Comcast's Incompetence, Lack of Broadband May Force Developer To Sell Home

BUL2294 writes Consumerist has an article about a homeowner in Kitsap County, Washington who is unable to get broadband service. Due to inaccurate broadband availability websites, Comcast's corporate incompetence, CenturyLink's refusal to add new customers in his area, and Washington state's restrictions on municipal broadband, the owner may be left with no option but to sell his house 2 months after he bought it, since he works from home as a software developer. To add insult to injury, BroadbandMaps.gov says he has 10 broadband options in his zip code, some of which are not applicable to his address, have exorbitant costs (e.g. wireless), or are for municipal providers that are prevented from doing business with him by state law. Yet, Comcast insists in filings that "the broadband marketplace is more competitive than ever." As someone who had Comcast call to cancel on the day of my closing (two days before my scheduled install) because they didn't offer service to my house after all, I can sympathize.

Comments

Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

The free and rational market wins again!

Re: Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't a free market if state laws restrict who can do business with whom. Remove those laws and the free market would push Comcast right out the door.

Re: Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

Naw it wouldnt most of the providers arent expanding their networks much even if they have the option to in a area ESPICIALLY in poor and rural areas.

I have a friend that lives 10 miles from downtown Dallas and .5 mile from the fiber trunk that runs south from Dallas and NONE of the providers will run any kind of broadband to that area because it is poorer where they all run to the rich developments in the north part of town.

Re: Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem are rate rules. The cable company is not allowed to charge more for cable runs to distant customers. Those rate rules mean that they can't charge more to recoup their investment for cable runs that are expensive to put in.

I was about 1000 ft from the nearest cable access after I built my house and the cable company wouldn't build out down my rural road for that reason.

The solution was simply to pay an installer to have my own line run.

It was expensive -- just under $3/foot, and there's no way a cable company is going to pay $3000 to hook up one customer for $30/month internet access. It will take years just to make back that $3000.

I was lucky to get someone at the company that could find a solution for me, but I don't think a typical customer service rep is going to bother.

Re: Invisible hand

[mc6809e]

Another problem are price controls.

Often the local franchise authority (set up by the city or state or county) sets prices for services.

If the price is set too low, then the cable company can't legally charge enough to pay for the infrastructure to reach certain customers, even if those customers are willing to pay more to get service.

Re: Invisible hand

[blackraven14250]

Remove those laws and the free market would push Comcast right out the door.

Unfortunately, infrastructure doesn't work the same way as other businesses. Those laws are an impediment, but they're definitely not the thing that when removed will create a surge of new providers.

Re: Invisible hand

[RabidReindeer]

It isn't a free market if state laws restrict who can do business with whom. Remove those laws and the free market would push Comcast right out the door.

Sure. The "Free Market" offered me exactly one alternative to Comcast.

I took it, but only because it was that or Comcast.

Re: Invisible hand

[putaro]

Telephone and electricity wires cost money to run as well. We mandated that the utilities provide service to all and they used to simply spread the cost over the entire customer base. As long as you're profitable in the large it doesn't really matter if each customer turns a profit. However, if a company is not required to do so, they will, of course, focus only on profitable customers.

We chose to subsidize services that were viewed as vital, such as phone and electricity. Cable TV is not a necessity but internet access may be.

Re: Invisible hand

[dgatwood]

It's only expensive because you were paying for it. The cable companies employ people to run cables, which makes those employees basically a sunk cost. They have to have those people to do repairs on an ongoing basis. When they aren't doing repairs, it costs the cable nothing to have them run lines to new houses, beyond the cost of the wire, which I suspect is somewhere between a third and a sixth of what you paid. (Over the long term, this isn't true, but when it comes to short-term variation, it is.)

Moreover, it costs $200 to rent a trenching machine for a day, and probably less than that to hire someone for a day to run the thing. So basically, even by the most conservative estimate, you overpaid for your installation by about $1,600, all of which went into the pockets of middlemen. Cable companies don't pay middlemen; they pay workers. So even in the worst case scenario, where all their workers were fully booked so that they had to hire new people to handle running your cable, they'd still pay less than half what you paid.

So at your price, it would have been about an 8-year payoff. At half that price, it would be a 4-year payoff. In the telecom world, a four-year payoff is amazingly quick, from what I've read. Your cable company just couldn't be bothered. It had nothing to do with cost, or if it did have something to do with cost, it was only because they were pushing the high up-front cost onto you as a means of ensuring that you could actually afford the service. Either that or they are nearly bankrupt and couldn't afford the $3,000, in which case you probably just wasted your money. Hard to say which.

Re: Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

Comcast bought those laws fair and square you dirty communist! How dare you deny their God-given (errr... Adam Smith-given?) right to moral superiority?

Re: Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that worse than 'Comcast or nothing'?

The "Free Market" isn't perfect, but its far, far better than 'X monopoly or nothing'.

Re: Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

i bet you say the same thing about electricity and running water. fuck off. i'd like to see business run without these "poor customers". maybe they wouldn't be such "poor customers" if psychopaths didn't' hoard all the wealth generated by the labor of their employees.

Re: Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

You proceed from a false assumption. Many cable companies (Comcast is one of them) hire other companies to do their cable runs.

Re: Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. They contract most stuff out. They only pay for actual lines put in the ground and hookups. When they dont' need anybody, they don't have anybody. All their installers are 'independent contractors'. They aren't paying for anything they don't absolutely need.

Re: Invisible hand

[rahvin112]

You have no concept of what it takes to put a cable in the ground.

First, all Comcast construction is done by contractors for liability reasons. This isn't negotiable for a large company, a single improper process for a contractor digging a utility in could bankrupt even a company of Comcast's size if their employee's were directly involved in the right incident.

Second, though it may only cost $200 a day to rent it's rather irrelevant because Comcast pays the going Contract rate for installations.

Third, if you think digging the cable in is the only cost you have no concept. There is the planning and engineering costs, the utility mapping, the right-of-way access, the coordination with the local city and the compliance with the local building codes, the insurance costs, the contract management costs, the inspection costs, the quality control and quality assurance. Pulling and splicing cables through the conduits, power and other interconnection costs, splicing the cables, testing and validation, and plant hookup.

Verizon's pass cost (the cost to put a cable in front of the house) was about $1500 per house in a typical suburban environment. It probably costs about another $500-$1000 to dig the cable to the house install the ONT and pull the cable to the jack.

May I suggest you not comment about such subjects in the future. Leave construction and estimating how hard something is to the people that actually know.

Re: Invisible hand

[AK Marc]

So providers shouldn't provide services to black people, because they make poor customers when you make then eat in the alley?

Or phone and electric were built to serve all, even in a particular customer was served for a loss, so why do you think that Internet is less of a fundamental service than electricity or roads or water or phone?

Re: Invisible hand

[dgatwood]

We're talking about the lines that they put in the ground, not the in-home installers. And I'd expect most independent contractors to be glorified employees, just under month-to-month contracts.

But even if they contract other companies to do the digging work, they're still paying a lot less for them than you would be as an individual, because those companies know that you are a one-time job, and they need to get as much as they can out of you, whereas the Comcasts of the world are repeat customers that will keep sending you business.

Re: Invisible hand

[dgatwood]

Err... sending them business, I mean.

Re: Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

It's only expensive because you were paying for it.....

Moreover, it costs $200 to rent a trenching machine for a day, and probably less than that to hire someone for a day to run the thing.

You forgot the cost of the survey (to make sure you will not hit someone else's underground utilities, the license/permit (to do the trenching), the insurance (for when you hit the underground utility that you were sure was not there), etc. Yes, most of those rules and regulations are "optional" for an individual (who either gets lucky, or turns into toast if they hit the gas main), but not so much for real companies that have to play by the rules. Yes, some of the price goes into profit, but some of the price is a required payment to someone else (which includes their costs, and their profits).

Re: Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

This. Hoarding of wealth. Keeping profits at the top. Bad for the economy, bad for everyone else but the people at the top.

Re: Invisible hand

[Bartles]

Why should they? Franchise agreements guarantee them a reliable customer base. They feel no pressure to compete or provide better service to their customers.

Re: Invisible hand

[Bartles]

Where was this "Free Market" you speak of?

Re: Invisible hand

[dgatwood]

First, all Comcast construction is done by contractors for liability reasons. This isn't negotiable for a large company, a single improper process for a contractor digging a utility in could bankrupt even a company of Comcast's size if their employee's were directly involved in the right incident.

The folks digging up our street were Comcast employees (or at least contractors working for Comcast, not some installer company). They drove Comcast trucks. They ran underground pipes that were manufactured specifically for Comcast, with their name printed every few inches all the way down the length of the tubing. Maybe you don't realize just how big a company we're talking about here.

As for liability, there's a little thing called liability insurance. Companies doing that sort of work have to have it, and if they hire a company to do the work, the company they hire has to have it. It is usually required by law. Whether Comcast pays that cost directly or indirectly is irrelevant; they're still paying the cost of that insurance. Comcast chooses to use contractors in some places because they don't have enough work to keep full-time staff occupied, and/or because it confers tax advantages to use contractors instead of employees. The liability claim is just something they tell contractors so they don't realize how badly they're getting screwed.

Second, though it may only cost $200 a day to rent it's rather irrelevant because Comcast pays the going Contract rate for installations.

Think about this: You're a contracting company that specializes in pulling cables. You have two options:

1. Work hard to find a bunch of small jobs, knowing that if you can keep your schedule full all day, you'll make n dollars, but realistically knowing that some days you'll barely make n/4 dollars.
2. Take a contract with Comcast that pays .5n dollars, knowing that they're going to keep sending you work on an ongoing basis.

Which one would you choose? Most contracting companies would choose B, knowing that they'll still be able to pay their employees the same wages, but the company as a whole will be more immune to market fluctuations.

Third, if you think digging the cable in is the only cost you have no concept. There is the planning and engineering costs, the utility mapping, the right-of-way access, the coordination with the local city and the compliance with the local building codes, the insurance costs, the contract management costs, the inspection costs, the quality control and quality assurance. Pulling and splicing cables through the conduits, power and other interconnection costs, splicing the cables, testing and validation, and plant hookup.

Maybe you didn't read the original post. This was about a rural installation. In my experience, that usually means bare coax cables in the ground (no conduit, and probably not fiber), minimal utility mapping (relatively few houses with taps from the power and phone lines), minimal planning and engineering. I mean yes, you do have to do utility mapping, but it's a whole lot easier to map a rural street with a straight wire that parallels the road than it is to map a suburban street that has wires going in random directions from transformers to houses every fifty or one hundred feet.

The cable company would have to comply with the local building codes no matter what. I doubt there's a huge difference there between a rural install and an urban install. If anything, the rural install is probably more laid back, less rigorous, and has lower overall compliance cost. A building code inspector isn't likely to inspect the entire length of wire, but rather the termini, so that cost should be about the same for a 1,000-foot run as for a 50-foot run, assuming it doesn't require them to install any boosters along the way (and if it did, he/she wouldn't have gotten satisfac

Re: Invisible hand

[mysidia]

NONE of the providers will run any kind of broadband to that area because it is poorer where they all run to the rich developments in the north part of town.

Think we can get a lawsuits agains Comcast under Civil rights discrimination, for disparately not offering Title21 regulated essential utility coverage to some areas that are minority-populated?

Re: Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy could buy a lot of lte bandwith for the losses he will sustain selling the house.

Re: Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I Rtfa. I empathize a little with his problem. But instead of incurring a 6% loss on the house in realtor fees. Couldn't he spend that in lte bandwith. I did this for months and Vpn worked fine.

Also... How about a public library or .. GO into the office?

Seems like he is doing this out of spite

Re: Invisible hand

[rahvin112]

The folks digging up our street were Comcast employees (or at least contractors working for Comcast, not some installer company). They drove Comcast trucks. They ran underground pipes that were manufactured specifically for Comcast, with their name printed every few inches all the way down the length of the tubing. Maybe you don't realize just how big a company we're talking about here.

They were independent contractors hired by Comcast with a Contract requirement that they badge their trucks and wear Comcast shirts. Comcast supplies the materials, there is an advantage to labeled conduit in that people digging utility test holes can easily identify the owner.

As for liability, there's a little thing called liability insurance. Companies doing that sort of work have to have it, and if they hire a company to do the work, the company they hire has to have it. It is usually required by law.

Yes Liability insurance can be purchased, and probably even cover 90% of accidents. Large companies choose to hire independents because if the independent contractor makes a mistake the small company can declare bankruptcy and clear all the liability while Comcast isn't material affected. No for profit company of Comcast's size would EVER dig in a utility with their own forces. It's economic suicide and the insurance they would need to purchase to cover them for all possible incidents would be so prohibitively expensive to basically make it impossible to build anything at all.

I ran into a utility once where the costs for any contractor that dug up and cut the utility were about $46K per minute the line was out of service. This was a cross country fiber with multiple strands. At the time, splicing a single fiber required a clean room standards and about 6 hours of time to cut, polish and splice the strand. The line was literally in the middle of no where, as is frequently the case it's more likely to run into these types of utilities in rural areas. Consider the cost of a break that took out all the strands where the fastest response time would be about 2 hours and that's just to locate the break, determine how bad it is and dispatch the repair crew. Then the repair crew has to dig up the line, make clean cuts, setup a clean room tent around the break and then splice all the fibers. Though communication cables can have some of the highest repair costs there are plenty of other utilities that a break can trigger other catastrophic damage including the loss of life. What does it cost if you cut a gas line and you end up killing an entire family, how about a whole neighborhood of families? What about the costs if you cut a high pressure oil line, kill several people in the process and poison the land and water for several thousand people?

Comcast chooses to use contractors in some places because they don't have enough work to keep full-time staff occupied, and/or because it confers tax advantages to use contractors instead of employees. The liability claim is just something they tell contractors so they don't realize how badly they're getting screwed.

No, Comcast uses contractors for anything that requires digging, and I have no doubt it's company policy. They more than likely use their own forces to pull the cables once the conduit is installed but they do NOT dig anything with their own forces that's not an emergency (and I have big doubts they would even do it in emergency, they retain contracts for emergency work for that just like everyone else).

Maybe you didn't read the original post. This was about a rural installation. In my experience, that usually means bare coax cables in the ground (no conduit, and probably not fiber), minimal utility mapping (relatively few houses with taps from the power and phone lines), minimal planning and engineering. I mean yes, you do have to do utility mapping, but it's a whole lot easier to map a rural street with a straight wire tha

Re: Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly! Here in Seattle, me and most of my friends are still on dial-up or ISDN because Comcast has been granted the monopoly, but doesn't offer service to much of their monopoly area. If the law allowed competition, there would be competition! Instead, I'm stuck paying per minute charges for ISDN. At work, we share five phone lines between almost twenty people so it's painful. We're moving out of downtown Seattle to Redmond so we can get faster Internet access. That sucks because we're going to lose probably half of our employees because of the longer and more expensive (toll bridge) commute.

Re: Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

That must be the problem in Seattle. It's very expensive to get the city's permission to install equipment and you also have to have a super majority of the residents agree to allow the equipment. A nonvote, such as for an empty residence or someone they can't find, counts as a no. That makes it very time consuming and difficult for them to provide service, so they simply don't. If they were allowed to sell the service at a profit, they would start trying to gain new customers. As it stands now, the block where I live doesn't have cable TV or Internet. The building where I work doesn't have cable either. We're stuck with a very expensive and relatively slow T1.

Re: Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife is a utility lobbyist, and that is certainly a problem for Comcast in a lot of places. I live in apartment building on the northern edge of downtown Seattle in a building with about 200 units. We do not have cable TV or Internet in the building despite eight years of work on her part. Her estimate for total costs in bribes, permits, fees, street paving (yes, Seattle makes utility companies pay for paving for a much larger area than they actually disturb), replacement sidewalks, equipment, etc. is over $125k. If they make an average profit of $8 per month per unit (which is her estimate, Comcast's estimate was much less), it will take them 78 months to recover the initial investment. That means that if the equipment and wiring lasts that long, and that is not a guarantee with the evolution of technology, they will only break even at that point. Given that most of my friends in the building have never had cable TV or faster Internet access at any time in their lives and probably won't buy cable, that 78 months could easily turn into two or three times that long!

It sucks that I'm in my early fifties and have lived in Seattle my entire life, but I have never been able to have cable TV or fast Internet access. It makes me want to move the hell out of this city so I can get ESPN to watch football and basketball. I'm tired of having to impose on my friends that live outside of the city in order to watch sports.

Re: Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

Seattle...over $125k

And that is why, despite having a monopoly for most of the city, that Comcast doesn't offer service to much of it. I've lived here for over twenty years in five different locations, and not a one had cable TV available. Two had 1.5 Mbps DSL available from CenturyLink, but three had no options for access faster than an analog modem. The city council is very anti-business and even more anti-Internet. I work at Amazon, and it's depressing seeing all of the new hires that move here eventually quit and leave the city because they can't get Internet access at home. They just assume that access here is as available as other places. It isn't.

I'm posting this over dial-up to copper.net, and the new beta is a bandwidth hog. I used to check /. several times per day, but now I maybe come here three times a week because the pages take multiple tries to load. /. has really forgotten about those of us that live in areas like Seattle.

Proud AC since Oct '98

Re: Invisible hand

[narcc]

You're confused because all you see are monopolies and near-monopolies. Don't panic. That's what an under-regulated free market naturally produces.

