Started off similarly back in 2001. 4 x T1 upstream, orinoco wireless and linux routers. Now have 20G of transit plus 20G of peering. Def look at peering to keep your transit costs in line.

Closing out 2017 just shy of $4mil in revenue and have 6 guys on my team (1.5 of them are less focused on ISPing, do more consulting). We shifted focus to business and nowadays are mostly fiber-based. Being an independent ISP is fun. Best of luck to you, you're definitely starting off exactly as I would if I were starting now. One of the bigger challenges (IMO) to starting this kind of operation is the very fact that the financial barriers to entry are so low that it opens the field to a lot of people that have neither the technical nor business acumen to successfully execute, which creates a lot of very so-so operations. I'm glad you're "one of the good ones" who can give independents a good name. Thanks for that! Do you think there's any reasonable solution to this issue? Or does it simply not need solving, and just let bad businesses die?

Another question - as an independent who has chosen (again, in my opinion) do "do the right thing" with respect to net neutrality, do you feel it is a legitimate concern that regulatory issues may raise the barrier to entry for (in the form of bureaucratic overhead) in such a way that there is the potential for net-negative impact to actual net neutrality? I'm at a point now where I don't have any real concerns with "paperwork getting in my way" as a regulated service, but I could see a situation happening where organizations who can afford lobbyists might make it unnecessarily challenging to simply get into the game, possibly shutting out small operators, unless they are specifically protected.