Does anyone know the rough economics of router manufacturing? At what quantity could you get reasonable enough prices to sell it at an acceptable (to consumers) premium?
Build your own, only open hardware (if that's even feasable..soooo much closed stuff) and sell as EFF approved/privacy friendly whatever. EFF probably has enough brand recognition with the right folks to pull it off as a sponsor or something.
Seems like a couple of million kickstarter or similar project to me. Especially if they also serve the non-US market which is currently rather security/privacy concerned.
[unfortunately I know very little about hardware cost/closednes but last time I did a rough check it seems like somewhat of a nightmare field to be in]
Edit: Heck YC could think about opening a spot specifically for a startup that improves privacy (i.e. open wifi router). After all they did enter the nonprofit market. Seems like a reasonable PR/goodwill move.
Router boards these days are a commodity, with all the available consumer access points using the same SoC and hardware on a different PCB with their own plastic case.
A single SoC often provides 1) MIPS processor, 2) Ethernet MAC, 3) Switch in ASIC, 4) WiFi MAC
You can buy off-the-shelf complete systems ready to be dropped in a plastic case, or even complete (and very commodity) systems: http://routerboard.com/
I'd love to see a RaspberryPi-style approach to home access points using the popular MIPS SoCs, with pfsense (https://pfsense.org/).
Build your own, only open hardware (if that's even feasable..soooo much closed stuff) and sell as EFF approved/privacy friendly whatever. EFF probably has enough brand recognition with the right folks to pull it off as a sponsor or something.
Seems like a couple of million kickstarter or similar project to me. Especially if they also serve the non-US market which is currently rather security/privacy concerned.
[unfortunately I know very little about hardware cost/closednes but last time I did a rough check it seems like somewhat of a nightmare field to be in]
Edit: Heck YC could think about opening a spot specifically for a startup that improves privacy (i.e. open wifi router). After all they did enter the nonprofit market. Seems like a reasonable PR/goodwill move.