Re: Invisible hand

[sxpert]

are you 2 communists ? we all know commies are eeevil !! ;-)

Re: Invisible hand

[Trepidity]

If the prices were set near cost, that might be a reasonable excuse, but Comcast prices have ballooned much faster than inflation. They also charge much more than is typical for broadband in other countries where the cables are municipally owned and rented out to ISPs. Yet they still can't make a profit even with their absurd $60+/mo packages?

Re: Invisible hand

[fustakrakich]

It isn't a free market if state laws restrict who can do business with whom.

Yeah it is. Learn who the state serves and see that they are just another player. The 'free market' is all there is. What we don't have is an open market.

Re: Invisible hand

[dgatwood]

They were independent contractors hired by Comcast with a Contract requirement that they badge their trucks and wear Comcast shirts. Comcast supplies the materials, there is an advantage to labeled conduit in that people digging utility test holes can easily identify the owner.

Maybe so, but if so, they're playing a very dangerous game. The legal term that comes to mind here is "agency by estoppel." Briefly put, that term means that if a company authorizes you to act on their behalf, and if they allow you to look and act like an agent of a company, then the company can be held liable for your actions.

As long as Comcast's name is on those trucks, if they screw up, Comcast is almost guaranteed to be held liable in court, regardless of whether the workers are employees or independent contractors. That legal risk is the reason that most contracts these days contain clauses that forbid you from representing yourself as being a partner of or an agent of that company.

The only communication utility that has direct buried cables (no conduit) that I'm even aware of is very old installations of telephone wires. I have run into some of the older fiber optic cables that were not in conduits but they were in armored cables with flowable fill. Such cables aren't used for anything that's not very very important. Anything installed within about the last 30 years when cheap PVC conduit became cheap is now in conduits.

Admittedly, I've only seen cables being buried for cable companies in rural areas, but they were A. coax, and B. not in any sort of conduit whatsoever. That was only a few years ago, and I doubt that practice has changed much except in areas that have gone to fiber. Mind you, that practice does vary widely from place to place, so if you live in a city (or even within twenty or thirty miles of a large city), I can understand why you would not have seen it. That doesn't mean it isn't common practice in truly rural areas.

So rural is easier, but then it's about the same cost?

It's easier, but the distance is also longer. The cost is higher in rural areas, because fewer houses can be served by a single line or set of lines. However, it isn't as much higher as the distance implies, because you don't have to bore under a driveway or sidewalk every fifty feet (and/or dig up and re-build sidewalks and driveways). Building the infrastructure while you're putting in a neighborhood is much cheaper than building it later for the same reason. The less crap you have to work around, the less it costs to put lines in. That statement is amazingly straightforward, and I would challenge you do prove it wrong.

You might find this hard to believe because you don't know what you are talking about but the cost to install the cable to this one house could be a million dollars. He could be on the outer limit of the amplification limits such that it would require them to install an entire fiber hut and amplification system. He could be on the other side of a protected refuge or there could be major utilities between him and the closest connection. In fact there could hundreds of reasons that only Comcast knows about why they can't afford to service that house. There is little point is speculating about what those reasons are unless you want to pay the $5K it would cost for an engineering and locate study to check the feasibility of the installation.

I'm not speculating. The person in question did the installation. There were no boosters, no multi-million-dollar fiber huts. The person paid to have someone trench and run a cable. The cable company lit the cable. End of story. Therefore, I do know that none of those things were necessary, and none of the things you're talking about are even slightly relevant in this case. Clearly the cost was not a million dollars. In fact, it was about $3,000. It is safe to sa

Re: Invisible hand

[fustakrakich]

Everything is hired out. I still can't figure how stuff gets built. I'm not bullshitting. I hear of workers who hire somebody else to show up at their job for them.

Re: Invisible hand

[dgatwood]

You're right. I did ignore a lot of those things, though presumably you as an individual would incur most of those same costs. The point was to demonstrate the costs that you would pay, but Comcast wouldn't. I suppose I didn't quite do that as well as I had hoped. Mea culpa.

Of course, in most places, the utility companies are required to mark the lines at the landowner's request, at no charge, so that's not a cost; it's just a "to do". (Amusingly, that's probably one of the few costs that Comcast would incur that the landowner wouldn't.)

Either way, there's some profit margin built into any contracting company's fees, and a company big enough to have their own custom cable and conduit manufacturing is also probably big enough to hire their own employees, thus cutting out that portion of the cost. Whether they choose to do so or not is another question, of course.

Re: Invisible hand

[ldobehardcore]

It's bad for the people at the top too. If the 99% decides to stop getting assraped, and start building guillotines.

Re: Invisible hand

[DaHat]

I want to double down upon what you are saying as you know far better than the parent what is going on.

Just today I had sub-sub contractors from Comcast trying to fix the cable from the box across the street to my home for an issue I first reported the issue in mid-December but after a few months of nonsense things finally got worked out.

After first having a visit from a person who appeared to be a Comcast employee declaring the connection between my home and the distribution box across the street bad (I was seeing .1 mbs upload(should have been closer to 10mbs) yet semi-normal downloads), he wrote it up for replacement... and so began a multi-month process.

A week later received a note from a sub-contractor of Comcast (though with the Comcast letterhead on the door hanger and the sub-contractors name in the fine print) which said my cable needed to be replaced. Over the next couple of months I'd call them to check on the status with the work order # on the tag as things slowly worked their way through the Comcast and local city bureaucracies.

Eventually they told me that the work had been issued to a 'sub-contractor' (really a sub-sub-contractor) who took about a month to get things worked out as well between the city and them (which included two paintings of the paths of various utility lines under and around the street (much to the annoyance of the neighbors who didn't like the paint on their property)).

Finally the day of repair arrived (today) and they did their digging... alas they hit a rock when tunneling under the driveway of the neighbor in front of me (and right next to the distribution box) so they had to fill in most of what they did (amazingly professional in this way) and say that another team from the same company would have to come out in a week with a different boring machine to complete the work.

The pathetic thing about this whole process was that as far as Comcast is concerned, my issue has been resolved months ago by virtue of it being sent to an outside vendor... in the close out email even citing the fact that my signal strength had returned to normal (hint: it hadn't fully).

There is a part of me that is considering dropping Comcast service once this whole repair effort is complete (costing them $5-10k)... however they (unfortunately) provide the fastest internet for the price... when it works.

Re: Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, clearly a billion dollar company shouldn't have to wait a few years to make a profit. Oh wait, they already receive millions or billions of dollars to cover that additional expense, so even if they only planned to be around 5 years they would still make the profit. Instead, they just take the taxpayer money and say "thanks, now go fuck yourselves"

Re: Invisible hand

[stealth_finger]

So providers should provide broadband as a charity?

See, the thing about poor people is, they're broke and so make poor customers.

No, it should be provided as a utility you dumb fuck. Available to all and not a complete rip off.

Re: Invisible hand

[justthinkit]

Everything is hired out. I still can't figure how stuff gets built.

By contracting out, you get people who actually want to do good work for reasonable pay. Unlike union workers, or "set for life" big company employees.

Where I live the city has contracted out extensive sewer work. These contract workers are superb. You wouldn't see one-quarter of this efficiency with a union city crew. Everyone, including the city (and the city union bosses!), knows this.

Re: Invisible hand

[Isaac-1]

Since when did poor become a minority?

Re: Invisible hand

[Gr8Apes]

That's why there's this universal access fee for phones, and why broadband ISPs were offered billions in subsidies.... So yes, they should offer service.

Re: Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

I call BULL SHIT!

I am 25 miles south west of Dallas and have a 60Mbps link to the house.

10 miles from downtown puts him in the 635 loop and you can get anything from Timewarner (Not a comcast area), to DSL from 5 different providers, DS3, T1, FDDI, hell you can get point to point dark fiber run. Mind you each of these costs different but you can get them.

Timewarner offers a 3meg internet for $14 a month.

To top that off, every Bar, Whataburger, McDonalds, Denny's, Library, hell even the little smoke shops have free WIFI Internet.

Re: Invisible hand

[jbolden]

It is subsidized. Look at your cable bill. There is an FCC tax to expand broadband. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...

Re: Invisible hand

[roccomaglio]

The rates are lower in poorer areas. I remember when I was living in little Haiti my basic cable was only $25. I moved there from South Beach where the basic cable rate was $50. The lower rates are required by the government for poorer areas, so companies just skip those areas for service.

Re: Invisible hand

[jbolden]

Well written comment. You are not going to get the up votes you deserve by talking about the real costs.

Re: Invisible hand

[cHiphead]

By contracting out, you get people who hire workers willing to do work for the least amount of pay, unlike union workers who get better pay and tend to have formalized processes that do the work right the first time, even if it seems over done.

You don't know how business works if you think contracting out has anything to do with 'good' work.

I live in a city that contracts out everything but the most emergency of repairs for sewer work, the private contractors take longer and leave the areas they work in fucked up every-single-time. We have a mile of road that was ripped up and repiped by contractors, after it was done the road was littered with dips and potholes and they are having to completely dig up and repave the entire road now as a result. Contracting is about making money off government and doing it as cheaply as possible.

Re: Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in a rural area. I have a drilled well and onsite septic, not municipal water and sewer. If I built a house way out in the woods there wouldn't even be a road or electricity. But I could (probably) still set up a wireless link and get internet.

Re: Invisible hand

[flappinbooger]

There is a part of me that is considering dropping Comcast service once this whole repair effort is complete (costing them $5-10k)... however they (unfortunately) provide the fastest internet for the price... when it works.

And this is why Comcast is the biggest ISP. And why they are so thoroughly hated by so many people.

Re: Invisible hand

[flappinbooger]

Since when did poor become a minority?

I could make a comment about how, since 0bama, poor is the majority -

but I won't.

You can thank me later.

Re: Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

Cable laying staff are contracted in by area; the bigger the role-out, the lower the quality of the crew.

Re: Invisible hand

[Miamicanes]

Actually, poor people can be extremely *profitable* customers, precisely because they have so few options available, they're often forced to obtain goods/services at *profoundly* higher total costs. Being poor is expensive. Someone with a SUV who makes $100k/year can buy Charmin Ultra by the pallet at Sam's Club for a fraction of what someone who lives in a poor neighborhood, doesn't own a car, and has to buy toilet paper by the single roll from 7-11 (because the nearest real grocery store is more than a mile away, and getting there by bus would probably take an hour each way when you factor in waiting times and infrequent service) ends up paying.

Ditto, for things like appliances. You & I can buy appliances somewhere like Costco & haul them home with help from a friend or two in somebody's pickup truck... and probably pay just a few hundred dollars for them. Someone living paycheck to paycheck, by contrast, might end up paying $2,400 for a $500 refrigerator because he can't afford $500 up front, but can (hopefully) scrape $25/week for 8 years (with substantial penalties & additional fees piled on top if his income falters at any point during those 8 years).

Even when you factor bad debt that never officially gets paid in full, the poor are staggeringly profitable because the seller has usually broken even on his hard wholesale costs by the third or fourth month, and everything past that point is pure gravy.

Re: Invisible hand

[DuckDodgers]

My great grandfather worked in coal mines in the early 20th century. He worked for a mining company that had this policy after a cave-in: dig until you've recovered all of the mules, alive or dead. Then stop. Buried miners were ignored because they were paid by the ton and thus had zero cost to replace. His son, my grandfather, moved away from the mining town and got a job at a General Motors subsidiary and watched outrageous abuses of union protection and terribly shoddy work there.

Likewise, some contractors do rock solid, honest work and some rip you off.

You have to judge contractors or union workers on a case by case basis. There's no universal law that governs the quality of either - if there was, then one side would have won out decades ago.

Re: Invisible hand

[hjf]

Where I live the telephone company contracts another company to do the "shitty job" of hooking new customers: laying (or hanging) wires, drilling walls, etc. They also have access to junction boxes.
Guess what? It's a mess. Installs are crap. They don't even bother putting junction boxes lids back on (gotta love the sound of rain in your phone line).
So they have to send out their crew of actually trained phone company employees to fix the mess left by the hired installers.
Very fucking efficient.

Re: Invisible hand

[DuckDodgers]

I am, of course, sorry to hear that was your experience. I bought my current house in 2002 and at the time I didn't have the foresight to weigh the benefits of having more than one broadband provider available. So my only choice has been Comcast. My service has been rock solid the entire time, the only problem I ever had was with Comcast's phone billing department - which is horrendous. Everything else - technicians, contractors, most of their support staff, and the billing staff at their closest branch office has been excellent.

But if I can convince some crazy person to buy this property (I don't know how I could manage that in good conscience....) I would move somewhere with Comcast + Verizon available, or something similar. Or maybe somewhere with Google Fiber. :)

Re: Invisible hand

[DuckDodgers]

Right. That's the angle of the libertarian fantasy that always puzzles me. Once you dismantle FCC, EPA, FDA, FTC, OSHA, patent law, copyright law, etc... what is going to stop Comcast, Google, Microsoft, Mosanto, Exxon, Intel, Walmart, etc... from buying enough members of Congress to put them right back together, even more favorable to the big players than they already are? I mean, if oligarchy is your goal you should be an oligarchist, not a libertarian. If free market competition is your goal then you need smarter government oversight, not less government oversight.

Re: Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you saying only black people are poor? GP didn't say shit about race, only economic status. As long as people like you bring race into the conversation after it started, racism will never go away.

Of course, that's what you want, isn't it? Just like women, you don't want equality, you want to be treated special.

Re: Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

Your 'middlemen' are the taxes, regulation and debt service that the install company has to pay every month in order to stay in business.

Re: Invisible hand

[BVis]

Sometimes when you contract out, the dynamic is what you suggest, the contractors are incentivized to do good work lest another contractor get their business.

And by "good work", I mean "cheap". Trust me, Comcast does not give a single fuck about the quality of work these contractors perform, so long as the price is right. Even the occasional rework (due to those whiny customers who actually want what they're paying for, the greedy bastards) still leaves the overall scheme profitable.

I've met Comcast contractors who were quite good. Quick, professional, polite. I've also met Comcast contractors who were drunk on the job.

The one saving grace here, if there is such a thing, is that many contractors prevent one from becoming so entrenched in one area that Comcast has to do business with them, because there is no competition. (Karma's a bitch.) A private company runs our water service here. While the rank-and-file employees are competent and professional (at least the ones I've met, who once had to repair our water supply line on Christmas Eve), the management is rotten to the core. They ignore mandatory aspects of the contract with the town, like routine maintenance requirements and disaster plan documentation available on-demand by the board of Selectmen or its designate. (They're also supposed to have enough reserve capacity so that if one of their pumping stations breaks down, the remaining equipment can handle the load. Nope. A while ago when a pump failed, the town was notified, which is a small miracle in and of itself, the town had 3 hours of water left. There were no repercussions from this obvious incompetence and breach of contract.) We had a boil order for 11 days a few years ago, because lack of maintenance on a storage tank led to a cryptosporidium bloom. In this state the way you get a boil order lifted is by having a negative test for the infection two tests in a row (twice daily), with the test performed by a lab the state specifies. One of the managers of the company took a sample, dumped bleach in it, and submitted it for test. This was, of course, immediately detected by the lab, since 1) the chlorine level was off the scale, and 2) it changed color unexpectedly when the reagent was added to detect the infection. That manager went to jail.

Of course, the private company immediately lost the contraHAHAHAHAH couldn't keep a straight face. Of COURSE they kept the contract. They own the lines. They have a monopoly on the water service in our town. The customers have no say in how that company is run, whereas if the town ran the service like nearly everyplace else, they could at least vote incompetents out of office. They had the balls to ask for an 83% rate increase a couple years later. They got 33%. The town basically had no choice, if they wanted to continue to get water service.

When private companies have no incentive to provide the service they're being paid for beyond losing the contract, and they are the only game in town, they don't lose the contract. They can pretty much do whatever the fuck they want with impunity.

Privatization is not a cure-all. Given the choice between a private company and public administration for a vital town service, I'l take the (unionized workers from the) town every time.

Re: Invisible hand

[F34nor]

Fuck the invisible hand too. Its bullshit; total unmitigated bullshit.

http://www.scientificamerican....

The Economist Has No Clothes
Unscientific assumptions in economic theory are undermining efforts to solve environmental problems
Mar 17, 2008 |By Robert Nadeau ...The strategy the economists used was as simple as it was absurd—they substituted economic variables for physical ones. Utility (a measure of economic well-being) took the place of energy; the sum of utility and expenditure replaced potential and kinetic energy. A number of well-known mathematicians and physicists told the economists that there was absolutely no basis for making these substitutions. But the economists ignored such criticisms and proceeded to claim that they had transformed their field of study into a rigorously mathematical scientific discipline...

ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Robert Nadeau teaches environmental science and public policy at George Mason University. His most recently published book is The Environmental Endgame (Rutgers University Press, 2006)

Re: Invisible hand

[F34nor]

Because they live on the shoulders of giants and feel they are entitled to the benefits they currently have. They are totally driven by ideology rather than need or practicality. They are also deeply ignorant of the realities of history and why we had institut controls on corporations. "Social security is never going to help me so fuck the old and poor!" "I will be a fortune 100 CEO one day and don't think when I'm rich I should have to pay proportional taxes!" "Corporations are people with human rights who deserve both limited liability and the right to petition government" "Money is speech!" and on and fucking on. In my limited experience the more people bitch about free markets or taxes the less likely they are to have ever earned a living with a few notable exceptions.

If you despair for us just remember 50% of people are dumber than average they just used to die more often before we nerfed the world that's why REAL AMERICANS advocate releasing top level predators into the suburban environments.

Re: Invisible hand

[F34nor]

That's why shills are AC.

Re: Invisible hand

[greg1104]

Fuck the invisible hand too.

