Another ISP bits the Dust

Yet another ISP has bitten the dust. RAWNET - a regional ISP of northern queensland has been turned off by its upstream provider. This just goes to show that it is hard to make a living out of the ISP business.

Reports are still rather sketchy about why this has happened but i would like to speculate that they have gone in too hard and too fast. The required infrastructure to set up something of this scale takes months of planning and constant tuning until it is right.

Talking from experience - I attempted to set up and run a small ISP myself. After nearly 3 months of negotiations with providers i still had not signed a single contract that could guarantee me service for my clients. No wholesale provider would ever guarantee that they themselves wouldn't have their service turned off at any point. Even though they provide the infrastructure and the data source.

To me this indicates that the whole industry in general needs a good shake up.