What were your startup costs?

By far our biggest cost, an intangible cost, was the enormous amount of time and energy required to negotiate and arbitrate with Qwest for some ten months to arrive at an interconnection agreement. Other would-be DSL coops in Colorado might be able to bypass this cost by "opting in" to our interconnection agreement pursuant to the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

We had to buy a DSLAM, and you can read about what it cost. Our subscribers had to buy DSL modems, and you can read about what they cost.

We had to buy some 350 feet of 100-pair direct-bury telephone cable, which cost some $450. You can see it at http://www.rric.net/barn/. We had to bury this cable, which cost us about $2000.

We had to buy protectors. You can read about what they cost.

We had to pay a Quote Preparation Fee of $1107.09 to Qwest, to learn what price Qwest would charge for installation of a Field Connection Point for us.

Qwest required us to obtain an ACNA (Access Customer Name Abbreviation) from Telcordia and an OCN (Operating Company Number) from National Exchange Carrier Association, costing $100 and $150 respectively.

Registering our domain name cost $15.

Filing to incorporate with the State of Colorado cost $50.

Filing with the IRS for 501(c)(12) tax-exempt status cost $150.

Installing service for each of our charter subscribers required incurring the non-recurring costs associated with adding a subscriber.

The law firm of Oppedahl & Larson LLP had to pay some $500 to Qwest to get its frame relay T1 line installed. It paid some $200 to its ISP to start IP connectivity service. It spent some $5000 on microwave transceivers and gain antennas to set up the point-to-point microwave link. It had to spend $800 for a T1 CSU/DSU and $1000 for a used Cisco router.