past vs future use

On Sun, 29 Jun 1997, Stephen Sprunk wrote:

> The fact is 80% of ISPs fail in one year.  There is also another
> oft-ignored fact: NOBODY EVER RECLAIMS DELEGATIONS.  This means that the

80% in their first year?  What black hole did you pull that figure from?

> The expected procedure for a new ISP is thus:
> 
> 1. Connect to an upstream provider
> 2. Obtain some PA IPs from that provider
> 3. Efficiently assign those IPs to your customers OR do a bunch of
>    fake SWIPs that make it look like you're efficient
> 4. Repeat 2 and 3 until you have ~8192 PA IPs
> 5. Trade in your PA IPs for a /19 allocation
> 6. Make every customer you have renumber

That't the normal way for an ISP to "grow up"...but what about ISP's that
start out with deep pockets?  Say you just sold a long distance company or
string of video rental stores and decide to start up a regional ISP with
multiple connections to the net on day 1, etc.  What if you decide instead
to start up a new backbone company that plans to sell connectivity to
ISP's?  Do you sell connections to small handful of customers telling them
you'll be renumbering them in a few weeks? 

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