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Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

arstechnica.com

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Re: Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

#41

Post by pintxo »

dmonitor wrote: post #36
teeray wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ISPs are weird: You don’t call the water department if your sink is backed up—you call a plumber. You also don’t call the electric company when you want to wire your finished basement—you hire an electrician. ISPs somehow became responsible for absolutely every aspect of consuming their service though. Why isn’t “home internet plumber” a thing?

Most people don't have the equivalent of home internet plumbing in general. They have a hole drilled into the wall (by the ISP) where the all-in-one modem-router-switch-wap sits on a shelf. There's probably a third party service to get ethernet run through your walls, and maybe even replace your all-in-one box with something good, but most people are just doing the equivalent of getting water straight out of the wate…

Nice analogy!

Re: Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

#42

Post by MostlyStable »

dmonitor wrote: post #36
teeray wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ISPs are weird: You don’t call the water department if your sink is backed up—you call a plumber. You also don’t call the electric company when you want to wire your finished basement—you hire an electrician. ISPs somehow became responsible for absolutely every aspect of consuming their service though. Why isn’t “home internet plumber” a thing?

Most people don't have the equivalent of home internet plumbing in general. They have a hole drilled into the wall (by the ISP) where the all-in-one modem-router-switch-wap sits on a shelf. There's probably a third party service to get ethernet run through your walls, and maybe even replace your all-in-one box with something good, but most people are just doing the equivalent of getting water straight out of the wate…

This, and also, it's much more common for internet problems to be caused by upstream issues not in the house (partly because of the situation you describe....not much to go wrong on the users end). It's very rare that a plumbing problem is because the main water line lost pressure.

Back when I still had ISPs that provided the modem + router, every single issue I think I ever had fell into one of two categories: a modem and/or router power cycle fixed it, or it was a broader network issue that had nothing to do with me or my particular internet situation (this is omitting the most common third issue: terrible customer service problems, but that's a separate thing)

Re: Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

#44

Post by gs17 »

beeb wrote: post #43

Wow the US really has it bad when it comes to home internet. In many European countries, you can get symmetric Gbit internet for 30-40 EUR (probably less in some places), and I haven't seen a data cap in forever.

It's getting better here. Google Fiber is expanding to a lot of cities and their symmetric Gbit with no data cap is the equivalent of 60 EUR ($70).

Re: Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

#45

Post by babypuncher »

nancyminusone wrote: post #19

I'm one of their customers. I often see that one green car parked down the road. It's pretty good - their provided router is locked down to hell and they're on a cgnat, but not having to deal with Comcast's 1.2tb data cap is well worth it. Checking Comcast's site now, it seems that they now offer "unlimited" data. Interesting, that option wasn't there 6 months ago. ~100 customers seems too small for the amount of eff…

Comcast similarly removed their 1.2TB cap in my neighborhood within months of us getting fiber. It's almost like the only reason for the cap was because they could get away with it when there wasn't any competition.

Re: Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

#46

Post by HnUser12 »

beeb wrote: post #43

Wow the US really has it bad when it comes to home internet. In many European countries, you can get symmetric Gbit internet for 30-40 EUR (probably less in some places), and I haven't seen a data cap in forever.

Depends on where in the US. Most populated places have inexpensive internet. Smaller towns have these issues because there's not much competition.

Re: Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

#47

Post by radley »

beeb wrote: post #43

Wow the US really has it bad when it comes to home internet. In many European countries, you can get symmetric Gbit internet for 30-40 EUR (probably less in some places), and I haven't seen a data cap in forever.

Bay Area has sonic.net with unlimited 10Gb down & 1Gb up for only $40.

Re: Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

#48

Post by Cerium »

mosdl wrote: post #20
Cerium wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downtown San Jose is nice - I have fibers from both AT&T and Sonic. I switched from AT&T to Sonic a couple years ago and have been impressed. I pay half what I did, get 10x the speed, and customer service is much better.

Downtown SJ has sail internet as well, great local isp!

Thanks for saying so - I got a flyer and didn't realize they are local.

Re: Two guys hated using Comcast, so they built their own fiber ISP

#50

Post by seany »

latchkey wrote: post #38

I wish these guys the best, but I've shifted more and more to Starlink. As long as their is a clear view of the sky, it works exceptionally well and is more than enough bandwidth. Plus, I can easily take it with me anywhere I go, which includes my campervan. This is great for when you're out in the middle of nowhere, with no reception, and you need access to maps. I wish it was a bit cheaper, but someone has to fund…

I've really been looking at some of the new mobile options for when I take the family camping but I still need to get some stuff done. With that said, over the last 30 days at home we've downloaded 4.8tb and uploaded 6.2 (no torrenting). I'm sure there are thing we could do different, but two people that WFH and do some semi data involved things... really just not sure how we could make that work full time.
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