To put your ISP into operation you will need the services of your local telephone company and an Internet backbone provider. Both services may be provided by the telephone company.

If you wish to offer dial-up service, then from the phone company you will need T1, E1, or PRI lines for incoming phone calls. Every T1 line has 24 dial-up lines, E1 lines have 30 dial-up lines, American PRI has 23 lines, and European PRI has 30 lines. So, for example, to provide 240 dial-up lines for subscribers you will need 10 T1 lines.

Be sure you do not get any long distance service on your dial-up lines. If the phone company assigns a long distance company to the lines you will get a base charge for long distance for each line every month. You may find yourself getting a different price quoted with each conversation, so be sure to get a price in writing if you are going to depend on it for your business plan.

On the other end of the network, you need a connection to the Internet. This connection can be a T1, E1, PRI, T3, E3, or an optical fibre (OC) line. The type of line you get will depend on the number of subscribers you plan to serve.

• A T1, E1, or PRI line can serve a maximum of 2000-3500 dial-up subscribers or 6-25 broadband subscribers (depending on speed and usage patterns)
• A T3 (DS3) or E3 line can serve a maximum of about 100,000 dial-up subscribers or up to about 660 broadband subscribers (again, depending on speed and usage patterns)
• An OC-3 line can serve a maximum of about 500,000 dial-up subscribers or about 2300 broadband subscribers
• An OC-12 line can serve a maximum of about 2M dial-up subscribers or 9000 to 13000 broadband subscribers

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