Hey folks

I’m starting an ISP. Again.

Not my first time doing this — I built another ISP from the ground up and helped take it to scale. So I should have known what I was getting into. And yet… somehow I forgot just how gloriously painful it all is.

Welcome to Olilo. A no-BS broadband provider for geeks, by geeks. No contracts. No hidden fees. No corporate faffery. Just stupidly fast internet and sysadmin-friendly vibes.

This is Week 1 of building Olilo in public. Every week I’ll post what we’ve done, what worked, what went sideways, and what I wish someone had told me before I hit “submit” on that Ofcom form (again).

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What Actually Happened This Week​

1. Paperwork & Planning (a.k.a. Death by Admin)​

• Registered with Ofcom – the point where it becomes real (and real complicated).
• Signed up to TOTSCo for One Touch Switching – the new UK-wide switching system. Makes switching ISPs simpler for customers, but about as fun to set up as explaining BGP to your dog.
• Locked in agreements with multiple open access fibre networks – this gives us a chunky FTTP footprint right from the start.

Honestly, this is the stuff I blocked out from last time. Telecoms is 50% strategy, 50% legalese, and 100% acronyms.

2. Forecasting, Funding & Feeling Regret​

• Built out cost models for customer acquisition, support, backhaul, CPE options, and more. (It’s amazing how many ways money can disappear.)
• Mapped our first-year growth, burn rate, and the moment when we hopefully become self-sustaining.
• Wrangled a lot of spreadsheets. Most of them made me question life choices. Some even made sense.

3. Planning the Geeky Bits​

This is the fun part. The “why we’re doing this” part:

• Bring your own router as standard (sick of ISPs forcing plastic bricks on people)
• Olilo-approved router list for those who want something solid and pre-tested
• Monitoring system from customer router to HQ – think “we know it’s broken before you do”
• Internal automation via n8n – everything from smart support alerts to briefing reports
• Geek perks – early access tools, IPv6 tunnels, CLI goodies, maybe even some ASCII art if we’re feeling generous

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Wins of the Week​

• We’re real. We exist. Ofcom knows our name and we haven’t been sued yet.
• FTTP footprint is better than I expected — thanks to wholesale partners with great coverage across the UK
• We’re building switching so simple your nan could do it.
  But let’s be honest — we’re not after just any nan.
  Unless she’s compiling kernels, running pfSense on her own whitebox, and has opinions about bufferbloat… then yes, we absolutely want your nan.

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WTF Moments​

• Forecasting support volumes led to a full-on existential crisis. Again.
• Someone I talked to thought FTTP was a cryptocurrency. (just kidding, or am I?)
• TOTSCo still sounds like a kids’ cartoon but is, in fact, a critical broadband switching hub.
• Telecoms acronyms should come with a glossary and a therapist. (I remember saying this the first time round)

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This Week’s Stack & Tools​

Here’s what we’re actually using right now:

• Notion – our brain-in-a-box. We're using it for everything from internal docs and project planning to router testing notes and random shower thoughts about IPv6.
• Google Chat – for internal comms. Lightweight, fast, and gets out of the way (mostly). Plus it’s where half the chaos happens at 2am when something breaks.
• Vercel – hosting our monolithic app stack. Yes, monolithic. Microservices can sit down for now.
• n8n – open source automation on steroids.
• Spreadsheets – lots of them. Some haunted.

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Next Week’s Plan​

Coming up:

• Integrating with our first fibre partner (starting with provisioning and CPE workflows)
• Building the first version of our home-agent-to-HQ monitoring & alerts system
• Finalising the Olilo-approved router shortlist
• Designing the onboarding flow and getting our pricing into something that makes sense

And maybe… finally getting to write some proper network config instead of just contracts.

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Why Share All This?​

Because nobody talks about this stuff publicly.
Starting an ISP is doable — but weirdly secretive and unnecessarily complex. I’ve done it before. I’m doing it again. And I’m dragging it all out into the open this time.

So if you’re:

• Thinking about launching an ISP (it's stressful, its painful, its endless hours of work)
• Deep in the world of FTTP
• Running your own WISP / alt-net
• Or just love reading about network chaos from the front lines...

You’re in the right place.

Ask me anything — from funding models to router recommendations to why One Touch Switching is a necessary evil. I’ll answer everything I can without getting a stern email.

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Founder of Olilo – the anti-BS broadband provider.
Building in public. Packet by packet.
(Somehow forgot how brutal this all is. Doing it anyway.)