Romania has 14.3M (1) Internet users for an active population of 9.2M (2)

As the same time, about 98% of the population has mobile phone coverage (which implies some form of data access) with terminals that can be had for 0 upfront cost and ~10€ per month subscription with very large traffic allowance. Telekom (previous Romtelecom) can offer DSL services in most villages where a phone exchange is present.

Corruption or not, its probably a bad idea to start a wireless Internet provider in Romania because it already has excellent commodity connectivity virtually everywhere.

1. https://www.internetworldstats.com/europa.htm 2. https://www.romania-insider.com/romania-active-population-do...

That is the situation for cities, yes. On villages is another dimension. Broadcast is almost non-existent and everybody is relying on mobile. The few that have Digi (that's the actual former Romtelecom) are a drop in a bucket. As corruption is rampart, those on villages that require constant high speed connection usually bribe some city hall workers to let them get a fiber from the city hall to their house. The big majority of people, like I said, rely on cell data by doing hot-spots with them, and that gives them most of the time 3G due to weakness of the signal. Romania has coverage over its territory, but just enough to allow you to call an ambulance or police, but to rely a country side business like a farm that sell its products over internet that's not happening. We all wait to see what happens with 5G, and see wtf is the outcome of the current trade war US/China and most importantly to see from where to get 5G equipment for infrastructure. Huwaei is currently the incontestable leader of 5G tech but with shots fired from US govt. against it, and due to Romania being in NATO and having a US military presence we can't really just say "you know what? we'll get 5G from Huwaei". On the other side we are part of EU and current movement is to kinda ignore Trump and the trade war (see EU stance vis-a-vis Iran issue) and most big telecom companies from France/Germany do have talk with Huwaei. So we, a small fish, are caught between a rock and a hard place...and we wait...and we started to fall behind.

That being said, a WISP for villages would definitely has its place in current situation.

You are rambling and the situation you are describing is nonsensical and not related to anything that is going on in Romania.

Telekom is the former Romtelecom.a quick Google search should clarify that for you.

Coverage in Romania is 98% mandated to all operators by law and regularly checked (http://www.ancom.org.ro/en/ancom-has-verified-the-coverage-o...)

Bribing a city Hall worker for fiber Internet connection is again made up. City halls and all other institutions in Romania are not connected to the regular Internet, the connectivity is provided by STS (Special Telecommunications Services) to a private government network. In remote villages this is provided over satellite or radio link. Regular Internet is purchased by the local authorities from local providers (as needed) and is the same service that would be available to anyone else.

If you would run a local farm, do not host your eCommerce site using the available bandwidth, do it in the cloud, that's what grown ups do.

Please provide sources for your claims and do start a WISP if you want to address the rest of the population 2-10%, spread out over a country the size of UK.

Sounds like the perfect place for a bribe transparency website to name and shame officals that take bribes.

The thing about name and shame websites is how easily they are gamed.

Also I wouldnt host any of it within the same country.

Ironic, because this kind of neighborhood ISP scheme was how Romania got a good foothold on internet connectivity in the 1990s, according to my Romanian friends who remember the period.

Yes, 90's were Wild West for Romania. We had no legislation hence a lot of stuff could and was done by ignoring the state. Those in charge were more busy selling stuff to fill their pockets then legislating. And all those neighborhood networks eventually merged so right now in Romania, on any given city, you can have a maximum of 3 ISP to chose from. We still do have good internet but we are starting to fall behind and soon I'm afraid I'll see here the same situation that is in US as in one ISP on any given zone and crappy internet speed.

I'm in Bucharest, and on UPS. Since I'm from the UK, frankly, the price and quality (speed, uptime, etc.) are a continuing marvel to me.

Weird, I'd imagine the ubiquitous and insanely cheap pole fiber would be a much bigger problem for WISPs in Romania than the corruption.

Seems like it would be very hard to make a profit unless you can find hundreds of customers close to each other who are willing to pay unusually high prices for internet connectivity.