How to start an RSP in Australia
The roadmap: three napkins, twelve corners
Starting an RSP isn't one big problem. It's twelve medium-sized ones, and the order you solve them in matters. Here's the whole map.
Last time I said I was done drawing napkins. Now let’s actually unfold them.
Starting an RSP isn’t one big problem. It’s twelve medium-sized problems that all interact with each other, and the order you solve them in matters more than most people think. Get the order wrong and you’ll build a beautiful billing system for a product you’re not allowed to sell, or sign a capacity commitment before you know your margin.
So here’s the whole map, before we go deep on any of it.
Napkin 1: The groundwork (can you even do this?)
This is everything you sort out before you build anything. It’s the least exciting napkin and the one that sinks the most people.
Top left: build or resell, and can you legally do it? The first fork in the road. Are you building a network or reselling one? That single decision drives your legal obligations, your capital, your margins and your risk. Then the rules: ACMA, the TIO, the TCP Code, record-keeping. Not hard, but the traps are quiet and expensive.
Top right: the pipes. Transit, peering, backhaul, and the big call: go direct to NBN, or sit behind an aggregator. Get this wrong and you’re either drowning in capacity risk or bleeding margin.
Bottom left: the money. Pricing, cost of goods, CVC, cashflow. Where the margin actually lives, and where it quietly leaks out. This is the corner that kills people in year one.
Bottom right: who does the work. What genuinely needs a human, what you outsource, what an AI agent can do now, and what can wait. Most new RSPs are one burnt-out founder doing all four corners at 2am.
Napkin 2: Building the machine (systems before a single customer)
Once you know you can do it and you can make money doing it, you build the machine.
- Website and customer-facing presence. Address checks, sign-up, the stuff the customer actually sees.
- Billing and BSS. The system that turns services into invoices and invoices into cash. Get this wrong and nothing else matters.
- OSS and provisioning. The automation layer between “customer clicked buy” and “customer has internet.”
- Support and ticketing. How faults get logged, tracked, escalated and fixed.
Napkin 3: Now you’re trading (live, and getting customers)
- Day one: the going-live checklist. What has to be true before you take a real customer’s money.
- Marketing and sales. How to compete when you can’t win on price, because you won’t.
- Support and operations. The 2am call, escalation paths, SLAs, and keeping your sanity.
- Scaling and what comes next. The stuff you only learn 15 years in.
Why this order
Each napkin depends on the one before it. You can’t price until you know your pipes. You can’t build billing until you know what you’re selling. And you shouldn’t take a customer until the machine is built.
Thinking about starting an RSP? Grab a napkin. We’ll fill in the first one over the next month.