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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

#321

Post by greesil »

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.

Yeah but at least they're getting gigabit from an asshole, instead of 1.5 Mbps from an asshole.

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

#322

Post by pessimizer »

capableweb wrote: post #207
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.

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…

> you get 1 Gbps symmetric fiber connection in most countries in Europe for under ~$30/month.

I suspect that decisionmakers in the US think that symmetric connections encourage communism.

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

#323

Post by linsomniac »

chriscappuccio wrote: post #280
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

Except, potentially, for locates. In my conversation with one of our local ISPs that for a while was doing fiber builds but then stopped, locates were quite a nuisance for them. This was in a less rural location though.

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

#324

Post by missedthecue »

wbsss4412 wrote: post #242
missedthecue wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Are those margins only on their broadband business? Comcast has other ventures as well.

Good question. I briefly looked into it and it seems they do break out the numbers for cable communications division (as well as media and entertainment) but I couldn't find a profit margin figure without opening the whole 10K and my calculator. Worth noting that the great majority of their business is cable communications.

However, Charter Communications is a competitor that is more of a pure play and their margin is 10.8%

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

#325

Post by II2II »

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.

I'm with an ISP that is fairly well known for having poor support. I have never had an issue with them. They deal with problems on their end efficiently and without complaint. I would never expect them to deal with a problem on my end, so they never have an excuse to provide me with poor customer service. It all works fairly well, particularly since I am paying about the half the price compared to a major telecom company.

Compare that to a major telecom company. Even if I took the same approach, I would have more issues to deal with (typically issues over billing, rather than technical problems).

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

#326

Post by xhrpost »

> "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."

I did a lot of investigation some years back hoping to start an ISP in a much more dense city where options were still limited. I had quotes from electrical companies of $25k-75k to run 2,000ft of aerial fiber on telephone poles (no drilling even!) The electrical company (who owns the poles) said that only certified installers could do it but that list was rather short and the person I spoke with didn't seem to know what that certification actually was. I wonder if this guy simply figured out how to legally do the infra layout himself.

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

#327

Post by zzzeek »

> Jared Mauch is expanding with the help of $2.6 million in government money.

> Mauch told us he provides free 250Mbps service to a church that was previously having trouble with its Comcast service.

That's interesting, he's taking money from the government and giving free internet to a religious organization? Do all "churches" get free internet or just the ones he prefers? Taxpayers are OK subsidizing a specific church based on one person's personal whim???

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

#328

Post by withinboredom »

supernova87a wrote: post #320
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…

> 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 . Then isn't this a point against the scalability / feasibility of this idea working broadly for others or becoming a model for replacing dumb telcos? If part of…

> threatening to sue if we don't do what they say.

I do love the occasional power trip. I'd look them straight in the face: "here's our lawyers number, have your lawyer give my lawyer a call. Since you seem to be so adamant about suing, you should have no further contact with me. I'll see you to the door." and if they don't go? Arrest them for trespassing.

Sounds like a great power trip.

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

#329

Post by jonathantf2 »

entropicdrifter wrote: post #286
Victerius wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-...

I wonder why there's so many weird domains being hosted on AS2? https://dnslytics.com/bgp/as2 (scroll down to Top Domains)

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

#330

Post by ninju »

treis wrote: post #316
kevin_nisbet wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced this is the case. The big thing that makes telco's such profit making machines is that wires in the ground are generally a large capital expense that doesn't really provide a great marketplace for competition. But once you've got that infrastructure, it's hard to duplicate. The rest of the equipment and employees relatively aren't that expensive. So the power is on the provider here, there isn't rea…

Telcos aren't really that great of profit making machines. It's a capital intensive business that requires a lot of scale before making money. Look at what this guy is doing. Many millions to get 600 customers paying <$100 a month.

As the old adage goes...it takes money to make money.

A couple mill up front to get 500k+/yr means ROI of 5 years.

It's a sustainable model as long as you don't get greedy and I don't think this guys is doing this to be a 'gazillionare' :-)

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