There's an additional service fee if you want an invisible handjob.

Re: Invisible hand

[AvitarX]

It appears to be working. Globalization means that most Americans are on the losing side.

Re: Invisible hand

[AK Marc]

He mentioned discrimination first. I just asked how far his discrimination went. Would you have preferred serving Atheists in the alley? A bill up for vote now in Indiana would allow exactly that (religious discrimination would be explicitly allowed by law).

And you seem to be assuming something about me. "you want to be treated special". Who us "you" and what special treatment did I ask for?

Re: Invisible hand

[AK Marc]

And due to REA and the USF, and the fact you didn't talk about not having electricity and phone, I will assume you have 3 of the 4 I mentioned, and are a lying little shit only talking about the one you don't have, and pretending that is somehow standard.

Yes, if you moved to Antarctica, you'd have few services. And yes, unincorporated Alaska has no services either. But middle-of-nowhere Alaska, if still an incorporated area, will likely have 4/4 for the services I mentioned. You'd have to deliberately avoid the services to end up somewhere they weren't.

Re: Invisible hand

[ahodgson]

A libertarian wouldn't give Congress enough power to have any impact on those companyss operations. It's only a benefit to buy politicians when they can actually make laws that benefit you and screw everyone else.

Re: Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

No shit...

I'm a fairly recent transplant from the land of Time Warner monopoly, and I had thought that Seattle had excellent provider choice compared to back east. I imagine this is due to living in the gentrified hell-hole that is SLU/Westlake, but uncapped symmetric 1Gbps for 80$/month is the norm here...

Re: Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

LTE sucks hard in Seattle compared to other US metro (and even rural) areas. T-Mobile has decent coverage downtown and on the Eastside, but nobody invests much out in Kitsap. l

Re: Invisible hand

[Bartles]

No, I see a bunch of heavily regulated companies in heavily regulated markets. It's no surprise that we have monopolies and near monopolies.

Re: Invisible hand

[Bartles]

Ding Ding. This guy gets it. Regulations and powerful government is what gives companies the ability to buy influence, and provides the opportunity for graft.

Re: Invisible hand

[DuckDodgers]

And how would the libertarians stop Congress for amending the constitution to grant itself that power again?

It seems to me the only way to do that is to have a Congress that's really under a tight leash from the voters. And to get that, you need educated voters. And to get those, you need... a decidedly non-libertarian national education policy like the ones in Finland, Poland, Japan, or South Korea.

Re: Invisible hand

[DuckDodgers]

First: if you strip that regulatory power from Congress, how are you going to stop them from granting it back to themselves? The only way you're going to get Congress out of regulating is if the majority of voters want them out of it, and continue to want them out of it. It will never happen.

Second: in many European countries, the governments are big and have lots of power, and they aren't letting companies like Comcast, Verizon, Sprint, and so forth fuck consumers the same way it happens in the US. The problem of poor regulation is not fundamental to all governments, it's a specific problem we have that has been solved elsewhere. Our national education policy sucks - the national education policies in Finland, Japan, South Korea, and Poland don't suck. Our regulated broadband internet utilities suck - broadband utility subscribers in places like Denmark have better coverage for much less money.

Most of the people trying to tell you "big government is the problem" just don't want to pay taxes so median income levels can increase. Bad government is the problem, and that's not related to size.

Re: Invisible hand

[rahvin112]

Blah Blah Blah Blah

More dribble, little understanding and a continued insistence that you know it all.

The facts seem pretty clear here, and the fact is that it cost $3k for a random individual to hire a contractor, who in turn got all the necessary permits and permissions and ran the line. Therefore in the absolute worst case, it would have cost Comcast... $3k to run the line.

Said random individual hired a fly-by night contractor to install said line for $3K has very little bearing on what it would cost Comcast. You have no idea if the contractor followed any of the requirements or received any of the required permits or performed the required studies or even installed it properly (such as the pull weight limits for the type of cable installed). I would in fact wager against it having been done properly because the guy probably hired the contractor that gave him the cheapest price without any regard to following the rules.

Of course the beauty of doing what he did is that he now owns the entire thing. That contractor nicked a water line that's now leaking and will end up causing frost heave that ends up destroying the roadway, it's all on the homeowner. Or the water line nick floods his neighbor's basement, guess who pays to replace the neighbors antique furniture that's now ruined. He improperly trenched the roadway and replaced the pavement with inadequate drainage and improper material which causes the roadway to fail, it's all on the homeowner. There are a million things the contractor could have done wrong, all of which that could have catastrophic consequences. The first and foremost is that if that was installed without a right-of-way permit the local jurisdiction is probably going to make him remove that line in the future, or they will remove it and charge him for the removal.

Or even the simple problem of his internet connection stops working, Comcast will deny it's on their end and will suggest he replace that line he just installed and Comcast will likely refuse to do any troubleshooting because it's not their line and not their problem. Or some other company installs a Utility in the area and cuts his line because it's not properly marked, identified or in the one call system, all the liability is on the homeowner.

That homeowner took on some big liability by installing something into the public right-of-way. I hope it doesn't come back to bite him in the ass and end up bankrupting him and ruining his life.

Re: Invisible hand

[BronsCon]

The average adult, globally, has much more buying/trading power than an American with $10 in their pocket and no debt, yet simply having $10 in your pocket and no debt makes you wealthier than 25% of Americans. While I'm doing quite well for myself, I couldn't afford to go buy a goat right now, but people living in mud huts do so routinely. Yes, collectively, we have more currency than most of the world, but per-capita, we have less buying/trading power than most 3rd world nations. It gets worse when you remove the 0.1% of Americans who control 22% of household wealth from the equation; worse still when you remove the 10% who control 80% of the wealth. Remove the outliers (and with weighting like that, there's nothing to remove from the low end) and calculate the buying/trading power of the average American, the compare that with the buying/trading power of the average person in, say, Ghana, then tell me who can afford more. Keep in mind that debt is *negative* buying/trading power, it's literally money already spent. If someone has $10,000.00 in liquid assets but $10,000.01 in debt, they legitimately have ($0.01) buying/trading power. That's negative one cent.

We only appear to have buying power in the US because we are extended much more credit than we can afford. Consider:

The average US salary is $51,000 per year, the average home price in the US is $188,900 per year (at 4% for 30 years), the average US car price is $32,086 (at 5% for 5 years), and the average American has $16,000 in revolving credit (at 14.9% in perpetuity). That means, right out of the gate, the average American is going to have $236,986 in debt which would take nearly 5 years to pay off with no interest, assuming they could throw their entire salary at the debt. Now, consider that the average American spends $151/wk on food (and doesn't necessarily eat much better than people in agriculturally-capable 3rd world countries), for a family of 3, that's $23,556 per year, leaving only $27,444 per year to pay down that debt, which would take almost 9 years if not for interest. Except that we also need clothing, which costs the average American family of 3 $174/mo, or $2,088 per year, leaving only $25,356. At that rate, it will take over 9 years to pay down that debt, with no interest. We've covered food, shelter, clothing, and transportation, so we'll ignore other expenses since the average American could forgo those if necessary.

Since I'm not writing a text book, I'm going to simplify the interest for the first year; I'll go with a set of estimates based on 6mo of payments toward each debt (e.g. I'll estimate the year's compound interest by calculating interest based on the mid-year principal balance), which won't be perfectly accurate. Some balances will be higher, some will be lower, in the end it should be fairly accurate; the interest calculated will likely be a bit low, but accurate enough to highlight my point. The average American's housing cost accounts for 79.71% of their debt, while transportation accounts for 13.53%, leaving the remaining 6.76% to revolving debt, so that is how I will distribute excess (e.g. over the minimum) payments for this example. The minimum payment for a $188,900 30 year home loan @ 4% is $902/mo, or $5,412 every 6mo; the minimum payment on a $32,086 5 year car loan @ 5% is $606/mo, or $3,636 every 6mo; and, the minimum payment on $16,000 of revolving debt @ 14.9% is $640/mo, or $3,840 every 6mo. Remember, the average American has $25,356 available each year to pay debts, half of that (to get 6mo of payments) is $12,678, so that is the number I'll be basing 6mo of payments on. Well, there's already a problem, given that the minimum payments total up to $12,888, over 6 months, which is $210 more than the average American will be able to pay in that time.

So, which payments get cut? Remember the percentages I calculated for excess payments? We'll cut everyone according to their share of that $210 deficit, based on those percentages. So, we'll cut the housing payment by $167,

Re: Invisible hand

[pnutjam]

Yeah, but it's gravy they are entitled and who unto them who claim otherwise.

Re: Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

I live between Dexter and Westlake on the edge of SLU. There's gigabit a block away, but I'm still stuck on dial-up. The owner of the building is still negotiating with Comcast. He can't afford the monthly minimum they require in the contact, and since he's afraid not enough residents will buy cable to meet that minimum, he hasn't signed the contract. It sucks that I live in a booming neighborhood with skyrocketing rents, but I can't even get cable TV. My rent has more than doubled since I move din seven years ago, but I still can't get ESPN or Internet faster than dial-up. Seattle sucks.

Re: Invisible hand

[Bartles]

2/3rd of the House, Senate, and the States have to agree. Not going to happen. On the other hand, who cares about the Constitution any more?

Re: Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

Which means we're better off... you nullified your own argument. I'm sure you enjoyed your typing, and I'm happy for you.... but, no. You're wrong. On a scale of ermagerd debt, sure. But on a living scale and a day yo day scale, no. Your argument is impractical due to only accounting for numbers. Literally, just numbers. That's an ignorant tactic and pretty cheap.

Re: Invisible hand

[F34nor]

Phantom Limb? Shouldn't you be kissing Dr. Girlfriend's ass right and arching Dr. Venture instead of dicking around on the internet right now?

Re: Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you think the power company wired up that new subdivision for free? They did not. The developer paid the majority of construction costs for the utility. The same happened with water and sewer. Even with utilities there is no free construction. The costs were borne by the original developer and included in the selling price of the house. When water and sewer service became available in areas formerly without the property owners will face special assessments in the many thousands of dollars to pay for the hookup. You only think it happened for free because you weren't the one who paid the original bill. But there was a bill, and it was very large.

Re: Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

It's drivel not dribble you drooling idiot.

Re: Invisible hand

[joelsplace]

You are clearly making some of this up. Conduit? I've been around a lot of cable and FIOS installs in the DFW area over the last 20 years and none of them have been in conduit. All direct buried including the Charter cable installed at my house last year. A Verizon crew cut my gas line doing a direct bury line to my neighbors house in Keller about 6 years ago. It would cost way too much to dig a trench and install conduit. The installers just lay in on the ground and then another crew comes along later (hopefully). They just split the ground and shove it in.

Re: Invisible hand

[mysidia]

Since when did poor become a minority?

In many cities, there may be some correlation between wealth of an area and race composition of the residents, just like there is some correlation between race and having a criminal record. Therefore, if a broadband carrier isn't very careful about the manner in which they exclude "unwealthy" areas, they may consequently find themselves at the wrong end of a lawsuit at some point.

It's why the US government has suggested that employers discriminating against applications with a criminal record might constitute unlawful racial discrimination, if the employer adopts a de-facto blanket policy of refusing employment to criminals, then they are opening themselves up to lawsuits against discrimination through "disparate impact" theory.

Re: Invisible hand

[Anonymous Coward]

It's drivel COMMA not dribble COMMA you drooling idiot. You aren't as smart as you think, fucker.

Re: Invisible hand

[mysidia]

I could make a comment about how, since 0bama, poor is the majority -

If Obama had reduced the wealth of a majority of people, then ultimately he made everyone richer, since in the US... poor is relative. They call you poor if you want more and you have less material stuff than what the media portrays as the average person.

The rich are defined as the people who have more stuff you want, or more access to money than you.

If you had a time machine, and brought someone here from the early 1900s... they would look at all the resources the poorest of the americans have access to, and call us all rich, even the ones with the fewest resources.

Today they call you poor if you can't afford to buy a prefabricated home or apartment built by someone else located in a high-traffic area, with electricity, running water, mechanical transportation, and manufactured food products created by someone else.

By timeless standards.... if you don't have to exert your own labor to build your own shelter from parts scavenged from nature, treat your own injuries, scavenge for your water sources, walk on your own two feet to get from place to place, hunt and gather your own food using sharpened sticks, and your own bare hands, then you are probably richer than 99% of those who ever lived.

Re: Invisible hand

[BronsCon]

I was replying, specifically, to

Instead of thanking your lucky stars for being ultra rich in comparison to most of the world

In the context of that, well, being "rich" is all about the numbers. Literally just numbers. So I'd say it was pretty much on point.

Do we enjoy a better quality of life than most of the world? Sure. I never claimed otherwise. In fact, I actually said:

Sure, we have nicer stuff, which our financial overlords let us use, for now.

That's an admission that we're doing better in the "who has the better toys" race, which is what you seem to think matters. But no, it actually is the numbers that matter. Why? Why is the the numbers and not quality of life? Because, until we actually own things, banks can decide they simply don't want us to have their property any longer and take it away. But that's really secondary to the problem you're (and rightly so) trying to address: our ability, at an individual level, to actually do something to improve the quality of life for the rest of the world. When 25% of the population has less than $10 after debts have been accounted for, they simply can not afford to affect change in the global economy. When you factor in that even average and slightly above average (so now we're looking at 60-75% of the population) earners are living paycheck to paycheck and often have less than $100 after debts, well, they can't do anything about it either.

You've got a nation of people who might give enough of a shit to want to do something to improve quality of life on a global scale, but who simply don't have the means. Sure, they could donate their time, but, well, first they'd have to be able to afford the time off work; and that's assuming the organization they were working with was willing to fly them to whichever country they'd be working in, and back, which is typically not the case; so they'd have to be able to afford the time off work *and* plane (or boat) tickets *and* room and board *and* food for the time they were abroad affecting real change. Which, again, comes down to numbers.

But you go right on ahead and say it's ignorant and cheap to look at it from that perspective. Just assume that all of us greedy fucks over here are just sitting on our hands; after all, if we really wanted to change things, surely we could, right?

False advertising?

[Anonymous Coward]

One might expect that this could be grounds for a false advertising lawsuit...

Re:False advertising?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure there's a cover your ass clause somewhere in there that lets them off the hook.

Re: False advertising?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. Cannot get out of false advertising by contract.

Re: False advertising?

[Anonymous Coward]

*yes you can.

See that asterisk? That's all it takes to mislead customers in advertising.

*special rates may apply
*not available in all areas
*subject to additional approval
*go such it, customer

Re:False advertising?

[tompaulco]

Well, to be honest, they didn't advertise falsely. They just lied. However, damages were done, and Comcast should pay for the homeowners relocation, heartache, stress, loss of income, closing costs, time and expenses and court fees.

Re:False advertising?

[davester666]

Comcast will have no problem paying the $10 fine.

domain name error

[Ydna]

It's http://broadbandmap.gov/ (singular)

Re:domain name error

[Anonymous Coward]

You are doing god's work.

We should lobby to break the cable companies

[Firethorn]

I think that we should lobby to break the cable(and other incumbent monopolistic ISPs) companies.

For example, state(and lower) prohibitions on municiple broadband systems should 'go away', and every time a cable company refuses service to a customer they should be hit with a $1k(or more) fine.

Especially with the federal government declaring it a utility.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[kamapuaa]

Dude lives in the middle of nowhere. There's nothing wrong with Comcast not offering him service, there's something wrong with them claiming they did when they didn't.

Additionally, the homeowner should have been more diligent that his home in the middle of nowhere, with no cable box, would actually have cable.

Internet over 4G really isn't that expensive, and that's what he uses now. I'm surprised that doesn't work for him.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Why focus only on the cable companies? Shouldn't the phone companies that provide broadband also be broken up? Or, at a minimum, for EVERY house or apartment they refuse to connect to broadband, they should lose $10,000 to a local government, to be used toward building a municipal broadband to replace those corporations who provide expensive, poor, broadband. Maybe we can get broadband that is as fast as Romania's, and for a similar price.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[Anonymous Coward]

What company would get into a business that had regulations like that? Better off just having the government build a nationwide fiber network and be done with it, instead of playing games like that.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[Anonymous Coward]

There ware two separate problems: telephone companies and cable companies.

Telephone companies have been regulated since they involved two-way communication and were considered necessities (for emergencies and whatnot). Requirements to service an area made sense.

Cable companies started as a luxury service (television), so weren't regulated so much. They weren't required to service areas (usually).

Then Internet technology was invented and it turns out it runs on almost any sort of wire. Already laid coaxial is superior to twisted-pair telephone cables. Cable internet in part due to this, but also to its reduced regulations.

Telephone companies don't want to be regulated, so that's why Verizon is claiming it sells an information service.

Rather than start new municipal broadband efforts, I think the easiest answer is to force traditional telephone companies into the utility ISP role. CenturyLink has already laid fiber in Seattle. If they just extended it to this guy's house, there wouldn't be a problem. Let Comcast compete against cheaper and better fiber services.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[Bengie]

Middle of nowhere? He lives in a county with 250k people and about an average of 650 people per square mile. My county has roughly twice the area and 1/3rd as many people and access to gig fiber through most of the county.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[Darinbob]

This is patently false. Rush Limbaugh would never say that as he's previously said that we've already turned into the Soviet Union.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[Darinbob]

But if Comcast doesn't service that area then Comcast calls it "nowhere".

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[Darinbob]

Lack of internet service should be something that should be disclosed as a part of the home buying process. It's ok to say "never had internet before", but to have the seller/agent claim that there was service when there clearly was not should constitute as a breach of contract.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[Anonymous Coward]

He lives half a mile from another home. Counties can have some areas that are populated, and other areas that aren't.

