Hello
So You Want to Be an ISP in the South of France?
(a public service FAQ)
Part 5: Can it be Done?
Any Anglo-American type who has ever lived in France (and I mean really lived in France), will tell you that the unofficial motto of the French Economic Structure is "Vous ne pouvez pas faire ça". This is easily translated by "you can't do that". It's a good lesson for us free-market types to assimilate early on.
There is an up side to this. The budding entrepreneur need only remember the 'other' unofficial motto when dealing with l'administration, suppliers, clients, landlords, electricians and others: "Bien sur, mais ça va coûter" or "of course, but it's going to cost."
(And don't forget to look both ways before crossing.)
ISP-in-France Startup Checklist
Here's what seems to me to be a strict minimum of necessary steps to create an ISP in France (once the startup capital has been obtained):
- Create a basic French
corporation.
The least painful form is called an SARL, which is like an American Subchapter S Corporation with most of the advantages stripped away.You will need a lawyer for this, really.
You will also need:
- a copy of your birth certificate issued within the last 3 months if
you are a non-EU citizen. (When I was asked for mine, the US government
was closed down for budgetary reasons. A helpful administrateur proposed
that I fill out Form EC-1088dc-900 "Request for Permission to Submit a
Forged Birth Certificate" and Form EC-11922yy-200 "Official Forged
Birth Certificate Template", but the US government came back on-line
before this turned out to be necessary.)
- A minimum of 50 000 ff (10,000U$) to place in an official escrow
account in the name of the new corporation, as a show of good faith and
intentions. If you commit yourself into an asylum in the ensuing months
in which you attempt to create your business (for reasons which should be
obvious by now), the money is squirreled away on your behalf in a vault
in the Catacombs and added to the year's GDP total. When you are
released, you only need fill out form Form EC-9688aaax-5 "Request for
Permission to Recover Escrow Funds Contributed to the GDP" and Form
ARG-525t-9999 "Names of Next of Kin Still Young Enough To Probably Be
Alive When the Funds Are Released".
- A medical certificate stating that you are in good enough health to
create jobs.
- A strong writing hand (to fill out the forms, sacré bleu!).
- Three months of patience and serenity while the Machine goes into
motion. If this doesn't drive you crazy (see above), at least it gives
you lots of time to get some other ducks in a row. Such as...
- Find a place
A SARL can be setup in its founder's garage, but only for the first two years of its existence. In the case of I-Link, that created a problem for France Telecom, who was not willing to install all those telco lines in a residence (the official explanation was "you can't do that.")
This wasn't a big issue since we were seeing ourselves as Internet ambassadors to la France profonde. We would be inviting our mayor, prefet, and other assorted dignitaries to our headquarters and we wanted them to feel that they were, well, witnessing the Future.
Our garage does not resemble the Future at all.
- Order the phone lines
Have I presented France Telecom (FT), the French telephone monopoly. Oh, yes, of course I have. They even have a web site.
Like l'Administration, FT has been cosseted and impermeable since its creation at the beginning of the 11th century. A major difference though is that the European Union has decreed, in the interest of all its citizens, that on the 1st of January, 1998, there will be no more telecom monopolies in Europe. Until about 12 months ago, everybody in France and in FT thought that this was a big joke, hah, hah, hah. Now that everyone realizes that it's not a joke, we are all witness to a painful coming-of-age. (Painful for FT, at least. The rest of us can't hardly wait.)
Since FT is a recurring theme in the Internet business in France, we won't say anymore for the moment. But if you just sold your POP in the States to get up the booty for the POP you want to start in France, you should know that for the price of the T1 you had over there, you won't even get a 64k over here.
- Walk the walk, talk the talk
Since you can't rightfully buy equipment until your SARL is created, you have three months to window shop. The key words here are 'use them wisely'. It is a time for learning and reflection.
My best advice, if you do decide that the pursuit of wisdom is better than the alternatives, is to read David Dennis' ISP FAQ. It was not, of course, written for a French ISP audience (wrong language, wrong telco, wrong way of getting things done), but you really shouldn't attempt anything until you've read it three or four times.
Since I-Link was starting out as a small regional service and access provider in la France profonde, we were able to scale down our wish list to reasonable proportions. Since then, we've glimpsed how the big guys (with the multi-homed T3's and ATM switches) do it, and our eyes glaze over.
But given our ambition (modest on the planetary scale), our physical location (local calls are expensive, non-local calls are exorbitant), our culturegeist (the semi-big guys in Europe start with a 128k, but for us it was 64k), and our business plan (be prepared to offer lots of different Internet services until we understood what the French Internet community wants and needs) we settled on our entry-level plan:
- Chief machine: SGI Indy with the Webforce package
- My machine: Mac PowerPC 7500/100/48/1g
- The 'other' machine: Pentium 133/24/1g
- Access server/router: Cisco 2511
- Twelve external modems
- And kilometers of cable, wiring blocks, hubs, and all the other usual suspects.
