If you've seen the OTR thread, you know that for some of us, rural internet options are getting more limited.

I've kicked around the idea of starting a small WISP to serve our small community/area for a while, but now it may become more necessary. My [first] problem is that I don't really know how to go about finding an available fiber connection to be able to buy to resell.

We are just south of Navasota off Highway 6, and there are several towers along the highway. I assume there is fiber along the highway. Does anyone know how to go about finding out how to know for sure? If anyone has some expertise in this, I'd love to pick your brain. This isn't my area of expertise, but I feel like I can overcome that with motivation...

Assuming there is fiber there is just that, an assumption. There are companies that specialize in wireless carrier back-haul. Some of these towers in certain areas could be all wireless.

Depending on your distance from the towers, it may be cheaper to lease space on the tower and provide CBRS, somehow. Though tower space is expensive as hell. And the carrier you then contract with would have to have a node you could use on the tower.

It's no Fiber but Starlink should be ready to go online with the public within the next 1-2 years. That'll be a game changer for rural internet in that you'll be able to snag relatively low latency, 100 mbps internet in even the most remote locations. Not suggesting it in place of Fiber, but your post made me think of this.

Lots of glass in the ground along the highway, but you can't just contract to connect to it in a random place. You typically have to meet a provider at a colo facility or pay them to special construction fees to build you access to their colo. Most WISP's don't connect in tier one datacenters, they buy from lower tier providers who will actually consider talking with them. Most in the BCS area have a connection to Michael Pulk's infrastructure (www.pulkco.com) others to Suddenlink a few both. MP links a bunch of customers from the Wells Fargo building in Bryan. Century link is the incumbent telco in Navasota but also one of the largest internet providers in the US because of their acquisitions. They might have some POP strategy there. Might look at fiberlight, but again not sure they have a POP in that area even though they have fiber along that route.
Personally would reach out to existing providers and see if there is a way to do a joint venture with them to cover a new area. I licensed link back into an existing network is far easier way to bootstrap this type of business than a greenfield deployment.

DallasTeleAg said:

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Depending on your distance from the towers, it may be cheaper to lease space on the tower and provide CBRS, somehow. Though tower space is expensive as hell. And the carrier you then contract with would have to have a node you could use on the tower.

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Any recommendation as to how to find out whose tower it is? I guess I could just hop the fence, look around, and then wait to find out who comes to arrest me?

Yeah, I am certainly aware of Starlink and the potential it has. I was content waiting for it to become available until recent developments have made a significant gap in reasonable service become very likely. 1-2 years is going to be a tough wait.

Crown castle, american tower, and tillman infracture will be happy to supply you a list of sites in your area. They will not cover your medical costs for the heart attack you have when you see their price quotes. You probably should understand commercial tower pricing when you go talk to other options like your rural water company and electric coop.
Very few cell operators own their own tower infrastructure anymore.
Cellmapper will help you determine whos cellular infrastructure is where also

Takes a lot of capital to get into the game.

If you had your own land to build a tower and had fiber on your property, you do a CBRS implementation for surrounding homes within a couple of miles.

As said above, the companies that buy up dark fiber have some pretty hefty agreements with the local LECs and such.

Crown Castle is in the tower game but, as already mentioned, it is expensive as hell. Building towers and leasing space on them is an industry in itself, and people can make some serious money with it.

If I had fiber on my property, this thread wouldn't have to exist. But I do understand your point.

I'm just trying to understand if it's at all feasible to somehow get our community decent internet service. I am not looking to become an ISP mogul or anything. We are just stuck in island of nothingness. Centurylink offers terrible DSL in some parts, and other parts have no option at all. But we are relatively close to major thoroughfare and small city. So I feel like some option surely has to exist. We aren't in the middle of nowhere. Just a low density rural area that got left out.

On one point one of the local BCS WISP's had a spot between Navasota and Hempsted west of hwy 6 they covered. Basically one person wanted internet and was willing to spend the money on the infrastructure to get it out there and they offered to others in the area to help offset the build cost. Thought it was BrazosWifi but maybe was Adosea. I would reach out to some of them and ask for a $ number to build a dedicated drop to cover your area.
You could play with the ubiquity's online microwave path calculator and see what type of heights you would need on antennas to get you back to civilization. I would suspect 7-8K would get you a pair of unlicensed radios that could get you 25mi and suspect the RF environment not as brutal there as most metro places. Tower structures are expensive if you have installed but an industrious individual can source the materials and likely do for about 1/2 the price of a commercial installer.
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If you have line of sight to a tower, that wasn't all that bad. (We couldn't get line of sight)