And 250K people for a county isn't much. I live in a county with 1.6 million people, and it's not that densely populated.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[Obfuscant]

I think that we should lobby to break the cable(and other incumbent monopolistic ISPs) companies.

The Kitsap County cable franchise ordinance is online. "Any franchise granted pursuant to this chapter shall be nonexclusive ...". That means that all it takes to "break the monopoly" Comcast has on Kitsap County is ... have a second company get a franchise and enter the market. And the franchise is for cable TV, not ISP service, so all another ISP would need is ... to enter the market.

But they're already there. The maps site says there are a lot of internet services. All but two are "too expensive", but the map site doesn't rate service by cost, just availability.

According to the franchise ordinance, "14.32.350 Extraordinary installation":

In the event a request is made for service and the residence is more than three hundred feet from an existing cable distribution line, such installation shall be completed on a time and material cost basis for that portion of the service line extending beyond three hundred feet.

This applies to cable television service (ISP service is not covered by the franchise). So, if he's ordered cable TV and they don't honor this section of the ordinance, it becomes a legal issue reportable to the franchise authority.

I don't see where he's reported Comcast to the franchise authority for failure to comply. If existing laws aren't being used to try to resolve problems, then why are new laws the right solution? (I used my local franchise authority to beat Comcast about the head and shoulders regarding cableCard service -- Comcast responded and I got what I wanted, in less than a week.)

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[tepples]

Internet over 4G really isn't that expensive

In what way is $5 per GB not "that expensive"?

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[Mashiki]

In what way is $5 per GB not "that expensive"?

When you live in Canada and it's $20-25 per GB, and I'm not even kidding. That's what Bell Canada charges people for their wireless service in the middle of nowhere.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[DerekLyons]

Middle of nowhere? He lives in a county with 250k people and about an average of 650 people per square mile.

Yes, the middle of nowhere. (I live in Kitsap County as well.) That average is misleading because most of the people are concentrated in one of three major 'metro' areas, much of the county is low density or practically empty. (And he lives in one of the low density areas, in an area which county residents regard as being 'backwoods'.)

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[Anonymous Coward]

In that situation, if he can get 4g intenet for effectively $5 a gigabyte, then for now, he should just pay that until something better comes along and minimize usage. He apparently blew through a 30GB cap, so assume he uses 50GB then that is $250 a month. That is steep, but then his situation is hardly ideal and he is using it for his job.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[superwiz]

They'll claim that the same website indicated that Comcast did offer the service. So they stated the service was offered -- not that it was previously installed. Good luck holding a realtor liable for a 3rd party not going through with their offer. If the garbage pickup company stops service to your town, do you think you can sue the realtor for that, too?

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[Anonymous Coward]

If they owner says they did have garbage pick up service, then later the new owner finds out it has never had garbage service, then yes, the previous owner can be sued for misrepresenting the purchase.

In this particular case, the previous owner never said whether there was or was not high speed internet service, it was assumed because the new owner had called Comcast (and then believed the most hated and despised company in America). That's why this should have been in the purchase contract, so that the previous owner would have to declare whether or not there was such service subscribed to in the past.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[Firethorn]

He might not know about it. Going by what's reported, Comcast really screwed the pooch customer service wise. They spent plenty of effort, just not effective effort.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[IcyWolfy]

There are 6 properties on the access road between his house, and the main Street. It's kinda laid out like a |::# . # = street. :: = four houses along the access road. | his house capping the access road.

He's half a mile from the trunk along the primary street. Not from his neighbours.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Seattle in the shadow of the second tallest building on the west coast, and Comcast doesn't offer service to my block. I guess I live in "nowhere."

It sucks because I've always wanted to have cable TV, but I haven't lived anywhere yet where it was available. I've lived in the Seattle area for all of my forty-five years.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[BradMajors]

Internet over 4G really isn't that expensive

In what way is $5 per GB not "that expensive"?

It is very cheap in comparison to the cost of selling his house.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[SuricouRaven]

He contacted two major cable companies prior to purchase to confirm availability of service. Both of them lied, due to improper checking of the address: They just looked at the zip code, confirmed that they serviced that area and promised him they could supply cable broadband. Neither comcast nor xfinity checked throughly enough to be sure that individual property could be serviced.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[91degrees]

I've heard that in Britain, our telecoms monopoly (BT) is obliged to provide service for a standard connection fee. There are occasional remote locations that they've been obliged to connect for a nominal fee of £130 or so.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[Anonymous Coward]

To clairfy this point:
BT are not a telecoms monopoly. you can choose to get your service from a myriad of companies. However BT are the infrastructure monopoly. Pretty much everyone else uses their cables and facilities (note there are a few cable companies that are the exception to this rule)

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[geoskd]

But they're already there. The maps site says there are a lot of internet services. All but two are "too expensive", but the map site doesn't rate service by cost, just availability.

By that measure, there is 100% gigabit coverage in the united states by virtue of the fact that all you have to do is run your own fiber (or pay someone to do it) to the nearest backbone location, and the owner of that blockhouse will be happy to jack you in (for a gigantic monthly fee). Where there is money, it can and will be done. The only question is how much money.

The point of the FCC regulations is that there should be broadband access for *all* Americans, not just the ones that can afford to lay out $1M in upfront costs and $10k / month... Sites like the broadband finder sites are there for one of two reasons: A political entity trying to demonstrate that they are in fact getting the broadband that they were elected / appointed to create, or by industry leaders wishing to demonstrate why there is no need for further regulation / and or that industry regulation is being met.

I've used that same site, and according to it, there are 7 providers in my area. Of those, two are 4G wireless at $5 / gigabyte, my bill last month would have been $935. 2 are DSL which meet the old definition of broadband at 1.8 Mbit. 1 is Time Warner that offers up to 75 Mbit, but has only ever been able to get 50 working where I am. 1 is Verizon Fios, which cant seem to figure out where my house is (those people are idiots). They would be great for my needs, but cant figure out how to get the signal from their fiber (that runs less than 30 feet from my house), to my house. and 1 is a provider that services a county 20 miles away, The county I live in has over 4,000 residents per sq mile, and I am in one of the more densely populated parts of the county.

The FCC needs to change their measure of availability to include cost / GB, uptime, and cost per Gb. They should only be allowed to say that an area has coverage if it has 99% uptime, 10 Mb, and costs less than $100 / month. reasonable usage (which in this age has to include about 2 hours of netflix / day). I would say that 150GB is not unreasonable usage per month.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[dywolf]

and if not broken up, at the very least ISP's like Comcast should be forced to divest themselves from their content creators (NBC and such) and delivery services (Hulu).

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[jbolden]

You are contradicting yourself. If it is a utility it can be a monopoly no problem it just has substantial regulation and oversight. If you want competition then there is much less regulation and oversight.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize, a good many US citizens have no idea how the Government, espcially when it comes to local TV & Internet authorities, works, right? Even after working for an ISP, I have a mediocre understanding of just how convoluted things are.

While this guy was probably technically literate to discover it, perhaps staying afloat for work took more time than he'd hoped.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a software developer who lives in a rural area and uses 4G broadband service for internet. (I did, however, know that my options were very limited before purchasing my home.)

The performance is acceptable, but the bandwidth costs can get pretty painful. I pay several hundred dollars a month for cell+internet, with a 60 Gig monthly bandwidth limit. Bandwidth overage is $15/Gig. For my particular specialty, I can manage my usage pretty well. For other specialties that required frequently transferring larger amounts of data, it'd be tough. Occasionally if I'm already near my limit and I have to pull a large database or something, I just have to suck it up and pay extra that month.

I regularly get advertisements from various broadband providers encouraging me to get service from them. None of them will actually provide me service. When I'm in a feisty mood, I'll screw around with their customer service people, just on the off chance that they'll blacklist me from getting their ads. "But you sent me a card in the mail saying I can get it! Can I talk to your manager?"

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[Anonymous Coward]

4G doesn't go to the "middle of nowhere". You're lucky to get 2 bars of 3G or EDGE.
Also, if you need to move more than 20GB/month, there are no 4G providers available.
20GB equates to a sustained speed of 63.8 kilobits/second.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[Anonymous Coward]

they should be hit with a $1k(or more) fine.

$1k per day until service is supplied would be more fair.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[danbert8]

Xfinity IS Comcast.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[danbert8]

According to the map my new rental townhouse in a dense suburb in a major metropolitan area has 4 options when the reality is there is only a single option: Comcast. I'm sure the HOA got some cash from Comcast to only allow their copper into the neighborhood...

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[blue9steel]

Well, if that's true he should be properly referred to as Comrade Limbaugh.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[greg1104]

I think that we should lobby to break the cable(and other incumbent monopolistic ISPs) companies.

Comcast has over 100 lobbyists whose careers revolve around preventing that. They will scale up that spending as needed. And the FCC is practically a case study in how to execute regulatory capture.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[Anonymous Coward]

My dad's house doesn't even have cell phone access available at all yet. My mom's house now has 3G. Not everywhere has reliable 4G.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[Frobnicator]

in Britain, our telecoms monopoly (BT) is obliged to provide service for a standard connection fee.

Yes, that's the UK, where even farmland has a dense population.

Consider locations in the US like Wyoming (253,348 square km) compared to the entire UK (243,610 square km) but with a population of 584,153 compared to the UK's 64.1 million. Or states like Alaska, North and South Dakota, and Montana.

Wyoming is such a good comparison because the land mass is similar to the UK. Remove EVERYONE from the entire UK except the people of Cornwall, allow those in Cornwall to spread far and wide, wherever they want anywhere on the isles, and then hook them up with new infrastructure regardless of location. That's about how sparse one of the least populated states is.

Most Europeans fail to understand just how sparse the US really is. While the US is nowhere near as sparse as Australia or parts of Africa, except for a few cities most of the US is quite sparse. I've talked with quite a few people traveling from Europe who flew into Las Vegas and traveled to the Grand Canyon. It is a four hour drive -- 120 miles -- of desert, cactus, and sagebrush that most European visitors were shocked could even exist. Where are the people? How could there be so much empty space? Who owns the land? Google finds some images for comparison: Here is Alaska (the largest state) overlaid over Europe. Another, the lower 48 states overlaid over Europe. The trip from Lisbon to Copenhagen is just a portion of historic Route 66, and is less than half the distance of the country.

In these US states hooking up a single remote dwelling might mean deploying many miles, thirty miles, fifty miles, or even more, to reach the single dwelling. Nobody, not even the federal government, is going to mandate that kind of deployment for £130.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[91degrees]

Why not? The number of people who live that far away from civilisation is paltry even in the US.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[SuricouRaven]

Sorry. Easy mistake for me: I'm over the other side of the world. If Comcast are present here, they aren't going by that name. I do have a local cable monopoly, but I'm not too bothered because they are providing a good service to me personally - though I've heard horror stories from elsewhere in the country, so it probably varied by region.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[datavirtue]

It's more like $10 per GB...bare minimum.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[datavirtue]

I think the lying is intentional. The ISPs help create the broadband maps and increase/fudge the coverage area so the government doesnt give them shit....and yes they do include 4G which they should not because it royally sucks and is very expensive (high price and capped).

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Internet over 4G really isn't that expensive

In what way is $5 per GB not "that expensive"?

It is very cheap in comparison to the cost of selling his house.

If you use 100GB/mo, that $500/mo. That's more than your 30 year mortgage payment in those kinds of places.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[Firethorn]

I said 'for example', and that they need to be 'broken'. That can mean either removing their monopolistic protections, or breaking them through regulations. I suggested examples of both paths.

If service in an area is so broken that a community decides to replace them by issuing municipal bonds to form a cooperative, that's their business.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[Firethorn]

Such agreements actually exist in the USA, it's just that there are exemptions like 'only if it's 300 ft or less, in which case the person requesting service has to pay for the extra distance'. Generally said distance is 'around' double the average necessary hookup distance, and the extra install is at the marginal cost - IE the extra labor & materials. If it costs $1k just to show up on location and start pushing pipe, but only $1/ft after that, a 100 foot install would cost $1100, the maximum 300 foot one $1300, and the homeowner that's 400 feet away would be charged only $100 for being hooked up.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, I mean it's not Beverly Hills but it's still a large house near Seattle. I'd guess more like $1500?

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[jbolden]

OK if that's what you meant then bad choice of verbs. To break something is to, "separate or cause to separate into pieces as a result of a blow, shock, or strain". You want to use break then something like "break the power of the cable companies... either through ___ or through ___".

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[Obfuscant]

By that measure, there is 100% gigabit coverage in the united states

No, because the map neither specifies that the coverage is gigabit nor is there a claim that the wireless services, that might cover where wired does not, have 100% coverage. Neither it, nor I, said anything about leased lines to achieve 100% gigabit coverage.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[Shirley Marquez]

Maybe, maybe not. If he's a developer doing serious work from home, he could easily run up a $1000/month bill at those rates, not to mention that the wireless service at that location is likely to be slow and unreliable.

Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies

[Firethorn]

You're only using the FIRST definition of 'break'. There are many more.

"To break something is to" also covers:
  to overcome or wear down the spirit, strength, or resistance of; to cause to yield, especially under pressure, torture, or the like:
  to disable or destroy by or as if by shattering or crushing:
to ruin financially; make bankrupt
  to impair or weaken the power, effect, or intensity of
to train to obedience; tame
  to become inoperative or to malfunction, as through wear or damage

I think my use of the word is particularly appropriate.

Not faultless

[OverlordQ]

Maybe he shoulda talked to the people he bought the house from instead of level 1 sales drone. Hell, even looking at the house he should have seen if there was coax in place or not.

Re:Not faultless

[MickyTheIdiot]

Is there any corporate malfeasance that someone won't try to explain away. How about if Comcast came out and shot the guy? Would you say that was his fault?

Re:Not faultless

[Anonymous Coward]

He says he called several providers beforehand, and both claimed that not only was service available, that the previous owner had been a subscriber at some point.

Re:Not faultless

[Bengie]

He should have had it in writing.

Re:Not faultless

[ShaunC]

He tried; Comcast doesn't do that (and I suppose this is why).

Re:Not faultless

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if he asked them to shoot him, along the lines of "So shoot me now", then the Common Law might hold that from that point on they were acting has his agent, and no liability would acrue to the company.

The Common Law is so 'Caveat Emptor' it isn't funny. That's why we need so much consumer protection law.

PS: IANAL

Re:Not faultless

[Nyder]

Is there any corporate malfeasance that someone won't try to explain away. How about if Comcast came out and shot the guy? Would you say that was his fault?

Yes, you never call Comcast for any reason. At least Comcast shooting him is more honest then what they normally do.

Re:Not faultless

[NoKaOi]

Maybe he shoulda talked to the people he bought the house from instead of level 1 sales drone.

And what if the people living in the house didn't have broadband because they weren't interested in it? There are still plenty of people, although a small percentage, who don't have a computer at home, especially older people. On a previous rental I had, I asked the owner if it had broadband available and he didn't know because the previous tenant (who had been there a long time) didn't have it. On my house that I bought 2 years ago, I called both the phone and cable companies (only 2 options in my area) and both said I could get service. If they later told me I couldn't, what would I do? The seller listed that it had DSL available on the seller's disclosure, but they also listed that it was on sewer (there is no sewer in the area, which I already knew) so clearly that wasn't reliable. Sure, it could be used as a reason to back out of the sales contract before closing, but once it's closed, what are you gonna do? Sue the seller for being wrong in the disclosure? Good luck with that. Sue the cable and phone companies for being wrong? Good luck with that too.

Hell, even looking at the house he should have seen if there was coax in place or not.

And if it had analog cable but no digital or broadband available, that would be pretty meaningless, right? Or, if it wasn't wired for cable just because the previous owners didn't care about it doesn't mean it's not available.

Re:Not faultless

[NoKaOi]

The Common Law is so 'Caveat Emptor' it isn't funny.

I would say it's more like qui habet pecuniam pro advocatorum

Re:Not faultless

[Anonymous Coward]

Can every house in every rural area have fast internet? Probably not.

Ok, so let's try working from there. When can we require every house to be provided with Internet? Is there a number, or a cost level that IS acceptable to make it a mandate?

Re:Not faultless

[antdude]

My old nest, since the late (19)70s, never had coax cables before until 2001.

Re:Not faultless

[tompaulco]

You can't get a contract from a utility until you own the home or have a lease agreement in place.

Re:Not faultless

[tompaulco]

Nope. All the fault is comcast. They lied. Plain and simple. If you have to go on the assumption that everybody is always lying to you all the time and double and triple check everything then you will get zero things done in your lifetime. At some point, you have to trust that after a reasonable amount of research has resulted in a company claiming to provide a service, and then they renege on you, that is the fault of the company and they shoulder 100% of the blame.

Re:Not faultless

[zdzichu]

And how exactly having it in writing would connect Internet to his home? In present day, because he needs it now. Not after lengthy, costly litigation.

Re:Not faultless

[Anonymous Coward]

Comcastes eunt domus.

Re:Not faultless

[Anonymous Coward]

Timeo Comcastes et dona ferentes

Re:Not faultless

[Tim the Gecko]

How about if Comcast came out and shot the guy?

We called to shoot you but you were out. Please call 1-800-XFINISHYOU to reschedule.

Re:Not faultless

[c6gunner]

Nope. All the fault is comcast. They lied. Plain and simple.

Um, no, they were mistaken.

