Rocking came about in a rather unexpected way.
Back in the day I was running a little business, focused on tech support. Of course, you get dragged into all kinds of other bits and pieces. Connectivity was one of the bits and pieces I was dragged into.
The best that was available at the time was ADSL, and we had client’s bonding those (that’s another story), but the capacity just wasn’t there for any really bandwidth.
I began looking at fibre solutions for a number of customers, but the pricing back then was astronomical. None of the clients would commit to a fibre line.
I figured that if I had enough customers in the same geographic area, I could pull a fibre line in, connect everyone and share the cost.
So that’s exactly what I did. Some customers were in the same building and we could connect then via Ethernet, others were a little further away and we could connect them via radio links.
I manage to get enough people on board, get the fibre line in, and then connect everyone.
But then word spread. People in the area heard we had fibre and that some businesses in the vicinity had fibre, and they wanted in too.
Long story short, we ended up building and entire ISP on the back of this, and at one point had radio links stretching 20kms around the Cape peninsula.
We started rolling out more fibre, got into the world of municipal way-leaves, dug up significant stretches laying fibre.
We’d become an ISP, and the tech support business just quietly died. Although, 13 years later we’ve pivoted back into support as an MSP, again that’s another story.
We accidentally became an ISP simply by trying to solve a clients problems, and that’s essentially what it takes to get started in any business, but specifically in tech.
Client has a problem. You source solution. Once you deliver the solution you have a client for life.