Reddit reviews Residential Broadband (2nd Edition)

things you will need listed in a very crude order based on the cost of the item/difficulty to obtain.

1. a building or space
   
   
2. getting the building/space up to code
   
   
3. 24x7 help desk engineers/admin staff/sales/marketing - tier 1 x (QTY: 25-30)
   
   
4. 24x7 priority support engineers - tier 2 (QTY: 2-4)
   
   
5. SME engineer - tier 3 (QTY: 1-2)
   
   
6. A network architect - tier 3 (QTY 1-2)
   
   
7. networking equipment - this will depend on the type of SP you are trying to provide, ie DSL will require different equipment than a DOCSIS cable network (QTY - alot, and will vary and likely need to be upgraded on a bi-yearly cycle either based on capacity or system life cycle)
   
   
8. a ditch witch, with a crew of guys to run cable and the cable/permits to dig - put up aerial cables (QTY 1 but we can hope for 2....)
   
   
9. bribe money for things such as digging in local area's or putting wire on a pole. (QTY: alot)
   
   The above list could easily get a small SP started serving a semi-rural area with something like DSL or Cable, but also keep in mind you are just talking about providing transit, no services to your customers and likely a very very small peering to a tier2 SP that would funnel upwards towards a larger tier1. the tier 2 would likely send you a default route that you would pass down to your end users and you would send up to the tier2 a /24 that you are likely using a NAT pool for your few hundred/thousands of users that you service.
   
   Your biggest issue will be the retention of employees, as with all networks issues will arise, when issues arise and an irate customer calls and yells at employees of your company, you have to protect your customer but your employee first. Or an engineer for your company has proven their worth and become the go-to escalation person and is essentially on call 24/7. this engineer demands a raise but you can not give them that raise since you are a smaller SP and money is tight, well whats stopping them from jumping to another networking job making more money with the experience they gained with your SP? nothing. how hard is that person to replace in a very demanding and complex networking environment? extremely.
   
   your end game mindset has to be that you can pull enough customers in to stay afloat for a 5-10 years, in that time period you can continue to maintain/grow the network and pray to get purchased by the tier2/tier1 SP that wants the market and more importantly infrastructure (cables through equipment) you have built. then you can retire young and hopefully well off.
   
   
   edit:
   
   this book, though written in 1999 is still pretty damn accurate from a 1000foot point of view and costs < 5$:
   
   http://www.amazon.com/Residential-Broadband-2nd-Edition-George/dp/1578701775/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398445743&sr=8-1&keywords=residential+broadband