Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes • Hacker News Board

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

#291

Post by basedgod » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 6:18 PM UTC

great another example of abusing public taxpayer dollars to subsidize rural homes that shouldnt exist

infrastructure outside of dense towns is unsustainable with the extremely low amount in taxes rural areas pay

these people do not deserve the same standard of living as those in sustainable areas

subsidize them to move to urban areas, not their lifestyle that uses 20x the infrastructure load an urbanite does

Amerika can't keep building out the same levels of roads utilities and municipal water to rural areas as it does to cities. this standard of living does not scale. it is not sustainable.

if you don't believe me, go look at 100 year infrastructure costs once a suburb needs replacing. this is why every town in America is failing

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

#292

Post by floren » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 6:19 PM UTC

jrajav wrote: post #237

boplicity wrote: post #226

He's getting $2.6 million to set up access to 417 homes. That works out to $6,235 per home. At $55 per month, it would take 113 months, or over 9 years just to get $2.6 million in revenue. Horrible economics! What a crazy business to be in. No wonder grants like this are necessary.

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?

The Grant County Public Utility District in eastern Washington (and presumably PUDs elsewhere in the nation) did exactly that. They built a fiber network throughout the county (physically large but pretty sparsely-populated), although they don't provide service directly to customers--instead, a healthy number of local ISPs still exist in the area. If fiber isn't at your house yet, there are also a few WISPs, which were easy to stand up because of the fiber.

https://www.grantpud.org/getfiber

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

#293

Post by jedberg » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 6:22 PM UTC

dimitrios1 wrote: post #266

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…

> -- customers who don't behave as well or kindly as before Easy. Refuse service. You aren't legally obligated to offer your service to assholes. Any business has the right to do or not do business with whoever they want, provided they’re not refusing service for a reason that violates local, state, or federal law. > -- customers who need 24 hour customer service Also easy. You are under no obligation to meet peoples…

Right, but that's OPs point. If he does what you say, he's no better than Comcast, ignoring customers and telling them to screw themselves at the first sign of trouble.

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

#294

Post by jleahy » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 6:23 PM UTC

KingFelix wrote: post #284

jleahy wrote: post #206

My 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!

Less than 12 months from incorporating a company to go live, about 6 months of that was road works.

Low hundreds of homes (so low probability that you know anyone there, and if you do they have already heard about it).

https://www.linkedin.com/mwlite/company/hampstead-fibre

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

#295

Post by WorldMaker » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 6:25 PM UTC

tikiman163 wrote: post #282

I 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?

In this specific case there is an easy answer (mentioned in the article): Access to reasonably priced broadband internet was seen as one of the biggest, most easily addressable (with targeted government infrastructure funding) dividing lines between people that were able to easily work from home and those that experienced larger hardships during the height of the pandemic.

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

#296

Post by s1artibartfast » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 6:30 PM UTC

the_watcher wrote: post #262

capableweb wrote: post #238

Earlier 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 are completely ignoring any operating costs. For all we know monthly profit could be negative, and not 100%.

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

#297

Post by mrb » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 6:30 PM UTC

"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."

That's over $11 per feet. That sounds about right. I paid $18 per feet to have a private fiber optic line of 1000 feet installed at one of my houses (in the US), going down a very long driveway, with 3 patch panels, 2 at each end and one in the middle at a gate. That was just for my LAN, not internet access. I needed the link to hook up intercoms and security cameras. I absolutely wanted 100% reliability of the network link, so wireless solutions wouldn't have been adequate. The previous homeowner had buried a cat5e line in the first 500 feet, with a cat5e repeater (underground), but its electronics failed after a couple years and its exact location couldn't be found. And he had not even put the cable in conduit.

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

#298

Post by lotsofpulp » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 6:30 PM UTC

dimitrios1 wrote: post #266

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…

> -- customers who don't behave as well or kindly as before Easy. Refuse service. You aren't legally obligated to offer your service to assholes. Any business has the right to do or not do business with whoever they want, provided they’re not refusing service for a reason that violates local, state, or federal law. > -- customers who need 24 hour customer service Also easy. You are under no obligation to meet peoples…

>I think people don't understand just how profitable municipal broadband can be.

Operating the network might be profitable. Recouping installation costs are not, when Comcast and other coaxial cable internet providers are sitting there ready to undercut you the second you enter the market. Unfortunately, sufficient customers are not willing to pay more for a reliable symmetric fiber connection yet over whatever the cable company is offering with meager upload.

Also, I assume you mean fiber when you wrote “municipal broadband”. I thought municipal broadband refers to taxpayer funded internet networks, where there would be no profit required (and hence is the only alternative to getting a better internet connection than the cable company).

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

#299

Post by welterde » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 6:32 PM UTC

jeremyjh wrote: post #263

welterde wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The subsidy is for the company though and not this specific fiber run, which was a sort of worst-case. The company is quite limited in geographical scope, so they got a fairly small subsidy, while Starlink is much larger in scope and thus got a larger one. Also that fiber run will remain useful for far longer than the Starlink satellites. It's pretty much a one-time cost with negligible operating cost, whereas Starli…

One way or another, tax payers spent $30K on a fiber run to one house. Yes, they spent less on some other ones too. The indirection just increases cost insensitivity.

It's all about averages though. Some people will be cheap to connect, while others will be expensive to connect. And the subsidies are most likely written in a way, such that the ISPs can't only go for the low-hanging fruit.

Same with Starlink on a bigger scale. Some ground station will have more people near them than others (absent satellite to satellite comms). Some orbits will be used by more people than others..

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

#300

Post by mattnewton » Wed, Aug 10, 2022, 6:33 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #293

dimitrios1 wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> -- customers who don't behave as well or kindly as before Easy. Refuse service. You aren't legally obligated to offer your service to assholes. Any business has the right to do or not do business with whoever they want, provided they’re not refusing service for a reason that violates local, state, or federal law. > -- customers who need 24 hour customer service Also easy. You are under no obligation to meet peoples…

Right, but that's OPs point. If he does what you say, he's no better than Comcast, ignoring customers and telling them to screw themselves at the first sign of trouble.

There’s still a country mile between what gp is suggesting and what Comcast gets away with because of their monopoly position.

Anecdotally, I replaced a router they gave me because it would randomly crap out (probably neighbors using the xfinity Wi-Fi feature I couldn’t turn off), and they kept trying to charge me a monthly rental fee for their router. Every time I would call with confirmation it had been returned, the charge would be removed for just that month and back again the next - this is just the most recent example of a long line of infuriating time wasting schemes I have dealt with from them.