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

Post by vlovich123 » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 4:03 AM UTC

ninju wrote: post #330

treis wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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' :-)

Post by YeBanKo » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 4:49 AM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #319

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…

I'm going to skate past the fact that difficult customers and maintenance aren't why monopolies are expensive, in fact they're the things that are most amenable to economies of scale, so bigger gets cheaper . The real question is: why does he have to get larger than the 600 homes in his nearby rural area, ever? Why does his goal have to be to defeat and replace Comcast rather than to supply internet service to his ne…

Post by 2Gkashmiri » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 5:39 AM UTC

Thetawaves wrote: post #315

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say it this way. Tomorrow if the american security /defence budget was cut to 0, do you think the rest of the world will storm/attack Americans because they have an eternal blood thirst for them? Don't they have their own problems to deal with? This is the problem with mitary and security infra of any country. They keep the bogeyman alive because their paychecks depend on it.

This is literally exactly what would happen. It need not be blood thirst motivation; simple profit dynamics are enough to ensure this outcome.

Post by mrunkel » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 7:11 AM UTC

YeBanKo wrote: post #403

pessimizer wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to skate past the fact that difficult customers and maintenance aren't why monopolies are expensive, in fact they're the things that are most amenable to economies of scale, so bigger gets cheaper . The real question is: why does he have to get larger than the 600 homes in his nearby rural area, ever? Why does his goal have to be to defeat and replace Comcast rather than to supply internet service to his ne…

Since we are asking why questions. Why does everyone else have to support them with tax money when it costs 30k to run a wire to a house? If there is no prospect of scaling it further to boost local infrastructure, then they should be footing the bill themselves or use Starlink.

Post by pzone » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 9:56 AM UTC

autoexec wrote: post #380

bentobean wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't see anything wrong with "collectively" deciding that every American citizen should have access to high speed internet access and putting our money where our mouth is. Especially remote areas that are expanding and will become increasingly populated to take advantage of the infrastructure. For most of us, it doesn't cost anywhere near that much to get access so we can handle the rare costs to build out to remo…