber lines near you. Contact companies like Lumen, Zayo, or even your local electric co-op. Ask for a quote for 1Gbps Dedicated Internet Access with a "Letter of Authorization" (LOA) for IP addresses. If the price is $5,000 a month, you need a lot of customers to break even. If it’s $500, you’ve found a goldmine.
3. Join the Community
The WISPA (Wireless Internet Service Providers Association) is the place to be. Their forums and trade shows (WISPAPALOOZA) are where you learn the tricks of the trade, like how to prevent birds from nesting on your dishes or how to deal with lightning surges.
Becoming an internet provider is about as "blue-collar tech" as it gets. It’s half software configuration and half climbing ladders. But in a world where the internet is as vital as water, being the person who turns the lights on for your community is a pretty incredible way to make a living.