Wireless Service Providers → [Equipment] Starting a WISP in downtown St. Petersburg Florida

Me and two other people are trying to setup a WISP in St. Pete there are only two other internet suppliers in the area and both with pretty bad coverage (being that we are on a peninsula). We are going to buy internet from Tampa and PtP it to St. Pete (15 miles) we already have access to a 15 story building in St. Pete and will be looking to get roof access to a building in Tampa soon. My question is about equipment I have been doing research as much as possible but I still don't understand which equipment should be used where. I also come from a software background so hardware is kind of new for me. We are hoping to PtP it to St. Pete and then do a Point to Multi Point here to sell it (to business/apt. buildings not individuals). I have looked into the motorola canopy system but am still not sure what all we would need. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

If your going over the water then you should be fine but you will need to have at least 50ft of elevation and no obstruction. Since the connection is traveling 25km weather will make the link suffer tremendously.

The device you might want is either a Nanobridge M5 or a Powerbridge M5 at 25dbi

M5 = 5.8ghz

The rest is up to you to do the research and make it happen.

How much bandwidth are you looking to transport?

I would just use rocket dishes and rocket be done and over with if your looking to transport over 17 megs of bandwidth.

for transport, you could go big and get a Cambium (fka Motorola) PTP600 or the like. Or you could get something for less than one-tenth the price from Ubiquiti (Titanium Rocket M5, a couple of 30dbi RocketDishes). The Titanium Rocket should be out in a month or two...for real this time.

Of course, if you're transporting more than, say, 50-60M of bandwidth you might need the expensive stuff.

for the PtMP side, you could use canopy. You could also try and use ubiquiti...again, big savings there and performance is still decent. Maybe even better than what you could get on canopy if you're careful about links. Which would be a bit easier to do since you're connecting up apartment complexes and businesses (larger monthly spend per location vs. residential0.

You need to start with what is called a link analysis. There's lots of them around. I happen to like this company, so I use their calculator: »www.ubnt.com/airlink/

Doing this with a single hop isn't going to be easy. You will quickly discover that at the distances and rainfall you will be dealing with, you need to look at the largest antenna you can get. You are going to have to trade off on frequency - the lower frequencies are going to handle rain much better, the higher frequencies will be much less crowded and noisy, giving you a cleaner link.

As others have mentioned, bandwidth is going to be a big question. Anything more than a few customers is going to drive you to getting a wired backhaul of some sort.

Given the population in your area, I'm having a hard time seeing the business case for what you are trying to do. There has to be alternatives to wireless that you will be competing with.

If you have line of sight and a decent clear Fresnel, 15 miles should be a piece of cake. My main 5ghz backhaul has been running 35 miles with awful fresnel clearance, and rain isn't a problem at all. The thing that is a problem is tropospheric/thermal ducting, and I do see that occasionally even on my 15 mile links, but I could probably overcome that easily with a bit more gain on my antennas.

Let's see....You want to build a WISP and have no WISP experience.

You really need to hire a consultant before you blow through $50,000 and still can't make it work.

He can learn...

At the beginning we are looking to do 5 mbs (just one building) but later on we would like to expand it so therefore upping the bandwidth. In the ned we would like to be able to service quite a few buildings (like 10-15). So in the end we would be looking at more of like 60-100 mbs

WHT - We are going to be talking to a consultant soon, one of my associates was part of a WISP similar to this in Miami so we have some connections but I wanted to have as much information as possible going into it.

jcremin - We have a pretty clear line of sight (top of two buildings going over the bay) not sure what type of interference and such we will encounter.

TravelGuy - Thanks for the info I used PTP LINKPlanner by motorola. The reason we are doing it here is because there are only 2 real companies that sell internet here and the lowest you can get it for is 50 (for really slow low end internet) and the coverage is spotty at best. It is a Peninsula so thats why there are so few internet options. Our idea is to sell to companies and apts. and allow them to resell it to their tenants. A friend of ours does it over in miami and atlanta (clearsurf.com) so we know there is a market for it.