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Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes

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Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gotta pay your fair share, so it can be granted out for someone elses gain

This is literally how societies function - you contribute a small amount to the general pool, you use small amounts from the general pool. In some cases bigger chunks go for bigger works like ISPs or bridges. I certainly hope you don't want a world where every road, bridge and traffic light is independently owned.

Well, there is a lot of legal graft in society

Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes

#102
post #66

This seems like a fun project to work on but what is the financial game here? Does he invest in building the network, operate at a loss and then sell to someone like Comcast? I assume building a remote fiber network that can reach 600 houses has to incur huge CapEx (way more than $2.6M right?) and at $50/mo a very long payback period. However it works, pretty awesome project, kudos.

Its a misleading title. Govt 'built ISP', this guy led the effort.

Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes

#103
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today you help finance someone’s fiber, tomorrow they help finance your hospital/fire dept/etc, that’s the whole idea of public works.

Sounds more like how crony politics for personal gain works. Alternatively, you could finance the hospital, fire depart, or whatever without an middle man siphoning off "their fair share"

Alternatively, you could finance the hospital, fire depart, or whatever without an middle man siphoning off "their fair share"

This has already been tried. People used to subscribe to fire service, or ambulance service. It doesn't work, and is also bad for society.

If you want people to only use the things they directly pay for, and not pay for shared things through taxes, then only drive on your own driveway. Don't drive on any roads outside of your cul-de-sac. Don't get your Amazon order delivered on state and federally-funded highways. Don't fly out of any big airport in America. Don't fly on any commercial airline, since they have all received taxpayer bailouts in the past. Don't use a bank. Don't use money. Hire a security guard to protect your property, and another one to follow you around every day. Get your water from a well on your own property.

For an 88-day-old account to be this stunningly obtuse, I'm going with "troll," rather than "genuinely completely oblivious to how the world works."

Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes

#104
post #83
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on how close they are he could run cables (ethernet) or fiber. Single mode fiber can go 10km according to some Ubiquiti spec sheets I found on google. Ubiquiti also sells AirMax products that can do PTP or PTMP over the air, although some will be affected by rain. They could even rent space from a radio/cell tower. There are probably a decent amount of other products out there I am only familiar with Ubiqui…

You can shoot light over SM at distances up to 200km (several important caveats at this distance) and it’s very usual to see spans of between 50-80km.

Looking further you can get a UFiber OLT Terminal for $1,799 that can run 20km and support 1024 clients or 128 ONU CPEs per port.

How much would a 200km switch run?

Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes

#105
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does spending a lot of government money make goods and service more expensive? EDIT: At least here in Western Europe, we mostly have a supply side inflation, because energy got a lot more expensive, not because the government has been "printing" a lot of money. I suspect it's the same in the US.

Yes, inflation is currently a world-wide issue, and explanations at the world level lead somewhat obviously to the pandemic and Russia's invasion of the Ukraine. But here in the USA, people like to believe it must be political and local, completely unrelated to the totally-coincidental worldwide issue that happens to be very similar.

>But, here in the USA people like to believe it must be political...

Cool, whats your prognoses for effectiveness of the Reduce Inflation Act

Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes

#107
post #7

> Comcast once told him it would charge $50,000 to extend its cable network to his house—and that he would have gone with Comcast if they only wanted $10,000. Starts his own company and finds out it costs $30,000 to do it. You need big trucks, drills, excavating equipment, skilled union workers making good wages, safety concerns around water, gas, sewer, electrical and other communication lines, you can't mess up peo…

The correct price in cities is $10 a month. The correct price in rural areas is $500 a month plus. But we have to average them because we insist on taxing cities to subsidise rural lifestyles...

The funny thing is I'd be totally okay paying $500/mo for good Internet service outside the city. The problem with this is that even in the city where Comcast has it's headquarters they will lie to you and then not show up at the agreed upon time scheduled 3 months in advance /and paid for/, then try to blame you for it and take no accountability. Which is exactly what Comcast did when I tried to get connected in my move last month. So, sure, organizations have Product teams that focus on pricing strategy, and part of that is amortizing capital costs to serve those customers and also averaging out the per-customer cost of service, but a bigger issue is that Comcast is just really bad at doing it's supposed job.

I wish there was a rural fiber or muni fiber project near me that I could subscribe to, and I'd happily pay 3x-4x what I pay Comcast, if I had some assurance that the person on the other end of the phone would actually keep their commitments and know what they are doing.

Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes

#108
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The little guy in Michigan also doesn't own the NBC broadcasting network, theme parks... Comcast didn't make $42B off it's cable subscribers.

You should check their quarterly earnings I think you would be shocked. In the second quarter Cable and Broadband account for 7.4 Billion in profit, and have a profit margin near 50%. NBC Universal only accounts for 1.9 Billion and their theme parks are 632 Million. By far cable is the largest driver of profit. https://www.cmcsa.com/news-releases/news-release-details/com...

No post body was provided.

Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes

#110
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today you help finance someone’s fiber, tomorrow they help finance your hospital/fire dept/etc, that’s the whole idea of public works.

Sounds more like how crony politics for personal gain works. Alternatively, you could finance the hospital, fire depart, or whatever without an middle man siphoning off "their fair share"

So if you want to see this theory in action go to developing countries with an elite ruling class where they don't disperse funds to social works and see how nice it is, behold their lame GDP, etc.

The country I live in SE Asia is a good example. It's quite libertarian out here and yeah being able to pay for private hospitals is nice, but generally speaking your quality of life is lower, quality of goods is lower, average person is less educated, traffic is a crippling problem due to poor planning, it goes on and on. And despite labor being super cheap, roads are a mess, sidewalks are few and far between and if you do get one it's crowded with junk.. Only 10% of the country pays taxes, the inequality with the rich is massive, and if you're not in the top 1% you're basically a poor.

I recommend everyone in a rich english speaking country spending at least a year or two living in a developing country to get some perspective

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