I say setting up a new ISP, but I've sort of decided against reinventing the wheel, unless I have too. You see, when I started out wanting to do this, I was told that it wasn't possible to set up a service for the village and that if we were to be accepted onto the portal to offer a service, we would have to offer it to the entire region. Things are changing though, so our plans have changed also.

The change has come with respect to offering services via the portal to specific communities. That will now be a possibility soon, so it's almost as if we can scratch a lot of the work already done and concentrate on the mission, which is to raise money for the community.

Rather than set up an ISP to run on the entire network, with the introduction of location based offerings, we can very much build a service just for our village and if that service is used by the customers in the village, then the profits from that service can go back into the village and can be used in whichever way people want to use it.

So, as of today, it is very much a case of Skellefteå Kraft, the network owner, saying we can do this. I hope they do and sort of expect them too as they are the ones building this feature into their portal, but I am slowly learning that things don't always happen as you would hope in Sweden. If they do say yes however, I'm just going to have to wait until this facility is put onto their portal and I will then be able to add the service and promote the idea locally.

While we are still waiting for the yes from Skellefteå Kraft, I have been asked how much will be made and while we can't say for sure as we do not know how many people will sign up, we can say that we would hope to generate approximately 600Kr per year per customer that signed up and when you multiply that figure by the approximate number of customers in the village it equates to approximately 60,000Kr a year, although I also expect not all will sign up.

Not only does this sound good, but if Skellefteå Kraft say yes, it will also mean a reduction in what most of the people in the village actually pay each month with their existing service provider, so it appears that it is a win (customer) - win (community) situation all round. Probably too good to be true but I'm keeping fingers and toes crossed that Skellefteå Kraft say we can do this.