If you have to go on the assumption that everybody is always lying to you all the time and double and triple check everything then you will get zero things done in your lifetime.

If you have to go through life assuming that anyone who makes a mistake is a liar, you're going to end up a cynical bastard who never gets anything accomplished, yes. If, on the other hand, you always keep in mind that people are fallible, you're much more likely to end up with good results.

Re:Not faultless

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of people who use the internet for email and bills simply went from dialup to 3G, and now I guess to 4G. It's possible the previous tenant had a Verizon unlimited plan and didn't watch video.

Another option is to use 900mhz wireless to a neighbor and work things out with them. A few Motorola Canopy radios should cost about $200 off ebay, plus poles and whatever their neighbors internet bill is.

Re:Not faultless

[fluffernutter]

I'm just wondering how that would work if they don't currently have broadband access... Would you sign them on for a broadband contract and pay for it outright just so that they can test it? Would you set it up under the name of the current home owners? Would Comcast be willing to transfer the contract to you after you are in the home?

Re:Not faultless

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there any corporate malfeasance that someone won't try to explain away. How about if Comcast came out and shot the guy? Would you say that was his fault?

Nice strawman you have there. If broadband was an absolute necessity, the idiot software developer should have moved to a civilized place. Hell, I'm sure he could have found a comparably priced home in a neighborhood serviced by a fiber provider. But I guess it's easier to just cry on your blog than to do due diligence in the first place.

Re:Not faultless

[Anonymous Coward]

"Sue the seller for being wrong in the disclosure?"

YES! That's why its called a DISCLOSURE....

Re:Not faultless

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Not on slashdot at least.

We've got a strong contingent of temporarily embarrassed millionaires that still believe if they lick enough boots some rich guy's money will rub off on them.

There is no moneyed interest these basement residing ryandian ubermen won't prostitute themselves too, free of charge.

Re:Not faultless

[danbert8]

And you give them your social security number, address of closest relative, the combination for your high school locker, and a pair of your significant other's underwear. I mean they can pretty much demand anything... What are you going to do? Live without water, electricity, heat, or communication?

Re:Not faultless

[cyberchondriac]

Well, you have to admit, it is sort of the mindset here. Consider, some malcontent writes a virus that destroys systems, and the prevailing sentiment is that it's entirely some system admin's fault because he didn't have the latest antivirus patches, firewalls, etc.. when it takes down his system. Malware is treated like an act of god or of nature, so that by extension, the victim is at fault. It's not a huge gap for some people to apply that to megacorps too I suppose.

Re:Not faultless

[almitydave]

The Common Law is so 'Caveat Emptor' it isn't funny.

I would say it's more like qui habet pecuniam pro advocatorum

I would say it's more like "semper ubi sub ubi", because sooner or later Comcast will make you eat your shorts.

Re: Not faultless

[Anonymous Coward]

"Mistaken" implies this was not a deliberate action on their part, and that they should be willing to make a good faith attempt to remediate their error. I can see no evidence for either of these.

Re:Not faultless

[whit3]

If broadband was an absolute necessity, the idiot software developer should have moved to a civilized place. Hell, I'm sure he could have found a comparably priced home in a neighborhood serviced by a fiber provider.

Yeah, blaming the victim is always a popular activity. He IS in a civilized place,
and the distance to a service location is about half a mile. This suggests
that he could set up a one-room office somewhere in walking distance of
his home, and get the internet service there.

But, the infrastructure cost to dangle half a mile of wire onto existing poles
is much less; there is an effective policy (of long standing) of requiring
electric utility services to connect any customer, but allowing internet
utility services to charge arbitrary fees and/or deny service entirely.

As for 'a fiber provider', that's COMPLETELY out of the question. There's no
license for fiber right-of-way until/unless the law is changed/regulations are amended.

Re:Not faultless

[Cramer]

Comcast isn't a "utility", and they don't give a shit who owns the property. For residential service, you'll get no "contract"; they can (and often do) drop the order. For business service, you can get an actual contract, but read it carefully as there will almost always be wiggle room to get them out of it.

Re: Not faultless

[Cramer]

Well, their **EXTREME** incompetence isn't deliberate. (it's a function of greed and lazy)

Re:Not faultless

[Anonymous Coward]

Failing to construct a cable plant 1/2 mile for the tune of $50,000+ dollars to service one guy is an offense equivalent to murder?

Re:Not faultless

[Anonymous Coward]

Well he had his chance to pay $50,000 dollars to finance the construction costs, and yes it really does cost $50,000 grand to string a half mile of hardline coaxial cable, but he started dicking around thinking he could somehow pay his own construction crew to do part of it for cheaper. Comcast knew right then they were dealing with a cheapskate entitled broke idiot who wasn't serious and not worth the time or headache.

Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Maltheus]

Before I bought my house, I went down to the Comcast office to confirm that I would be able to get broadband there. Multiple people told me yes, but I still wanted to speak to a manger, just to be sure. And they did assure me, over and over again. So I bought the house, moved in, and then they finally told me it wasn't available yet.

Since I was doing software consulting from home, at the time, I made it clear to them that I wasn't going to move there if I couldn't get it. I ended up going over a year before they decided to turn it on (the wiring was all there, it was a new development). It really hurt my business, at the time. I'm still bitter about it to this day. I couldn't have been any more thorough in checking before moving in. They are absolutely incompetent.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[PPH]

I went down to the Comcast office to confirm

Your mistake. They have no problem lying to a customer's face. Conduct all correspondence by e-mail. And make sure the CCs to the state utilities commission, attorney general and FCC are clearly visible.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[TheGratefulNet]

can you write into the house buying contract, the requirement for inet connectivity?

I know, no one does that; but maybe it needs to be done, from now on.

in my area, at least, comcast is a per month basis; so if a house sale was hinging on this, I guess I could -install- comcast, verify it in the empty house (sigh) and then move forward with the purchase.

sounds like a drag - and if the market is a seller's market, then your request is probably going to kick you out of the running (unless your offer is that much higher than the rest).

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost same for me. New development. No Comcast, no AT&T Uverse, no Charter. AT&T DSL was 1 month in because of the regulated & required phone line. Comcast was 6 months later, but probably had something to do with a neighbor who worked for Comcast. When I called them, they didn't even know my address for a good 3 months, and then told me it will be another 9 months.

I thought it was so retarded that a I lived 3 miles from a major AT&T office, yet they had no plans to expand Uverse in my neighborhood. Poor Charter couldn't come in cause the locals had sold their soul to Comcast.

The state of last mile broadband in the US is simply a mess, an embarrassment for us.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Anonymous Coward]

For wired internet/cable service, your public service commission are the only ones they are actually scared about.

FCC are industry stooges and as far as the attorney general is concerned, if they're not breaking any laws, there's jack shit he can really do - and unless it affects a lot of people, it's not worth his time (he's got to make a splash to boost his political career!). But shitty customer service is within your public service commission's area.

And, when writing write a real snail mail letter certified along with you email. Emails are very easy to get 'lost' or buried.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[melchoir55]

If you had comcast business assuring you, in writing, that they could install to your house and then their error subsequently caused you to suffer financial damages, I'm pretty sure you have standing to sue.

Of course, I am not a lawyer, and this isn't legal advice.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[GerryGilmore]

Excuse me, but - FUCK YOU! How in the hell can you think that having emails or any other correspondence would make one fucks worth of difference? In today's America, when Corporate America(TM) fucks you, you lie down and take it like the good Consumer(TM) that you are, with no rights at all. You are no longer a Citizen(TM), just another sucker fed your appetite of ${YOUR_PREFERENCE} partisan crap.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Maltheus]

I don't believe it was a lie. That wouldn't make sense. I was already a customer and I told them I wasn't even going to move to that house, if I couldn't get internet. I stressed that point emphatically to them. Misinforming me cost them money too.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Livius]

They are absolutely incompetent.

They were successful in achieving their true objectives. They were many things, but not incompetent.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[userw014]

While I can understand your bitterness, I recall years ago looking at a cute little farm house just outside of town on a few acres of land. It was partially appealing because it was priced low (this was during the go-go housing price inflation of the early 2000s) and a large corner of the property was filled with 2nd (or 3rd) generation woods (weed trees) and that corner looked like a great way to make some money by selling of part of the property to someone to build a house on.

But when you looked into it, you learned that this area was outside of the city water/sewer system, and the soil was dense clay and water logged. There was no place on the corner to put a septic field, and in fact all of the available space for a septic field on the original property was already in use - so the house couldn't be expanded to have more bathrooms, a dish washer, etc.

In some parts of the country, you might have had a chance for some financial compensation from the developer/realtor for misrepresentation of the property if they had claimed that broadband was available.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Obfuscant]

I was already a customer and I told them I wasn't even going to move to that house, if I couldn't get internet.

I don't understand what you thought that threat was going to accomplish, or even why that would be a threat to Comcast. You are already a customer and you won't move to a new house if they won't sell you broadband? Ok. They'll take your money while you live at your current address. It goes into the same pocket eventually and they don't have to spend money doing an install.

Yeah, Comcast lies. I went through that process when I got my cableCard. I complained to the local franchise authority and Comcast called me to work out an acceptable answer. But Qwest (now CenturyLink) lies, too, and they lied to the PUC when I filed a complaint. And even wireless services lie. "Absolutely Free 500Mb/month" that costs $10 if you go past 400, for example.

The moral to the story is that not everywhere in the US has wired broadband simply because there are places where the costs are too high. You may have to settle for wireless.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Obfuscant]

in my area, at least, comcast is a per month basis; so if a house sale was hinging on this, I guess I could -install- comcast, verify it in the empty house (sigh) and then move forward with the purchase.

Trust but verify. If wired broadband internet is a critical feature of any house you buy, verify before you buy. If a basement is a critical feature, either look at the basement or get the soil tests done to see if one can be added before you buy. Don't trust the seller to know when he doesn't care.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[NoKaOi]

can you write into the house buying contract, the requirement for inet connectivity?

Yes, you can. But what happens if you've done your due diligence (and maybe even the seller has too) and you don't know until after closing? I suppose you could write in that broadband be installed before closing to prove it, but if they have multiple offers then having an extra clause like that could be viewed as an extra pain in the ass (and an indication that there's higher chance that you'll back out for some other nonsense reason even if they do install it) so you're less likely to get your offer accepted.

All these people blaming the homeowner have probably never bought a house before, or at least if they did, they didn't pay enough attention to know what was really going on (which is what the realtor's job, so that doesn't mean they're stupid) and they didn't encounter anything unexpected.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Mateorabi]

But what objective did they achieve? They didn't get a new customer in him. They created headache and strife out of incompetence that didn't gain themselves anything in the process. If anything, telling him the truth would have caused him to look elsewhere for a home and become a (happier) customer all the faster.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Krishnoid]

Even that may not be sufficient. After this story, I would:

• personally pay to install cable internet for the existing owner
• call their real estate broker
• have them download a preferably large nightly build for some project
• have them run md5sum.exe on the nightly build, provide the result, and compare it to mine
  • 
    A little paranoid, but it's a minor inconvenience compared to having to do without broadband at all.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not a threat, it's a statement of fact: "I am going to move, and want to ensure I can still be your customer."

They still managed to fuck it up.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummmmm, did anyone think of maybe asking the nearest neighbors? Oh, and even though my job does not require Internet access, I would make the sale contingent on reasonably priced broadband Internet service being available, as well as me getting all rights and right of ways to the house/property in question.

Years ago I had a friend who lived in between 2 small towns that were about 5 miles apart. The only local cable TV/Internet provider in the area wanted to charge him over $1000 to run cable to his home. If he would have paid for the cable run, 9 other homes between him and the nearest town could have all gotten cable TV/Internet hooked up for a $29.95 installation fee. He didn't pay, and moved in a short time.

When I moved to my current apartment, the landlord assured me that broadband Internet was available, but I still talked to a couple of neighbors about it.

Cable TV/Internet providers are price gouging us badly enough that the nearest ISP/Cable TV provider should have to connect an residence that is not already connected for a fee of no more than $19.95 even if they have to run cable for 50 miles or more! They can easily afford to do so.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Thor Ablestar]

If he has a lot of acres it's quite possible that some of acres are not obscured from the said microwaves by the said tall building.

My provider is 500 meters from me and is obscured. He gives 400 meters of cable, all other length is mine. If such a config were impossible, I'd install a microwave in my neighbor's house. It's not obscured.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[tompaulco]

The moral is sometimes the price is too high and so we should accept that a company lies to us? No. The company lied, it costs people damages. The company must pay for it's crimes. End of story.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[tompaulco]

If wired broadband internet is a critical feature of any house you buy, verify before you buy.

What verification steps can you possibly take beyond what he did? Hack into their computers to determine if there really had been service at that address?

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[VerdantHue]

Multiple people told me yes, but I still wanted to speak to a manger, just to be sure.

So did the three wise men.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree, they didn't lie. They just didn't give enough of a shit to actually double check.
After all, what were you going to do, sign up with some other ISP?
Typical monopoly behavior.

And, BTW, they didn't lose money. The person who moved into your old house replaced the revenue you had been providing. It was basically a wash for them.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Anonymous Coward]

If they lie, he moves, and they don't provide service, he doesn't pay them, they get less money than if they'd told the truth, he'd not moved or moved somewhere with service, and he keeps paying them.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[jonwil]

When I moved into a rental property I specifically researched to make sure that I was able to get the broadband option I wanted and actually rejected whole suburbs because they didn't have the right broadband options.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Anonymous Coward]

Depending on the specifics, it is possible that you could have won expectation damages against them in court for the losses in your business. (Written evidence would be much better too, of course.) If nothing else, it would have been a great bargaining tool; they wouldn't have wanted to deal with the hassle and may have either sped up their connection schedule, or settled with you to drop the claim.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[AK Marc]

The next time, place the order before you buy. If they agree to it, sue them if they fail to honor their contract.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely Free 500Mb/month" that costs $10 if you go past 400, for example.

You weren't really expecting to get the IP headers, checksums, start- and stop bits for free? And you were paying for IP, not TCP, so any retransmissions because of lousy line quality are on you.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Anonymous Coward]

> I don't understand what you thought that threat was going to accomplish

What makes you consider it a threat? I think he was just stating it, so they'd appreciate the grravitas of the situation - ie he really really wanted a no-bullshit answer!

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Anonymous Coward]

Before I bought my home, I went to the Verizon office to confirm that I would be able to get FiOS there. The response: "FiOS??? What's that?"

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[DarkOx]

Yes you can put anything you want in a purchase contract, I did exactly that. I work from home so I have to have connectivity.

Now an offer on one property I made was refused because they were unwilling to accept that condition; but that's their right. Just like it is my right not offer to buy something unless I can determine its suitable. Either both parties can accept the terms or not. That is how transactions happen in a free society.

I have no sympathy for this guy he should have taken some steps to protect himself; and no asking a sales drone in a Comcast polo shirt is not due diligence. A two second conversation with his realtor should have resulted in him being told we can put whatever you want in the offer contract. He could write that himself if comfortable or do what I did an pay for one hour of a lawyers time to draft up 6 sentence paragraph.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Anonymous Coward]

I was already a customer and I told them I wasn't even going to move to that house, if I couldn't get internet.

I don't understand what you thought that threat was going to accomplish, or even why that would be a threat to Comcast. You are already a customer and you won't move to a new house if they won't sell you broadband? Ok. They'll take your money while you live at your current address. It goes into the same pocket eventually and they don't have to spend money doing an install.

You are making the GP's point: in this case Comcast had no incentive to lie about being able to service the new address and every incentive to tell him that the new address was not serviced. Yet they still incorrectly told him the new address was serviced, costing themselves a customer.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Anonymous Coward]

The owner may tell you to get fucked and keep your deposit. Realestate purchases are trickier than whatever fake lease agreement you have on your moms basement.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Anonymous Coward]

Simple. Put your offer in contingent on the service, with the proviso that you will pay for the installation up to x$, but will not buy until the service is in. That way, if the service goes in, you're contractually bound to buy. If it doesn't, you can walk away from the deal.

In our case, we were the first non-cable internet subscriber in the neighborhood. We got it, but I get charged for 6 while getting 1.5. But when the neighbors moved in, the same provider told them they didn't service the area.

But we'll probably be getting municipal fiber in the next (mumble) years.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Anonymous Coward]

> so you're less likely to get your offer accepted.

Move to an area where the buyer does things like this for the seller. Not where the buyer has to stroke the seller's ego or somehow make things easier for the seller.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[blue9steel]

can you write into the house buying contract, the requirement for inet connectivity?

You can write in virtually anything you want, of course the other party has to agree for it to be binding.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[greg1104]

And make sure the CCs to the state utilities commission, attorney general and FCC are clearly visible.

Good plan. Then when those guys all get together to go out drinking again on Comcast's dollar, they will have a funny story to talk about.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Anonymous Coward]

Misinforming me cost them money too.

Maybe it cost them a few pennies. It's still cheaper to maintain an incompetent/misinformed/unmotivated staff than it is a better one.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[rhazz]

All that does is get you out of closing without penalty. You can walk away and not buy the house. But once you've closed, you own the property and all its inherent issues. So for that to work would mean the condition of sale was that broadband must be installed prior to closing. After that you have to sue. If the condition was only that broadband had to be available, you can try to sue the previous owners but you would have to prove that they acted in bad faith if they were the ones who said it was available. Maybe you can sue the cable company for acting in bad faith, but they have nothing to do with the property sale so it's a separate issue.

IANAL but I do have family who sued their home's previous owners.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[catmistake]

If wired broadband internet is a critical feature of any house you buy, verify before you buy.

