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

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381–390 of 439 posts

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

#381

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…

I, too, greatly respect the scrappy-ness of this individual. Kudos to him for sticking it to Comcast. That said, I'm not wild about the notion of dropping $30K of our collective money on running fiber to a single home out in the country.

At least our money is being spent in our country.

Rural electrification and rural landline were also subsidized, so there is some knowledge of how to build rural infra via subsidies.

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

#382

> 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…

I pay ~55$ a month for gigabit in the US. It’s that there are so many different states with different regulations that means we have both extremes generally.

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

#383

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)

Internet in Seattle is cheap, so that’s not a good example.

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

#384
post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was during covid lockdowns, right? It wouldn't be fair for the govt to enforce a lockdown and not provide funds/grants for internet infra.

Government money is still our collective money.

Agree, but then the alternative is to offer exemptions to lockdown. If they can't be provided for, the govt must allow them to provide for themselves.

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

#385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of ISPs that don’t suck

FblQ00Ho That was my first ISP password assigned to me from San Jose based ix.netcom.com (Also the city I was grounded a month for running a $926 long distance bill calling into BBSs to play trade wars and the pit) But the best ISP I ever had was a 56K dial-up in Seattle. To play Diablo. I am looking to build an ISP.

I feel old having to hear netcom.com explained.

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

#386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What's a "locate"?

That's when you call the "Call Before You Dig" number and a bunch of guys with spraypaint show up to mark where the buried gas, electric, phone, fiber... lines are.

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

#387
post #297

" 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…

> I paid $18 per feet to have a private fiber optic line of 1000 feet installed

Are you saying you paid $18,000 for fiber optic installation at your house?

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

#388

I'm going to put my hand up and say I have absolutely no idea how an ISP works. He runs cables to each house in the area... now where does the other end go?

Also very much worth reading on this topic: Tubes by Andrew Blum (https://www.andrewblum.net/tubes-2)

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

#389
post #14
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To say the least, it's more about siphoning public taxes

I don't understand this sentiment. Taxes are levied to then pay for things such as infrastructure which this qualifies as. How else should this work?

As a general principle it's fine. The issue is a combination of:

* Providing infrastructure and services for rural areas like this is inherently monumentally expensive.

* For most people, rural living is some kind of choice: most could likely move to a cheap suburb that could be served much more easily, but don't want to.

* Far from having more money to fund things like this, rural areas are actually much less economically productive per person, on average. Of course you need some people to farm, but in practice you have many more people than that.

Essentially, society is providing a heavy subsidy for a lifestyle choice for most people, with no compelling government interest there.

While I do think we should make a goal of hooking everyone up to decent internet, any sensible plan has to look at how we can do this efficiently. Absolutely bare minimum, we should be superceding local zoning laws and similar that often make it illegal for people to build more densely in these areas (small town city centers), such that people can individually choose to live in a more efficient way in the same general area if they want. Not talking about skyscrapers obviously, but traditional, walkable downtowns with townhomes or duplexes would be a great thing.

Some Americans may scoff at this, but you don't need large numbers of people to get walkable neighborhoods. I've been through Bavarian villages of a few hundred people that were more walkable than US cities 100x their size.

It's especially nonsensical that we'd heavily subsidize super low density living when that's basically always gonna be worse for the environment. It means you need much more land per person, obviously, so you gotta cut into nature more, plus higher energy requirements.

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

#390
post #2

> over $30,000 for each of those homes to get served This doesn't seem very efficient to me.

Its more than he personally was willing to pay ;-)

>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.

Im guessing being a nerd working at akamai he wont be the one spending ~1-2 days on a Ditch Witch/trencher to make those. He probably wont even hire anyone to work a rental from United Rentals. He will subcontract to same company that does trenches for Comcast.

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