Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 439 posts

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

#271

Post by jrajav »

asiachick wrote: post #243
jrajav wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So taxpayer dollars are necessary to make this business viable, and the product of that business is something that, realistically, everyone absolutely needs access to - certainly seems like this should not be a private business at all but a public utility. Have we ever asked this kind of question for interstate highways?

given the state of the roads and streets in most places in the usa I have very little confidence that public internet will keep up with maintenance, upgrading the equipment to the lastest speeds and standards every 5 yrs. Commercial ISPs have issues and they should not be given local monopolies but even shitty Comcast is better today than it was yesterday. The same is not true of most of the roads in my state.

I disagree with you on the basis that I can get in my car right now and be confident that I'll be able to drive with speed and safety to any city on the map, and that when I get there I'll be able to drink the tap water and to plug my electronics into any wall socket without them getting fried. Maybe some local municipalities aren't that great at keeping up with their last-mile pothole maintenance, and maybe that should be an issue the locals prioritize more when choosing their representatives - but that doesn't represent the average experience.

But also, we're already talking about publicly funded infrastructure. We've subsidized broadband to every home multiple times by now, and we still continue to write those checks. Maybe if we want it to be private we should actually enforce that and then see how it goes.

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

#272

Post by connorlads »

supernova87a wrote: post #241

I greatly respect the initiative and scrappy-ness of someone doing this. And the legacy providers are clearly sitting on their monopoly position in a way that makes their pathetic alternative so starkly unattractive. But isn't it also true that once his network grows above a certain customer base (and gets into the maintenance phase), he will start to see all the effects that eat into being able to do this cheaply? N…

Not sure how Canada compares but these concerns haven't stopped the biggest telecoms in Canada from providing subpar service under very restrictive terms and conditions with no accountability. Namely, a 12 hour complete outage by Rogers to which the reply was basically a big shrug. If they can get away with that I am sure a small independant provider can get away with that as well.

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

#273

Post by fragmede »

treesknees wrote: post #152
guywithahat wrote: post #145

Isn't this just called starting a business? Don't get me wrong it's very cool but this just seems like the thing people should do when there isn't enough competition in the market

He did start an LLC but it's not a business in the sense that he's hiring a corporate structure around it or kicking up VC funding, or even trying to make a profit. It's admirable because how many other ISPs can you point to with this model? I can't think of any.

Most small local ISPs are like this, a labor of love, not something who’s singular purpose is to make the owners unimaginably rich. Cruzio, in Santa Cruz, and MonkeyBrainz in San Francisco come to mind.

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

#274

Post by asiachick »

ViViDboarder wrote: post #269
asiachick wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

given the state of the roads and streets in most places in the usa I have very little confidence that public internet will keep up with maintenance, upgrading the equipment to the lastest speeds and standards every 5 yrs. Commercial ISPs have issues and they should not be given local monopolies but even shitty Comcast is better today than it was yesterday. The same is not true of most of the roads in my state.

My experience is a bit different. The roads where I live (San Francisco) are better than my AT&T options. Roads here seem to be repaved every 5-10 years and AT&T still doesn’t offer a plan that the FCC would classify as broadband to my house.

I don't know what parts of sf you're referring to but my experience of sf is it's pothole hell. Market, Misson, anything between market and van Ness, and plenty of others

to add, I lived on the east coast in the 80s and I found some fellow Californians where we co commiserated about how shitty the roads were in Baltimore and how nice they were in southern Orange County but now I drive though southern Orange County and the roads are clearly in need of repair.

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

#275

Post by ericd »

toast0 wrote: post #193
ericd wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, have you considered buying some conduit and renting a trenching machine and giving the driveway portion a go yourself? Might be worth talking over that option with the muni fiber people. Though sounds like the overhead portion would still be $$$.

I've considered it, but I suspect it might end up like bombcar's experience with cutting buried lines. I'm not much of a digger for the manual work either. And there's a seasonal creek to cross which seems like a lot of fun. I'm not too worried about the overhead portion; in theory, I could group with neighbors and we all pay a share, or I could pay it and consider it a goodwill gesture to my neighbors; they wouldn't…

Well, you'd probably start by getting Miss Utility to come out and mark your lines. I think bombcar's point was that you care a lot more about not cutting those than any contractor will, and so you're less likely to do it.

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

#276

Post by hinkley »

I knew a couple who did similar in Seattle. They all got gobbled up one by one, sometimes by Speakeasy, who in turn was gobbled up by others. Briefly theirs was owned by an east coast company which sucked because they had east coast tech support. If your internet went down binge watching a show at 9 pm you were done for the evening because their people were in bed.

I would not recommend doing this business with a spouse. They did not make it for many reasons, but running a 24/7 interest sped up all of their problems. Not unlike a vacation that is going poorly, but every month.

Also fuck Covad. They only had to suck less than Centurylink nėe Qwest and they couldn’t manage that.

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

#277

Post by mtnGoat »

H1Supreme wrote: post #203

> 1Gbps with unlimited data for $79 a month Wow, sign me up. Comcast, which has a monopoly on my market, charges me a few bucks more per month, for 150mbps.

I use a smaller ISP in Washington state and my 1G symmetrical line just went from $79 to $59 a month and they increased my upload, it used to not be symmetrical.

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

#278

Post by fragmede »

jquery wrote: post #202

Meanwhile I live in San Francisco and I still can’t get affordable symmetric gigabit fiber internet to my home.

More frustrating is to chart how close you actually are to gigabyte symmetric. AT&T and Sonic has wired up large parts of the city but if they don't serve you, it's often by just a block or two, depending on where you are in the city. Rumor has it that local ISP MonkeyBrains is also getting in on the fiber game.

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

#279

Post by londons_explore »

missedthecue wrote: post #234
capableweb wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The costs for internet in the US still surprises me, how on earth can it be so expensive?! I understand some countries, but in the US, it seems high costs are because "because we can", not because it has to be like that. In comparison, you get 1 Gbps symmetric fiber connection in most countries in Europe for under ~$30/month. In some, you even get it for under $10/month (like Romania, which has surprisingly awesome i…

Comcast has 189,000 employees who make US salaries. It costs a lot less to dig a trench in Romania than in Seattle. You can look at the profit margins. 11.3% for Comcast as of June 2022. That tells me they aren't simply collecting the difference between US and Romanian internet prices in profit. Of course, far be it from me to defend Comcast, but this is basically just the concept of purchasing power parity (PPP)

I'm gonna bet the Romanian ISP has fewer employees per subscriber and fewer employees per mile of fiber.

Businesses without competition get fat.

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

#280

Post by chriscappuccio »

supernova87a wrote: post #241

I greatly respect the initiative and scrappy-ness of someone doing this. And the legacy providers are clearly sitting on their monopoly position in a way that makes their pathetic alternative so starkly unattractive. But isn't it also true that once his network grows above a certain customer base (and gets into the maintenance phase), he will start to see all the effects that eat into being able to do this cheaply? N…

With a fiber based service he would be getting very few calls
Post reply on HN