What verification steps can you possibly take beyond what he did? Hack into their computers to determine if there really had been service at that address?

Obviously, all that is necessary is to order the service, rather than fruitlessly engaging in this ridiculous "verification" ritual. Schedule the damn install, and see what happens. If they show up, you can reschedule. If they don't, don't buy the house.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[tompaulco]

I've seen several posts in this thread where the install was scheduled, and Comcast still reneged.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Obfuscant]

The moral is sometimes the price is too high and so we should accept that a company lies to us?

I didn't say that.

The company must pay for it's crimes.

I think that's why I pointed out the service clause of the Kitsap County franchise ordinance and that he should have contacted the county franchise administrator when Comcast didn't comply.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Obfuscant]

I've seen several posts in this thread where the install was scheduled, and Comcast still reneged.

That's why the verification wasn't just "schedule" but also "see it happen". If it was critically vital for the service to be provided, make sure it could be before you buy the house. The install is what didn't take place, and when that didn't take place you would have verified the lack of service.

An alternative, simpler step than relying on distant federal websites that base their information on what the companies tell them, is to call the local municipality that deals with Comcast for cable service and find the guy (or persons) who are responsible for managing the franchise. Ask THEM what the service is at your intended address, and ask them what the requirements are for Comcast to provide service there. They would have told you about the law that says Comcast must provide service but can charge you for materials and labor past 300 feet. They would also have the private, secret numbers for internal Comcast dispute resolution and can make calls on your behalf. They could have reminded Comcast of their legal responsibilities, to someone higher than first level customer support.

But none of this was done.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[PPH]

It cost them almost nothing.

By including various regulators in your correspondence, you might not get a remedy for your particular problem. But given enough complaints, the regulator might realize that there's a problem with a particular utility and act. Or some public interest group can obtain such correspondence through a FOIA and use it to support legal or legislative action.

Corporations know that most people can be disuaded by the argument that your individual complaint will get you nowhere. And on a case by case basis they are probably correct. But if they percieve it as one piece of evidence that builds up to some sort of class action, they might be more motivated to fix problems early.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the homeowners fault, unless they knew and lied. It's Comcast's fault and America's fault for considering lack of broadband a "nonsense reason" to not buy a house. It's up there with power and running water as some of the most important things needed in a house.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's set aside that fact that it's absolutely insane this even be necessary, it's still not sufficient. I've seen them cancel an install on site because it turned out they couldn't. You'd need to have them finish the install, which is illegal to do to someone else's home.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Anonymous Coward]

If something is that important to you why don't you write it into the sales agreement?

Then you don't have to buy the house if the service isn't provided and ready when you walk in.

of course many simply sign the "standard sales forms" and never bother with an attorney when buying a house. oh well.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Anonymous Coward]

yes - simply have the seller set it up and write it into the sales agreement. end of story.

it is like making sure you have electric service before moving in.

Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me

[Anonymous Coward]

I reserve the right to later post some ridiculously unlikely and special circumstances why this will never work and why broadband will never be available in American homes, and the ISP is to blame for everything, and none of it is my fault.

Get a T1

[jsimon12]

I am sure the phone company can pull a T1 out so if it is really that important to his livelihood why not bite the bullet? Dumping a home 2 months after buying would likely cost more.

Re:Get a T1

[MAXOMENOS]

He explored that solution, and it turned out to be a huge pain in the neck. Quoting Consmerist (first link in the OP):

Then there’s XO, which provides connectivity solutions for business. We confirmed with an XO sales rep that the company could, in theory, provide T1 broadband service (through CenturyLink). However, it would require that either Seth’s employer purchase the service or that Seth have a business license of his own. But even if that were possible, the cost would be exorbitant, starting at nearly $600/month with a three-year contract.

I could see his employer saying "no," and $600/month for 1.5 mbps is highway robbery.

Re:Get a T1

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I think you can setup some wireless links yourself, and you would need a location in line of sight that you control that does have internet, which probably kills it. Laser type link would be similar.

At any rate, if he hasn't already a wireless isp is generally the last (sane) result. (WISP). You could also try satellite broadband, but that may be worse. Once upon a time I paid a ridiculous cost for ISDN, but, well at that level you might as well move. A T1 might be adequate though as others have said.

I know AT&T serves my mothers house and once or twice they said we could get DSL out there. They lied. That was probably ten years ago now and nothing has changed. Its a perfect example of how well the free market works.

Re:Get a T1

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what I was thinking, closing costs x2 is likely to be over $10,000 easily and I'd guarantee that they are over $5,000

Re:Get a T1

[Anonymous Coward]

Over the span of a few years a t1 is going to represent a big cost. Better to end it now. Besides the fcc says a t1 isn't broadband lol.

Re:Get a T1

[Anonymous Coward]

As mentioned by others. The closing costs to buy and then sell the house would easily pay for a T1 for quite a while until there actually is broadband at his location.

Re:Get a T1

[Anonymous Coward]

Compared to modern broadband, T1 is very slow - about 1.5mbps I think. That is at the low end of DSL. T3, not so bad, but VERY costly.

Re:Get a T1

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, I've been here. Do the LegalZoom, form the LLC, get the T1, take it off your taxes. About an afternoon's worth of work.

Stop whining. Start campaigning for FiOS and other solutions at the township level. It will get better.

Re:Get a T1

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe if the lines were already pulled and paid for, but if they have to trench out new line over a mile and a half, $15k for install and the rest for service over a 3-yr duration, the $600/month doesn't end up looking that bad. You can't compare prices between established and "paid for" infrastructure against new development - it's apples and oranges.

Re:Get a T1

[PuddleBoy]

Seriously?

I had a T1 to my house for several years, because I was running a business out of the house. My business *required* dependable, 24x7 Internet access, so, even though it was expensive *compared to residential service*, it met my business needs and could be paid for via revenues.

Expensive is a relative, not absolute, term.

Re:Get a T1

[Thor Ablestar]

Is it possible to install a T1 line and pass VDSL2 over the cable instead?

Re:Get a T1

[Munchr]

That $600 a month also comes with business level SLA's and penalties for outages that you don't get with a consumer level package so it's not highway robbery. It's merely not an appropriate package for home internet or single user business use.

Re:Get a T1

[Loconut1389]

Same T1 service used to cost $3k/mo in the 90s. But 1.5Mbps isn't all that great anymore. Even a T3 isn't very impressive at 44Mbps.

I have more bandwidth at my home than the internet service provider I used to run ever did.

Re:Get a T1

[Anonymous Coward]

Not sure about that option. I am not professional enough to answer that question at all.

Re:Get a T1

[Anonymous Coward]

A T1 was impressive back in what, 1993? In my house now I have roughly the equivalent of an OC1, with people claiming the equivalent bandwidth of an OC3 should be considered standard. An OC1 is a bit more than 51.6Mbit for those unfamiliar. I bet nobody will guess what an OC3 is /sarcasm.

Re:Get a T1

[jbolden]

The business license is no big deal. And the $600 / mo / 1.5m is probably reducible with an agent. So something like $250 / mo or 5mbs for $600 if he prices out different options.

That isn't highway robbery though. While there is lots of old copper at 24 lines per 1.5mbs offering people good modern bandwidth chews up a ton. Say 88mbs is 56*24 lines. It is a limited resource.

Re:Get a T1

[jbolden]

No on what you said, yes on what you meant. It is either or. T1 is a specific standard of how you use analog copper. VDSL is another way to use copper. So it is either / or for the telco. However... those high frequency DSL signals won't make it to the LEC, he's likely too far for VSDL2 to work.

Re:Get a T1

[PlusFiveTroll]

Yea, if most people put a traffic shaping rule on their router that limited them to T1 speed they'd go insane these days. Websites have grown huge, PDFs are commonly gigantic, and images are enormous. Oh, and don't even try to do anything with video.

Google fiber is the equivalent of an OC-20 (which doesn't exist per se).

Re:Get a T1

[Anonymous Coward]

Closing costs for a house sale are at least $3,500 and probably much more.

Re:Get a T1

[RatherBeAnonymous]

$600/month for a t1 is a little high, but not unusual. What you pay for with a t1 is not bandwidth, it is reliability, real-time monitoring, a dedicated circuit, and a SLA. T1 cost is dependent on distance from the CO and and how many phone companies the connection has to bridge through to get from your location to the service provider. T1's need a repeater every 655 feet and they roll that expense into the monthly charge. Internet providers also may may have to pay multiple telcos if they don't have a PoP (Point of Presence) in your phone company's facilities, and they have to bridge the connection across multiple telcos.

Around 2000, a company I worked for paid about 1100 per month for a t1. I repeatedly had resellers tell me they could cut that down to 400 or 500 per month only to have them call back a week later saying they couldn't do anything for me. To service the business, any Internet provider would have to chain that t1 through three different telephone companies, each wanting their cut, to connect to their PoP, thirty miles away. The incumbent telco didn't offer any sort of business Internet service at the time. This was not a sparsely populated area, but three different phone companies have carved up the county into 3 territories, and none of them were interested in making any investment in the region. So, we had to go outside the county just to find a decent Internet provider.

Re:Get a T1

[RatherBeAnonymous]

I've seen a telco run T1 over dual 768k DSL lines. They had a unit that presented a T1 on the client side, then connected back to the CO over two 768k synchronous DSL lines.

Re:Get a T1

[jbolden]

That's not technically a T1 it is bonded DSL at 1536kbs. What makes DSL cheap is that it isn't going direct back to the CO but is shared. If it isn't shared, then why not bond it and deliver it as an actual T1. I'd assume they don't intend to meet the SLAs. Certainly though bonding up lots of inexpensive connections can make for a so-so to good but not great internet at terrific price point.

Re:Get a T1

[RatherBeAnonymous]

The connection it provided was stable and consistent as an internet connection, and they were very good about the SLA and were on top of outages. They were honestly the best ISP I've ever dealt with. But, we never used it for voice. I imagine they would not have been able to get away with that set up if we had wanted to use it for voice as well.

I felt a little ripped off when I saw how they were presenting us the T1 connection. I would have rather purchased internet access via bonded DSL lines than the pseudo T1 that we got, but it was not available to us at the time. I blame the local telco. I asked the phone company technician about it and he told me that they had basically stopped running T1 local loops whenever they could.

Re:Get a T1

[zippthorne]

Plus, what's with the business license requirement?

Re:Get a T1

[Holi]

Fios?? Verizon has stopped expanding Fios, so if you are not in their service area already you are SOL.

Why? Because...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are they still in business? Oh, because there's no competition. That's why. As a friend of mine once said "yeah it's unfair and they suck, but c'mon I still have to do work, so they get my money." If there were competition Comcast and their ilk (I'm talking about the telco ILEC like AT&T (really SBC) and Verizon) would have long gone bankrupt or bought out. But they are in control because their lobbyists are writing the laws for them and there's little we could do about it besides hearing fud from these clowns.

Re:Why? Because...

[rubycodez]

uh, with your phrase "their ilk" you contradict yourself, Comcast does indeed have competitors, so you have no point. You elected the lawmakers.

Re:Why? Because...

[Anonymous Coward]

And hence the dilemma of increased regulation. The current problem is largely the result of regulation, lobbying and the resultant regulatory capture. Why would anyone believe more regulation will solve the problem rather than make it worse? I'm not a mindless anti-regulation guy, but "good regulation" vice "more regulation" is usually the answer. And good regulation is often less regulation, as the lobbyists have a little less to work with.

Re:Why? Because...

[tepples]

Comcast does indeed have competitors

Whose offerings are cost prohibitive. AT&T and Verizon are wireless ISPs, and wireless ISPs in the United States charge $5 per GB or more.

You elected the lawmakers.

Someone who just turned 18 didn't. Someone who voted for a candidate that lost didn't.

Re:Why? Because...

[sjames]

Once you get out of elementary school, you might learn that for the purposes of market capitalism, 2 players doesn't suffice for competition. They will inevitable fall into a sort of tacit agreement to keep prices high and service low.

It's also notable that many of those included in 'ilk' seem also to have a tacit agreement to stay out of each other's staked out territory meaning there may be several such providers but only 1 in a given area. That fairly neatly explains how there can be more than one and still not even minimal competition.

Re:Why? Because...

[Anonymous Coward]

Two companies of "their ilk" can and do exist mutually exclusive of area, even the CEO of Comcast has said that in trying to convince the allowance of their current merger aspirations.

Additionally, since you self identify as a programmer I would expect you to see this obvious logic clearly as your four syntax mistakes within one line of written English.

Re:Why? Because...

[Anonymous Coward]

If voting did anything. They wouldn't let us do it.

Re:Why? Because...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahaha I've never seen a knee jerk post so thoroughly demolished. OP shouldn't be allowed to post for a year after getting owned that badly.

Re:Why? Because...

[Cramer]

Really? How many cable operators are available to your house? VERY few places in the US have more than one. You have "competition" in the form of technology -- one company per: cable, dsl, powerline -- but that's all. And it's very far from any meaningful motivator. Healthy competition means the barriers to entry are not 9000 miles high and dripping with ebola. Wanna build your own Super Awesome Cable Co? Sorry, prohibited by franchise agreement. Wanna run your own fiber/copper network? I hope you've budgeted many millions for lawyers, because you *will* be spending *years* in courts before you get to bury the first foot.

And before you bring up satellite and cellular... Satellite is the internet tech of the ninth level of hell; it's a serious punishment. Cellular is exceedingly expensive.

Re:Why? Because...

[rubycodez]

TV service is available through the DSL line from AT&T where I live, and I happen to have Comcast instead. 70% of the populace can choose from more than one provider, good enough.

You are funny, the barrier to fabricating jumbo jets and building skyscapers are both very high too. Cry my a river.

Re:Why? Because...

[rubycodez]

You make assertions without proof; I say two competitors is just fine. 70% of subscribers in the US have choice of two providers, good enough.

$5 per GB to a profitable home business is nothing, by the way. If it's an issue your business is a waste of time

Re:Why? Because...

[sjames]

Google it, there's a bazillion books and academic papers on the subject. Read The Wealth of Nations, it's free.

You can assert that the moon is actually made of cheese all you want, but it'll only get you laughed at.

Re:Why? Because...

[Cramer]

That's not DSL, it's "Uverse". And it's not "cable" (i.e. coax), it's twisted-pair phone service.

In a nutshell, traditionally there are three types of wire carrying three different services: power (large braided steel/aluminium/copper), phone (24-32awg copper pair), and cable (coax) Thanks to modern technologies, all three can be used to carry data ("the internet".) Thanks to additional technologies, both phone and tv are now "data", and thus, can be fed over any of those common wires. However, the point remains -- You have ONE power utility, ONE phone utility, and ONE cable utility. You don't have 5 power companies, 19 telcos, and 17 cable companies spidering various cables all over creation to millions of consumers. In the "last mile", there is very little competition. If you want to sell me DSL, you WILL be paying AT&T, because they own the local lines.

Re:Why? Because...

[rubycodez]

There is a book that says there must be more than three of providers of product that costs tens of billions of dollars to make? No there isn't. You have no point and your imagined "sources" are irrelevant to this matter.

Re:Why? Because...

[sjames]

I'm guessing you haven't read "The Wealth of Nations". You know, one of my "imaginary" references. Go give it a shot.

Re:Why? Because...

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone knows this but it's gone so far now, what can you do? We need a little Fight Club-like action to demonstrate the severity of the problem. A few corporate HQ's destroyed and executives neutered and crucified (literally) and people would be shocked into change.

Re:Why? Because...

[rubycodez]

Yes I have, was required in school. You missed a core teaching "the value of reproducible commodities and services reflects the relative difficulties of production counted in labour units". That's why we are talking of 3, count 'em, three providers. The difficulties of production are immense.

Re:Why? Because...

[sjames]

You should probably drink less. You're not even making sense.

Re:Why? Because...

[rubycodez]

Said the person making irrelevant arguments and "but but but this old book on capitalism"

Cory Doctorow makes a good point...

[Anonymous Coward]

Never mind the fact that their entire Internet product itself is based on taxpayer-funded technologies, Cory Doctorow makes the point nicely that these "anti-regulation" ISPs exist only because of current government regulations that give them the right to bury cables in other people's dirt. Never mind the government investments in infrastructure itself that they got for free.

What douchetards. I'd love to see all these regulations that protect their monopolies pulled.. actually not really- but I'd love to see more strings attached, just like cable television stations used to have to offer "public access cable" stations/equipment/studios, I'd like to see public access/municipal support to make these awful OP stories go away, finally.

Oh and fuck comcast. And especially fuck AT&T. Never forget Room 641A and their "retroactive immunity".

Re:Cory Doctorow makes a good point...

[TheRealHocusLocus]

And especially fuck AT&T. Never forget Room 641A and their "retroactive immunity"

Yeah. Never forget. Remind others. Explain to the young.

Things have got to change, But first, you gotta get mad!
NSA and the Desolation of Smaug
I am Sam. Uncle Sam I am.
I really hated Men In Black
Am I the first to suggest... BLACKMAIL??
Sherlock Holmes: training wheels for NSA surveillance
Stick a fork in the Republic, it's done. HR4681/309 [failed submission]
The backbone, then [1980s] and now
Whatever happened to the 'old' NSA? Directive 18?
The Day Israel Attacked the NSA [failed submission]
Last Wish (aka The Pact)

Re:homeowner fail

[Fwipp]

I was expecting this to be a homeowner fail, but:

Q: Why Didn’t you check this before you moved?
A: Oh, but I did. Having broadband of some kind was an absolute requirement for our new home. Before we even made an offer, I placed two separate phone calls; one to Comcast Business, and one to Xfinity. Both sales agents told me that service was available at the address. The Comcast Business agent even told me that a previous resident had already had service. So I believed them.

