Can we create a connection to the internet ourselves without having to use a cellular 3g/4g subscription / wifi subscription?
In: Technology
The Internet is not a single thing. It is just a bunch of networks of different Internet Service Providers that happens to be connected together allowing data packets to move between them. It is very similar to a road network, postal network or telephone network. So in order to be connected to the same network you need some sort of subscription to a connection or another form of agreement to exchange Internet traffic with some of the other networks. The subscriptions you normally see is intended for private individuals and have a service that is very good for this purpuse. However there are similar subscriptions for businesses and other Internet service providers which have a few different terms. And companies like AT&T, Sprint, etc. have to buy these subscriptions from each other to allow their customers to access all the other networks on the Internet.
And technically you can buy one of these subscriptions but it might not be for you. Firstly it is unlikely that anyone deliver to your home. They expect you to hook up to them at some sort of colocation facility intended for this purpuse. The easiest way to do this is to rent a dedicated line from your phone or fiber company. And they might not have the equipment needed for this at your local phone central as this is usually things they only expect in business parks and such. So you might have to pay them to upgrade your local neighborhood equipment. And then when you get a line from your home to the colocation facility and connected to the other network provider they do not give you any sort of router or other equipment. You have to buy this yourself. And they do not set it up for you but you. This is not as easy as setting up a normal home router though as this is intended for professional networks and uses entirely different technologies. Even if you manage to teach yourself how this all works and how to set it up they still expect you to bring your own IP address allocation which you have to apply for elsewhere. And we are all out of IPv4 addresses so if you want those you have to convince others to give their up. So at the end of the day it have costed you minimum tens of thousands of dollars and a lot of time and you still have to rely on the same companies to provide you Internet access as before.
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