There have been some questions about the best way to contact your ISP to get permission to share your bandwidth. The first thing to do is to look up the IspWirelessPolicies and see if they've already been contacted.
There have been two approaches people have taken to getting approved/denied.
The first is to know someone how has some amount of authority with in the company and ask them directly. This is obviously the best path and how EasyStreet and QCSN were approached but requires that you know someone.
The second is to send an email to their support line asking (and you may well have to follow up with a phone call). The important things to mention in my mind (and maybe some of the owners of ISP's that are on the list can comment further :-):
- You are working with Personal Telco, a Portland based non-profit. If they want to know more about Personal Telco they can check our web site or the press coverage we've received.
- You want to share your bandwidth with neighbors and passer-by's with a wireless access point.
- You are *NOT* reselling access, there is no profit to be made by you.
- You (we) have the tools to provide some degree of security auditing and can make sure that users understand the terms and conditions of use that we allow.
- You (we) are willing to accept responsibility for dealing with any illegal activity or bandwidth abuse that occurs on your node. (Note: Accepting responsibility doesn't mean that you are necessarily in trouble if something bad happens but it means that you acknowledge that your users behavior is your responsibility as the "provider" and that you will work with the ISP to solve the problem).
- If the ISP decides at some point in the future that sharing is NOT okay, you understand that it's their right to do so. HOWEVER you request that they notify you in advance of the change so that you can make other arrangements.
Can anyone think of anything else that is worth mentioning to ISP's?