Comcast

[vazuff]

I have never in my life seen a more despicable, deceitful and generally miserable business than Comcast.

Re:Comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

AT&T.

They make Comcast look like a merry band of amateur comedians.

Re:Comcast

[Dracos]

Comcast, and all the other big ISPs for that matter, are indeed horrible, but statements like these are hyperbolic given the existence of companies like Monsanto, Halliburton, and Blackwater.

Re:Comcast

[vazuff]

Have you ever dealt directly with Comcast? I have. Sorry, not hyperbole, just experience.

Re:What a dolt.

[hambone142]

I live in a rural area. No DSL or cable. There are options although not as good as cable broadband. Motorola canopy system and satellite internet (2 mb/sec max). Motorola system is geographically dependent but satellite available almost everywhere.

A few things to consider

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Consider the source of the article (The Consumerist)

2) He could get LTE, just doesn't want to pay the price tag

3) This is just one guy living (apparently) pretty far out of town. One guy.

Check with the county office

[z3r0w8]

Where I live, those utilities contractually provide service. If you are in one of those areas, they HAVE to even if it costs the $$$ to upgrade their infrastructure to do so. The county manager can help here. Not sure if that is how they do it out there but where I am, they forced Comcast to run 1 mile worth of cabling to supply one house or get their contract canceled. some pennies.

Re:homeowner fail

[l0ungeb0y]

Actually, as a Developer I completely trust Comcast Business. True broadband, excellent upstream rates, and great QoS and reliability. Outages are infrequent and dealt with rapidly, their customer service is actually knowledgeable and the turnaround time to get an install is under 48 hours (I had a tech out installing at my new rental the day after I signed up for service and hadn't even had a chance to move in yet. I know many other small businesses and startups that use Comcast business and who have the same positive experience. Comcast Cable however are an evil cabal of raging assholes that love nothing more than abusing their customers. But Comcast Business and Comcast Cable are two different divisions and run independently of each other.

Not forced.

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean he chooses to sell his home. Home broadband is an amenity that is high priority to him, and it's a shame that he can't get it and he got an inaccurate answer when he tried to verify availability before purchasing, but nobody is forcing him to sell. Actually forced would mean that the place is uninhabitable due to rats or previous meth labs, or that he is unable to pay his debts and will face foreclosure if he doesn't sell. In this case, he could technically get by with DSL or dial-up at home and rent a small office within the broadband zone for his work. This is not necessarily Comcast's incompetence either, though they have lots of other examples of that; it's just an inaccuracy in their data. Maybe he could sue them for the inaccuracy or for any promises they failed to fulfill, but don't make this story worse than it is.

Re:Not forced.

[tysonedwards]

Per TFA, DSL and Dial-Up are not available as CenturyLink will not install him as they are on Permanent Exhaust, despite previously quoting availability and scheduling an install for both telephone and DSL services.

The owner is presently using cellular internet to do his work at extensive additional costs due to metered bandwidth, but it's his only option due to being lied to by these companies multiple times for months in advance of purchase and after move in.

Help us, P2P Kenobi, you're our only hope.

[Art3x]

It seems like the end game is peer-to-peer wireless.

Re:Help us, P2P Kenobi, you're our only hope.

[MAXOMENOS]

Is that reliable for the VPN he requires to work?

Re:Help us, P2P Kenobi, you're our only hope.

[CyprusBlue113]

It seems like the end game is peer-to-peer wireless.

Physics disagrees

Re:Help us, P2P Kenobi, you're our only hope.

[DigiShaman]

Uh, no. Most likely the GRE protocol would get broken. Well, perhaps an SSL VPN might work.

Re:Help us, P2P Kenobi, you're our only hope.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can someone explain this? I've read articles about it and they all seem to make certain assumptions about the nature of the protocols. E.g., ad hoc mesh might get congested or inefficient, but that doesn't seem like the only sort of mesh that's possible (e.g, geocasting).

I've not read something that really explains how a mesh/P2P infrastructure won't work, in terms of its fundamental structure--as opposed to the protocol, which is different. It seems like the protocol is something different.

I think the OP is right about where this is headed, so I'm honestly interested in explanations. It seems like a mesh infrastructure should be more distributed and therefore faster and more fault tolerant, but I understand how that intuition can be wrong.

Re:Help us, P2P Kenobi, you're our only hope.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a developer. I use a standard 4G connection from AT&T, and it works fine. Not that expensive either.

Re:Help us, P2P Kenobi, you're our only hope.

[Anonymous Coward]

Works great using NanoBeam's or NanoBridge's from UBNT.COM. We are using them now and are getting great bandwidth.

No one is forcing anyone to do anything

[supernova87a]

Let's be clear on whose responsibility is whose. No one is forcing this guy to do *anything* and it's kind of a stretch to say that Comcast is forcing him to move out of his house. He bought and wants to live in a certain house, that has not yet been clearly shown to have internet service. Comcast is incompetent, and it's his choice on what to do about it.

The issue is not that he has to move out, it's that he doesn't have many cost effective options to get fast internet at his house. But he hasn't even exhausted all his options. Has he looked into contracting to extend a line tap? Has he tried satellite? Phone? Any other options? Many people and businesses operate in far more remote places where they manage to get connectivity.

Much as I hate Comcast, have a sense of objectivity here...

Re:No one is forcing anyone to do anything

[pz]

Heck, he could, you know, rent an OFFICE to conduct his business from that has connectivity. There are tons and tons of incubator spaces that would be happy to have his business.

I've conducted business from home. It sucks. There are many good reasons to separate work and home.

Re:No one is forcing anyone to do anything

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but Comcast like other ISP's do little to service areas if they don't see high subscription potential. Its why rural areas get so little attention. The shear amount of
infrastructure and maintenance do not justify the investment for the lack of subscribers. Although, this was never the case for phone, electric, or gas. I think more needs to be done, to force cable companies to service a complete area and not pick and choose based on potential customer saturation levels. If their is a customer the cable company should be willing to provide service to them.

Re:No one is forcing anyone to do anything

[Anonymous Coward]

DSL in his area is CenturyLink. The DSLAM that coves his house is in "Permanent Exhaust" meaning it's oversubscribed so far even CenturyLink won't add more subscribers, and they have made the business decision to NOT increase the bandwidth to the DSLAM cabinet further to be able to support more hardware. I.E. "I'm sorry, we're full. No, we're not adding any more capacity. Ever. Goodbye."

Satellite doesn't work at all for full-time VPN access. Their bandwidth caps/fees are even worse than cell-phones.

And ComCast is flat-out refusing to service his house/area entirely. Full-stop: Since they can't charge him the full line-extension fee ($50-60k) the portion they have to pay by law is too high so they'd rather refuse him service entirely. Welcome to the edge-case downside of regulation preventing the full cost from landing on the end-user.

Point-to-Point wireless no longer covers his area due to a new tall building being built between their regional tower and his subdivision.

Currently he's burning 30GB/month on his Verizon service to stay employed, and if it's a big file transfer he drives into town to use the local StarBucks Coffee or McDonalds wifi.

He did his research, ComCast effectively has a bit flipped in their database: [X] Has had cable service previously at this address.

That single bit has caused all this mess.

- WolfWings, too lazy to login to SlashDot in over a decade now.

Re:No one is forcing anyone to do anything

[Nethemas the Great]

RTFA. Requirements with his job rule out satellite. Having personally had a stint in sh*thole rural Wisconsin I can tell you, satellite is a pretty absurd option and really just an act of desperation. He presently uses a Verizon powered hotspot but keeps hitting the 30GB cap even though he borrows a local Starbucks wi-fi for downloading. He did attempt to explore building out the 2500' but Comcast wouldn't consider it. Microwave line of site providers are not in range. Washington law bars municipal providers from retail.

Re: No one is forcing anyone to do anything

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the correct answer. He is willing to pay a substantial portion of the buildout, but Comcast is refusing. And due to a bad confluence of circumstances, there are no other broadband options.

Re:No one is forcing anyone to do anything

[DerekLyons]

DSL in his area is CenturyLink. The DSLAM that coves his house is in "Permanent Exhaust" meaning it's oversubscribed so far even CenturyLink won't add more subscribers, and they have made the business decision to NOT increase the bandwidth to the DSLAM cabinet further to be able to support more hardware. I.E. "I'm sorry, we're full. No, we're not adding any more capacity. Ever. Goodbye."

I live in Kitsap County and I looked up his address, and I can't say I'm surprised. He lives in a very low density area, and given current land use restrictions, that's not going to change. There's no money to be had in expanding capacity.
 

And ComCast is flat-out refusing to service his house/area entirely. Full-stop: Since they can't charge him the full line-extension fee ($50-60k) the portion they have to pay by law is too high so they'd rather refuse him service entirely. Welcome to the edge-case downside of regulation preventing the full cost from landing on the end-user.

No, welcome to the "edge case" of living in a very low density area outside of town rather than in a suburb.
 

Point-to-Point wireless no longer covers his area due to a new tall building being built between their regional tower and his subdivision.

He doesn't live in a subdivision - he lives in the woods outside the built up area of town.

Seriously, I've said it three different ways but I'll repeat it a fourth time because it's important to grasp - he lives in very low residential density area outside of town. He doesn't live in the suburbs or a subdivision. I give and grant that Comcast is incompetent - but his options are narrowed and/or blocked as much by the fact of where he chose to live as by any law or regulation. The north end isn't Palo Alto or Mountain View.

Re:No one is forcing anyone to do anything

[Richy_T]

Satellite really isn't all that bad for some methods of working. It's the latency that's the problem so if you need to RDP or VOIP, you're out of luck. If you can work locally and upload/download asynchronously, you're probably in good shape.

A lot of the problem is modern workflow practices are geared to fast, low latency networks.

Re:No one is forcing anyone to do anything

[Anonymous Coward]

Rural can get pretty good internet these days, and there IS good internet that would cover him as well, if they were legally allowed to.

But Washington has giant legal barriers preventing municipal broadband networks from expanding service, along with a few others.

http://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks/#DirectSale

http://apps.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=54.16.330

[... Nothing in this subsection shall be construed to authorize public utility districts to provide telecommunications services to end users. ...]

The first-linked article goes into more detail, but due to the laws he has to get internet from a major commercial ISP... and none of those are available at his specific location. And while the district and country and so-forth all have internet networks they maintain and can offer to Government-related contractors including coverage to his location, they're legally barred by a state-wide ban on, effectively, municipal internet to end-users.

- WolfWings, still too lazy to login in over a decade, but hey at least I check back in on comments I made!

Re:No one is forcing anyone to do anything

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, I've said it three different ways but I'll repeat it a fourth time

You should file a reimbursement claim with Comcast's PR office for all your hard work.

Re:No one is forcing anyone to do anything

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you don't live where the ISP can recover their cost in 6 months, does not mean they don't have an obligation to do their job. They got their semi monopoly not so they could only serve the easy customers, but so they could serve all their customers. ISPs should charge more for out of the way areas. You have to be somewhat realistic there. I wouldn't necessarily expect the same rates either, but not getting at least say 1Mbit DSL level to almost all of america by now is beyond pathetic. I could also see them requiring a longer term comittment for a rural customer in his shape of perhaps five years at the existing cost and level of service.

I think I saw something like a figure of 50k for the ISPs cost, but that is bound to not be the per customer cost, unless he really is in no mans land, and in which case he likely would have been told before buying it. The fact that there is apparently DSL there, save massively oversubscribed...

On another note, how the heck does he keep hitting a 30GB cap assuming he is actively trying to minimize use? Is that pure remote desktop traffic or something? If so you may be able to reduce the quality there. Normally with source control and such your not moving that much traffic. Make sure to toss together some local storage so you don't get files more than once, and maybe setup a squid caching proxy, although how much good it will do is debateable these days. I know I had previously looked into a proxy that did real time recompression of web page elements. Rent a server and you may be able to do something like that.

Oh, if your bandwidth constrained don't forget to run some kind of ad-blocking. Ads you don't download, don't consume bandwidth.

In general though he needs to break down that 30+GB of usage and find out how to reduce it. If it is a VPN can you burn CPU time to improve the compression? Can you as mentioned previously lower the quality of things like remote desktop sessions? Can you perhaps use a remote desktop session at times rather than downloading some material? Can you just go into work sometimes, say on days when you need to download something big?

I know I looked into openvpn once and found a little bit of wasted bytes in the protocol, or at least bytes I could remove and still use, but that is scraping at the barrel. Does he have any apps running that are wasting bytes? Perhaps ntop? or something on a linux router to track what is causing the usage.

Re:No one is forcing anyone to do anything

[Idarubicin]

Currently he's burning 30GB/month on his Verizon service to stay employed, and if it's a big file transfer he drives into town to use the local StarBucks Coffee or McDonalds wifi.

So...meh. At the $5 per gigabyte we keep seeing tossed around, that's $150 a month to work from home, with occasional trips into town for supplies and groceries he probably needed to get anyway. Some of us are out of pocket that much for a transit pass to get to work.

Given that it probably costs north of ten thousand dollars in legal fees, commissions, and taxes to buy or sell even an inexpensive home (and the sky's the limit if the property is more valuable), moving out solely to save even a couple of grand a year in bandwidth fees is a pretty dubious move, financially speaking. Bluntly, there's more to this story than is being reported.

Re:No one is forcing anyone to do anything

[superwiz]

Presumably he paid for a home space which would accommodate the office. What he should or shouldn't do is pretty much his business and his alone.

Re:No one is forcing anyone to do anything

[Anonymous Coward]

Replace one utility with another.

"It's a stretch to say that the water company is forcing him to move out of his house. He bought and wants to live in a certain house, that has not yet been clearly shown to have water service....The issue is not that he has to move out, it's that he doesn't have many cost effective options to get water at his house. But he hasn't even exhausted all his options. Has he looked into getting bottled water? Has he looked into contracting to have jugs delivered? Has he tried rain buckets? Any other options? Many people and businesses operate in far more remote places where they manage to get water."

Re:No one is forcing anyone to do anything

[Anonymous Coward]

And ComCast is flat-out refusing to service his house/area entirely. Full-stop: Since they can't charge him the full line-extension fee ($50-60k) the portion they have to pay by law is too high so they'd rather refuse him service entirely. Welcome to the edge-case downside of regulation preventing the full cost from landing on the end-user.

No, welcome to the "edge case" of living in a very low density area outside of town rather than in a suburb.

No... Welcome to the edge case of regulation that doesn't FORCE companies to eat the cost of connecting everyone.

Re:No one is forcing anyone to do anything

[luis_a_espinal]

Heck, he could, you know, rent an OFFICE to conduct his business from that has connectivity. There are tons and tons of incubator spaces that would be happy to have his business.

I've conducted business from home. It sucks. There are many good reasons to separate work and home.

You took the words right out of my mouth (or keyboard). This is one of my plan-B's when I work from home and internet connectivity at works sucks. It sucks to pay an extra few hundred dollars a month, but it sucks less than not working or having to relocate.

Re:No one is forcing anyone to do anything

[luis_a_espinal]

Presumably he paid for a home space which would accommodate the office. What he should or shouldn't do is pretty much his business and his alone.

Yes, it is his business alone, but that doesn't insulate him from reasonable criticism of his choices. Exploring the choice of renting office space is much,much cheaper than reselling a home, specially one recently purchased.

Re: No one is forcing anyone to do anything

[Anonymous Coward]

The issue with CenturyLink has nothing to do with density. Their entire Poulsbo CO is over capacity with DSL. It's a huge problem because of all the new housing _within the city limits_ of Poulsbo. DSL is just a dead-end technology so they won't upgrade. All the new subdivisions north of Silverdale cannot get DSL. Permanent exhaust is just that, permanent.

Re: No one is forcing anyone to do anything

[Anonymous Coward]

You are missing the point that he chose to live there based on Comcast's assurance that there was service there. Not because it was a nice place, not because it had trees, although those are pleasant. If Comcast had just said, "No, we do not service that property." Then the house would've been struck from the list of acceptable houses and a different one would've been found.

Re:No one is forcing anyone to do anything

[superwiz]

He purchased the space with the designated purpose of writing code. This isn't akin to conducting business in an office setting (seeing clients, conducting meetings, etc.). It is more akin to writing prose. If he feels he is more productive in a personal setting, then this is no different from a novelist renting a cabin in the woods to finish that novel that's just not getting out. Would anyone recommend a novelist to rent office space instead of a somewhat isolated personal space to do creative work?

Re: No one is forcing anyone to do anything

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha, this is perfect! Combine that with the house having full plumbing and the water company's assurance that the house was served with water before it was even purchased, and you have his situation.

Re:No one is forcing anyone to do anything

[Anonymous Coward]

Heck, he could, you know, rent an OFFICE to conduct his business from that has connectivity. There are tons and tons of incubator spaces that would be happy to have his business.

I've conducted business from home. It sucks. There are many good reasons to separate work and home.

Yes. I do work from my own office in middle of nowhere and the home office. Pluses and minuses. System Admin yeah home is fine. Software Development nope off to the office.

Probably a Wireless ISP in the area. Most of the country has them. I ran my own wifi network over 6 miles because I didn't like the only WISP in the area. Happened to have access to a 50' tower within cable area.

