Starting a local ISP in India: the software stack you need

Most local ISPs start the same way: a bandwidth line, a router, and a spreadsheet of customers. The spreadsheet works until about a hundred subscribers. Then renewals start slipping, unpaid users keep browsing, and support calls pile up faster than anyone can answer them.

This guide walks through what a new internet service provider in India actually needs, in the order you need it.

First, the licence

To provide internet service in India you need an ISP authorisation from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT). Under the Unified Licence framework it comes in three categories: Category A (national), Category B (one telecom circle or metro) and Category C (one secondary switching area, roughly a district). Most local ISPs start with Category C. The Telecommunications Act, 2023 is moving licences to a new authorisation regime, so confirm the current process before you apply.

Many operators start instead as a franchisee or partner of a licensed ISP: you build the last mile and look after the customers, and they hold the licence. It is the quickest way to start, but you depend on your partner’s systems and terms.

The network layer

• Upstream bandwidth. Internet transit from a larger provider. As you grow, peering at an internet exchange such as NIXI lowers your costs.
• Core router or BNG. Terminates subscriber sessions (PPPoE or IPoE), enforces speed plans and hands out IP addresses.
• Access network. OLTs and ONTs for fibre (FTTH), or radios and towers for wireless.
• Customer premises equipment (CPE). The router or ONT in each home or office.

The software stack

This is where most new ISPs under-invest, and it is what decides whether you can grow without hiring for every hundred customers. There are six pieces:

1. RADIUS / AAA. Decides who can connect and at what speed, and records every session. Without it, plans and suspensions are manual work on the router.
2. Subscriber management and billing. Plans, renewals, GST invoices, receipts and payment collection. This is the system your team lives in every day.
3. Automatic suspension. When a plan expires unpaid, the subscriber is throttled or suspended automatically and restored as soon as they pay. This one feature often pays for the entire stack.
4. CPE management (TR-069). Change Wi-Fi names and passwords, push firmware and diagnose lines remotely, instead of sending a technician.
5. Monitoring. Know a link or an OLT is down before customers start calling.
6. Helpdesk. Every complaint gets a ticket, an owner and a deadline.

Compliance you can’t skip

• Subscriber KYC. Collect a customer acquisition form and identity proof for every connection.
• Log retention. Keep logs that tie IP addresses to subscribers, including NAT logs if customers share public IPs. CERT-In’s 2022 directions require ICT system logs to be kept for 180 days, within India.
• Lawful interception readiness, as your licence conditions require.
• GST invoicing on every bill.

What to set up, and when

Your first 100 subscribers. The licence or a franchise, an upstream link, a router that can terminate PPPoE, RADIUS, and a billing system with automatic suspension. Put billing in place from day one: moving 500 customers off a spreadsheet later is painful and error-prone.

100 to 1,000. Add TR-069 CPE management and a helpdesk. By now support, not bandwidth, is your bottleneck.

1,000 to 10,000. Dedicated BNG capacity, monitoring with alerts, peering, and tools for your field team.

Mistakes we see new ISPs make

• Running billing on spreadsheets and suspending users by hand.
• Not keeping session and NAT logs from the start.
• Buying CPE that cannot be managed remotely.
• Tying everything to one vendor’s hardware, so changing routers later means starting over.
• Treating customer support as an afterthought.

Where we fit

We build the software side of this stack. ISP Subscriber System handles RADIUS/AAA, plans, GST billing and automatic suspension. CPE Controller manages routers and ONTs over TR-069. Next Gen Hotspot runs public Wi-Fi if you offer it too. They run on our cloud or on your own servers, and our Software BNG is on the way.