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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

#51

Post by mschuster91 »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #25

"Everything that we're doing is all underground." This indicates that their local and state governments aren't (at this time) captured by the incumbent cable provider. A captured state gov will pass laws to thwart new infra deployment, commonly written by ISP interests. A captured local gov will never approve deployment or slow-walk permitting in an attempt to bankrupt the upstart. more explainers: New suburban fiber…

It's not that easy. Poles vs trenches are a tradeoff discussion. FWIW I was once in construction digging trenches and I'm German, so I might be biased a bit.

Pro poles / open air:

- very, VERY cheap and fast to build out with GPON. That's how you got 1/1 GBit fiber in some piss poor village in the rural ditches of Romania.

- easy to get access when you need to do maintenance

Con poles / open air:

- it looks fucking ugly. Many a nice photo from Romania got some sort of half assed fiber cable on it.

- it's easy for drunk drivers, vandals (for the Americans: idiots shooting birds that rest on aboveground lines [1][2]), sabotage agents or moronic cable thieves to access and damage infrastructure

Pro trench digging:

- it's incredibly resilient. To take out electricity and power, you need a natural disaster at the scale of the infamous Ahrtal floods that ripped through bridges carrying cables and outright submerged and thus ruined district distribution networking rooms, but even the heaviest hailstorm doesn't give a fuck about cable that's buried. Drunk drivers are no concern, and so are cable thieves or terrorists.

- it looks way better, especially when local governments go and re-surface the roads afterwards

Cons trench digging:

- it's expensive, machinery and qualified staff are rare

- you usually need lots more bureaucracy with permits, traffic planning or what not else that's needed to dig a trench

- when something does happen below ground, it can be ... challenging to access the fault.

- in urban or even moderately settled areas, space below ground can be absurdly congested with existing infrastructure that necessitates a lot of manual excavation instead of machinery. Gas, water, sewers, long decommissioned pipe postal service lines, subways, low voltage power, high voltage power, other fiber providers, cable TV...

[1] https://www.usgs.gov/news/national-news-release/illegal-shoo...

[2] https://ucs.net/node/513

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

#52

Post by microtonal »

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.

Here symmetric 4Gbit without a data cap (NL). Best of all, you can bring your own equipment. I have my Ubiquiti Gateway Max hooked up to fiber with a media converter (yes, the Gateway Max does PPPoE etc.).

My parents live in a small, countryside village. They have fiber at the same prices (including 4Gbit symmetric, though they are happy with a cheap 200Mbit subscription).

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

#53

Post by sleepydog »

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.

The EU is better on average, but isn't universally great either. I pay 60 EUR for 200Mbit down/20Mbit up ADSL in Amsterdam, after my 6-month discount ran out. No fiber in my neighborhood yet. There's one gigabit provider in my neighborhood (Ziggo) and they have a bad reputation. For the same price I was getting FiOS gigabit in NYC.

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

#55

Post by nkellenicki »

gs17 wrote: post #26
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…

> Checking Comcast's site now, it seems that they now offer "unlimited" data. Interesting, that option wasn't there 6 months ago. It's been there since they announced the data cap. I thought the unlimited bundled with leasing their higher end hardware came first, but the email from 2016 announcing that our plan was getting the cap mentions being able to pay for unlimited.

You've always had the _option_ of paying extra for unlimited data, however its only in the past month or two that they've started offering unlimited data as standard (in select markets).

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/stung-by-custome...

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

#57

Post by xedrac »

babypuncher wrote: post #45
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.

Comcast is notorious for exploiting places that don't have any other real options. Just before Google Fiber was activated in my area, Comcast stepped up their game big time. The only problem is that they had spent years nickel and diming me for actual connection speeds that didn't even come close to their advertised rates, and their latency/jitter is garbage compared to fiber. Comcast clearly doesn't want to have to compete. In their defense, their connection was rarely down.

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

#58

Post by some-guy »

xedrac wrote: post #57
babypuncher wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Comcast is notorious for exploiting places that don't have any other real options. Just before Google Fiber was activated in my area, Comcast stepped up their game big time. The only problem is that they had spent years nickel and diming me for actual connection speeds that didn't even come close to their advertised rates, and their latency/jitter is garbage compared to fiber. Comcast clearly doesn't want to have to…

When I lived in downtown Oakland CA, Comcast literally could not keep up price-wise with the competition. Their customer service jaw would drop when I told them our local fiber offered a flat fee cheaper than theirs for 10 gigabit symmetrical fiber. On top of that there was another local microwave wireless option that wasn't too terrible.

The only thing in the end their salespeople could do was offer TV bundles but still wasn't cost-competitive. Not sure what their offerings are now but it was such an easy decision to switch.

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

#59

Post by icedchai »

teeray wrote: post #28
kube-system wrote: post #3

I've seen a few articles about folks who started an ISP and they always talk about the physical infrastructure. But in today's world where ISP ads are touting the speeds of their wifi, it really makes me wonder what the support burden ends up being like. What's the breakdown for actual ISP issues vs issues with customer equipment?

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?

After fixing internet for some neighbors and older relatives, I've wondered if people would pay for a home network / internet handyman service. It's super frustrating, especially for older folks. They often confuse their email passwords, ISP passwords, wifi setup, etc. Also I could save them a bunch of money getting rid of services they don't use, like moving their landlines to VOIP.

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

#60

Post by dilyevsky »

yalok wrote: post #8

Still waiting for someone to do the same in Bay Area. Many parts of it don’t have any fiber optics options, even though Sonic does provide some in the north. AT&T put an optic cable at my curb 10 years ago (most likely due to imminent competition from Google Fiber internet), but then never lit it (most likely because Google dropped their effort due to complications with cities)…

Sonic is doing this in sfba. Used to be att reseller now they lay their own fiber, 50% cheaper plans, byo router, ipv6 that actually works, great service.
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