There is a good interview on YouTube with Jared Mauch. I think it may have already been posted on Hacker News previously, but I have included the link below for anyone interested.
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
#282I find it a little weird and off putting that thierprivate business is having its expansion funded by state funds for coronavirus recovery. I get that this is generally a good thing, and many ISPs, especially the smaller ones, receive government funds for developing and maintaining infrastructure. However, why is the Coronavirus recovery fund paying for this?
Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
The actual price they are offering seems to be $55 or $79/month + ~$200 installation fee. Also missing in your calculation, is a $30/month subsidy from FCCs "Affordable Connectivity Program". I didn't make the calculation myself, but a sub-10 year horizon for a project someone seems to do from the goodness of their heart, doesn't seem so bad.
Including the installation fee and $30/mo subsidy (I am assuming this means the price he receives is $30 higher than the one customers pay), my quick math shows it would take a bit over 71 months (almost 6 years) to hit $2.6M in total revenue. However, that assumes literally every customer chooses the $55/month plan, if everyone chose the $79/mo plan, it would take almost 51 months, or a bit over 4 years (obviously t…
You're also assuming a 100% conversion rate, in terms of homes being wired for access. That's a pretty big assumption!
Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes
#284My wife did this, about 6 months of digging up roads in central London. Would recommend. AMA.
How long did it take to complete? Central London seems like high density, how many users do you have? Can you share website, I can forward to some central London folks!
Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
My university’s is number 2; is there any significance to that?
Is your university among these? https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/...
(Not the guy you replied to, but) it's not, unless I am missing it. ASN 2 is University of Delaware. You can search for yourself at whois.arin.net, just type a number in the search bar in the upper right.
Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
My university’s is number 2; is there any significance to that?
Is your university among these? https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/...
University of Delaware, per this: https://dnschecker.org/asn-whois-lookup.php?query=AS2
So, not on that map, but it was part of ARPANET by the time the TCP/IP protocol was introduced in 1983[0], per this map: https://www.historyofinformation.com/image.php?id=6456
[0]: https://blog.google/inside-google/googlers/marking-birth-of-...
Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes
#287>"I have at least two homes where I have to build a half-mile to get to one house," Mauch said, noting that it will cost "over $30,000 for each of those homes to get served."
is this really a valuable use of taxpayer money? sending a wireless link over a half-mile isn't that difficult, surely there's a better way to spend $60k of public money than delivering internet service to two families. especially now that starlink exists.
i'm all in favour of scrappy upstart ISPs, but this just seems wasteful.
Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes
#288This is kind of an interesting illustration of how little people know about how the internet works, and how news is ultimately entertainment.
Full respect to the man in the article for the hard work and initiative he took in starting a small independent ISP, but this story is the story of thousands of small ISPs in the US and many more around the world.
In a basic sense, this story is not "newsworthy" since there is nothing new about it. It's more of a human interest piece, like if the reporter wrote a story about the lady who started a coffee shop after being overcharged for a Frappuccino.
I'm guessing this ISP has gotten more attention here and on Ars Technica than others because the founder is fluent in the software engineering world, as well as having started an ISP. Ironically there is a pretty big gulf between the world of techies who know how to write the code on the internet and the people who actually build the internet who are more blue collar.
Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes
#289> 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.
> charges me a few bucks more per month, for 150mbps
And, in my experience, they will slowly ratchet up the cost until you call in and complain or change your plan, so a negotiated 80 dollars slowly can become 160+
Re: Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes
#290Earlier 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…
On the more measurable side I would imagine the cost of lines correlates with population density. Running wires to 100 single family homes is way more expensive than running the wires to a district of apartment buildings
Depends on how old the apartment buildings are. If the apartment buildings themselves are already wired with fiber (or really good, recent coax) it might be a lot cheaper running a single bundle of wires to services the building. (Keep in mind that ideally you still have one fiber wire per apartment to sell the highest speeds to each apartment, so you aren't necessarily saving on number of cables for 100 apartments versus 100 detached single-family homes.)
Of course, the older the buildings are the more expensive it gets. Running a new line into a single family home is usually a single new hole from the local utility trench or utility pole, which often have existing rights of way and known contact points to do utility work. Running new lines in an apartment complex often requires opening walls and ceilings between, among, and inside units, which then consequentially means doing new drywall and repainting (and maybe high costs to color match historic paints). If the apartments are condos there's even more complex rights of way issues in needing to get the consent of individual unit owners for some of the work.