Re:No one is forcing anyone to do anything

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. I mean I am looking to work on the road. Same sort of deal. You just factor it in and go. My employer has a flat $112 /mo max reimbursement on internet. I am sure he could wheel a deal like that w/ his employer and absorb the rest. So your cost of going to work goes up a $100 /mo. Mine went up 3x that last time gas hit $4 / gal.

It is what it is and move on. We never miss an opportunity to slam Comcast and try to force commerce around here. In this case they screwed up. Personally I would never move into an area w/o at least 5Mb DSL and Cable. Otherwise I lose my pricing power as a consumer.

Re:No one is forcing anyone to do anything

[luis_a_espinal]

He purchased the space with the designated purpose of writing code. This isn't akin to conducting business in an office setting (seeing clients, conducting meetings, etc.). It is more akin to writing prose. If he feels he is more productive in a personal setting, then this is no different from a novelist renting a cabin in the woods to finish that novel that's just not getting out. Would anyone recommend a novelist to rent office space instead of a somewhat isolated personal space to do creative work?

Bullshit. Writing code is not writing pose, and the artistic characteristics of software development drown in the setting of engineering and problem solving.

No, I wouldn't recommend a novelist to rent an office space to write the next "The Old Man and the Sea", but this is not a novelist, but a software developer (or artistic code monkey or whatever) that needs fast internet access at an affordable price to make his living.

What he does is his business. But don't tell me that selling his house instead of renting office space is an objective, rational decision (it isn't), and don't tell me he is an artist that needs green space to arrange bytes into perfection, because that is bullshit and no one pays a developer to be a Dali or Hemingway of coding.

Comcast: Get a new CEO.

[Anonymous Coward]

"... despicable, deceitful and generally miserable..." You and Consumerist are too positive about Comcast. Where is dreadful, dastardly, dishonest, destructive, and demonic? And that's only the Ds.

Comcast voted the 2014 "Worst Company In America".

It's interesting to note that Comcast encourages employees to abuse customers, and Comcast employees interpret that as permission to abuse Comcast.

There is an answer: Fire the Comcast CEO.

BroadbandMap.gov seems to show competition that doesn't exist as a way of fooling lawmakers, so that huge abusive corporations can limit competition.

Re:homeowner fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Same thing happened to me. Comcast said "oh sure we service that address."

When I went for Comcast Residential they quoted me $4k to build out. So I called Comcast Business and put in a request for 100 MBit, signed a 3 year contract and everything as long as they footed the bill for the install.

They installed it to the house and then realized they only had DOCSIS 2.0 in the area and couldn't actually fulfill the terms of their contract so Comcast Business canceled on me.

Then I called Comcast Home again, they sent an installer out and I'm now paying $39.99/month for 25/3. It did kind of feel good to 'screw' Comcast just a bit. They're so large and incompetent the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing.

Utter nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

Seth’s work requires that he have a VPN connection. Unfortunately, the latency on satellite broadband is so high that most residential-level service providers won’t guarantee that customers can access VPNs. So satellite might get TV and some Internet into Seth’s home, but not into his home office. Thus, strike ViaSat from the above list.

That is an absolutely absurd statement. I am a software engineer and have no broadband where I live. We knew years ago when we purchased the land it would be awhile before broadband came to us. I can do about 90% of my work over satellite. Latency is 650ms-750ms on average through VPN connectivity. There is minimal packet loss. Putty is annoying but still usable. VNC and X are unusable over satellite, I'll grant that - here's an alternative, use remote desktop into a Windows box and use X or VNC from the Windows box to whatever box you need to get into. Skype and most forms of screensharing work fine. Some of the AJAX heavy stuff does get annoying, remote into the Windows box as a workaround and pull it up in the browser there. For the 10% of my job where satellite won't cut it, I'll turn my cell phone into a hotspot and use the 3G/LTE signal from it. What exactly is the problem here that's forcing him to sell the home?

The comment about the broadband map is indeed correct. We were listed for years as having broadband. We didn't have it. Getting the broadmap map updated is not easy. It took a lot of discussion (and voting) with local county commissioners but finally happened. Lo and behold, we had a small teclo interested in deploying fiber to our area because, hey, they realized we are underseved and there's a significant business opportunity for them. ETA for fiber deployment - this summer. Thank you rtmc.net and local constituents for raising your voice to county commissioners.

For those curious, there are a few high-income neighborhoods with large lots that makes it worthwhile for the small telco to deploy fiber in an otherwise mostly rural area. They are not deploying everywhere - we were told there needed to be 1 customer every 1000 feet to make the business case.

Re:Utter nonsense

[ColaMan]

Tried Mosh instead of ssh? Supposed to be better over dodgy links.

Re:Utter nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

You may no know this because people are generally too nice, but your co-workers hate working with you and you are FAR less productive than you could be. Just hear all the "it works fine excepts" made my head spin. It doesn't work fine, you are just suffering through it and forcing those that work with you or pay you to suffer as well.

Find Someone Nearby Who Has Broadband...

[Anonymous Coward]

and make a deal with them.

There must be someone within 10 miles who has broadband. So he won't be able to work from home - he'll still be close to home. It ain't perfect but neither is the world.

We don't care, we don't have to, we're Comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHgUN_95UAw

Re:homeowner fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Glad their marketing works on you, the infrastructure is identical between their Cable and Business divisions.

Also not sure why a 'Developer' would be qualified to judge the quality of an ISP.

Not so unisual

[Anonymous Coward]

All business transactions incur risk. If broadband internet access is essential to a real estate purchase it should be included in the buyer's offer and escrow agreement. In California at least, real estate agents can be sued for false statements so if the sale went through a listing agent who claimed broadband availability, there ,might be a cause of action. Bottom line: a naive buyer got burned in a real estate sale. Happens every day.

Contract contingency?

[davidwr]

Tell your real estate agent to include a contingency stating that any deal is contingent on acceptable Internet service.

I'll leave the details of what "acceptable" up to you, but it should be something that's widely available in the neighborhood in which you are looking to buy. The intent is to let the seller know to not waste their time or yours if the KNOW their house doesn't qualify and to put them on notice that any offer is void if it turns out that you can't get Internet service similar to the those living in the same general area at a similar price.

You do have a small risk of "losing out" on a suitable home if the seller is summarily rejecting bids with "novel/unfamiliar/non-standard" contingencies, but you are much more likely to avoid wasting time and money on homes you wouldn't want anyway.

Re:Contract contingency?

[Anonymous Coward]

The contingency would not survive closing. In other words, he would have had to get the service installed before he owned the house for that to work.

Re:Contract contingency?

[thogard]

What is the problem with getting it installed before he moved in? I had to pay for termite inspection for a house I bought since I wasn't about to trust anyone else. If I hadn't spotted a radio tower I could link to, I would have had DSL installed in the house before I moved in. The costs of pulling out out of a DSL contract are much cheaper than trying to cope with a house in an area where you can't get connectivity.

Re:Contract contingency?

[tompaulco]

The contingency would not survive closing. In other words, he would have had to get the service installed before he owned the house for that to work.

Yes, and since he didn't own the home, he would not be able to instantiate the service. Catch 22.

Re:Contract contingency?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called privity and it is easy to establish in a case like this, created a leasehold prior to closing.

This sounds familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

He probably shouldn't have been wearing those clothes, either. It was basically his own fault.

Re:This sounds familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

Comcast not forking for $50,000+ dollars to hook up his remote rural house to the internet is akin to rape. How absurd.

Homeowner should be able to run his own cable

[Karmashock]

How far away is the closest ISP switch? I doubt it is more than a few blocks away at most. Which means the cost for cable for HIM is a couple hundred dollars at most. Let the home owner hand the ISP or whomever a spool of cable and say "run that over there."

Here people are going to freak out because it is "different" but if I can get a word in edgewise you reactionary fucks... the reality is that if we had proper conduits under the roads this shouldn't matter.

I'm very happy for things to be organized and operate under some sort of regulatory frame work. But at the same time no system is going to handle everyone. And as a result there needs to be a loophole in the system that lets individuals patch the system as needed. Again, yes you can force them to use the ISP or whomever deals with the poles or street conduits to actually do the actual installation. But if the cable is run from your house to the ISP switch, then the techs can't say they can't do it. They literally can plug it into their system.

And from there nothing more needs to be said about it.

I await your spittle filled hatred. I shall bath in your frothy discontent! :-D

Re:Homeowner should be able to run his own cable

[QuasiSteve]

Having googled around to find his address ( I was hoping to find out the antenna location for the microwave internet provider, to see who's blocking the signal ), I can tell you that he chose a house smack dab in the middle of nowhere.

The photo makes it look like a run of the mill driveway to a house, but really it's a small paved area that leads into the woods (which surround the house on all sides - I'd be surprised if line-of-sight solutions actually worked because there is no line of sight to anything but trees), exits lord knows where onto a single-vehicle-wide apparent dirt road that finally exits onto a double-lane road that is still only a secondary road.

Run own cable? Where to? There's certainly other businesses well within 2500 feet - I wonder if they have internet. Or his neighbors (as others have mentioned). But certainly any remotely densely populated area is more than 'a few blocks' away, not to mention that you'd probably have to lay it all weird (no straight line through the woods for you) if the county has any say in it.

Hopefully some of the people who contacted him can hook him up, 'cos the end-run he's been given is deplorable, regardless of the choice of location.

Re:Homeowner should be able to run his own cable

[Karmashock]

Running even a few miles of cable doesn't cost more than a couple thousand dollars for the cable itself. If it is a super rural area could could dig a shallow trench next to the road and run the cable yourself for miles. The trench wouldn't need to be more then six inches deep if its a gravel road. You just kick a little gravel over the cable.

If you wanted to go to the extra expense... which would be almost nothing... you could run the cable in a thin PVC pipe. Cost of a couple miles of PVC is again almost nothing. I looked this up not long ago. The prices are hilarious. You'd want to buy it wholesale. You don't want to pay the home depot price if you're running that much.

But again, for several miles of able you're looking at a couple thousand dollars. And the labor costs would also be nothing special since no one needs special training for something like that. You could either do it yourself, have some friends help you, or hire some high school kids to do it for a couple hundred bucks.

I have an uncle that lives in a really rural area. He asked the local ISP to run cable to his house and they said it would cost 300,000 dollars. That was for 2 miles of cable along a dirt road.

My uncle was a contractor before he retired. So he just ran the cable himself. The whole road is private. He got the signed permission of the other five people that use that road and did it himself.

Total cost was a couple thousand bucks.

ISPs are frequently unreasonable when it comes to running cable to just one guy. This is nothing new.

For legal reasons, the ISP didn't connect HIM to the internet, but the person that owned the property he ran the cable to. He paid that property owner... nothing I think because they didn't care. And the internet was connected their place and then linked into his cable which then ultimately went to his home.

The whole topic is an exercise in talking to idiots. Everyone is boxed into their little robotic responses and no one opens their fucking minds to alternatives.

The cable has to get run. It is not expensive. If people need to sign some sort of agreement then you knock on some doors with fresh baked cookies. Its not rocket science.

Re:Homeowner should be able to run his own cable

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole road is private.

key words.

Re:Homeowner should be able to run his own cable

[Karmashock]

It shouldn't matter.

if the road being public means that people don't have right of way to run cable then there is something wrong.

Here some would say "but what would stop a rat's nest of cables?

Well, first off, most people won't run cable at all. But if someone wanted to, there should be plenty of room for it. By all means, have the local techs actually do it. But there's no reason they can't be tasked for a reasonable fee to do it.

300,000 dollars for 2 miles of cable is not reasonable. And cost quotations like that are quite common from the ISPs. its bullshit.

Re:Homeowner should be able to run his own cable

[Anonymous Coward]

> Running even a few miles of cable doesn't cost more than a couple thousand dollars for the cable itself.

Right.... And building a laptop only costs a few dollars in platic, silicon, and aluminum. Heck, I bet I could make one out of what's in my recycling bin!

If your uncle had the gear, and time, to do that kind of work, and could do it on a private road with no liability issues, great. Good for him. Now, who's going to maintain it when it breaks in the winter due to freezing or an idiot with a backhoe?

Re:Homeowner should be able to run his own cable

[jbolden]

Interesting idea! A relay and a short rural cable run. I like it.

Re:Homeowner should be able to run his own cable

[Karmashock]

As to you analogy, the cost of the cable... not the cost of the materials to make it is that price. So your analogy is shit.

As to the gear required. None

As to the time, I believe it took a couple days for a single man to do it while not working especially hard at it.

As to liability, explain how that is relevant?

As to costs for breakage... if the entire cable costs a couple thousand dollars then what is a little kink in that line going to cost? Dollars. Likely less then even ten.

I don't think we are going to have a profitable discussion. You're reacting instead of thinking. I can't reason with someone that isn't even thinking.

Re:Homeowner should be able to run his own cable

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that I like Comcast but the issue is not just running a RG6 cable from their last point to his house

The cable signal strength would not be up to spec at that point.

Being I went thru this with just a 1000' ext, comcast will cut their main Coax line, extend it to his house, put a drop on it and then return to the existing cable (So 2 large coax).

That way he will be part of the backbone with the Amplifiers

That part will much more expensive than just running a cable

Then they have to dig a ditch to propper depth in a portion of the road they have a legal rightaway. pull permits and pay the local govt. get permission from local govt. then send out crews and pull permits to close roads and pay 2-8 people to dig and drop cable, terminate it and then test.

Then they can run the RG6 from thir drop to his house.

They only needed to go 1000' from the road to my house and it was 23000. I had to pay 15K of it

Re:Homeowner should be able to run his own cable

[Karmashock]

My uncle ran fiber. It is a lot cheaper and you don't need to deal with that bullshit. They just plugged the modem into a router at a neighbor's property, then ran fiber to his house from there where it went into a media converter and then a normal switch.

This is not rocket science.

As I said, the whole thing is basically a matter of talking to idiots until the retards put the yellow round block into the yellow round hole... instead of trying to eat it or banging it against their heads... or picking up the red square block and then whining that it doesn't fit into the yellow round hole.

It is frankly a frustrating issue because so solutions are so fucking obvious and so many people just can't deal with it that it just makes me want to put all the strychnine in the guacamole.

This is not complicated. It is fucking basic.

Oh you want to keep costs down and use a cable that maintains signal at long range? Lets use something that is expensive and fucking lossy. That's great idea.

What they should do in these situations is install a little media converter box on the tower, effectively cite that poll itself as the place they're cutting it off, run a cheap as shit fiber line to the house, and then either have a modem on that end or just another media converter and then another modem. I mean whatever. It isn't hard. Running the whole coax cable over there and back again though is what you do if on your off days you like to stick your dick in a blender just to see what will happen.

That professionals think this is a reasonable way to do things is literally painful for me. I feel like I've woken up in the idiocracy when that shit is passed around.

Re:Homeowner should be able to run his own cable

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a liar.

You cannot use RG-6 or even RG-9 for 2 miles. You must use hardline. Several miles of hardline won't cost just a few thousand dollars Even at the low end of $2.50 per foot for the cheapest 1/2 inch hardline 2 miles it will cost $26,400.

Re:Homeowner should be able to run his own cable

[Karmashock]

And you're an illiterate fucktard because I didn't say he ran 2 miles of coax. I said he ran fiber.

Please put on a bib, sit down at a table of your choosing, and eat all the dicks.

Good day.

That stinks - maybe rent office space?

[Anonymous Coward]

I won't defend *any* telcom/cable company.

How about renting 1 one person office?
Yeah, you've been had, but your business is more important!

this is a solvable problem

[david_bonn]

... and this guy doesn't need to sell his house.

You can buy point-to-point wireless internet solutions which will give you up to 5km of range and around 50mb/s of bandwidth for $300 or so per end, so $600 total.

If that is his house, he has a bunch of trees around it which will block line of sight so he needs a tower-type antenna mount which he can buy for about $1000.

So all he needs to do is make arrangements with someone to be the other endpoint and he is in business. For less than $3000.

I'm not making this up. I managed to do this in a remote part of Washington state (where I still do not have a landline phone, the last time I checked CenturyLink wanted more than 25 grand to put in the phone service, even after I pointed out that I had put in extra copper wires they could use when I put in power to my home site) over sixteen years ago. My out-of-pocket costs were less than five grand.

Re:this is a solvable problem

[Anonymous Coward]

What ISP is going to let the friend share their connection with the guy? That's against every terms of service I've seen. Sure it can be done, but there's a risk.

Re:this is a solvable problem

[Anonymous Coward]

So all he needs to do is make arrangements with someone to be the other endpoint and he is in business. For less than $3000.

Isn't it illegal to provide cross-property access to a regulated utility?

Re:homeowner fail

[Anonymous Coward]

I know, I would have called every cable company, a team of twenty engineers, my local senator... Hell I would have spent a good 7 months researching if the house I was going to move into had broadband! In fact, I better make sure the house has pipes too... I wonder how much it costs to dig out around the whole foundation and make sure the entire thing is sitting level? Screw it, better just demo the entire house in case anything is wrong and build it from scratch... anything less is your own fault for being a 'trustafarian', right?
 
I can't fucking stand kids on the internet anymore.

Infrastructure yes, service no

[SuperKendall]

Glad their marketing works on you, the infrastructure is identical between their Cable and Business divisions.

Don't recall him saying much about the infrastructure, it was more about the service - the simple fact is that the service is very different between the two tiers, which is really more important - I don't care if the network is amazingly fast, if it's fast enough that's fine. But I do care VERY VERY MUCH if it's out during the day and need a rapid, informed response on the other end of the support line to figure out why there is an outage.

Also not sure why a 'Developer' would be qualified to judge the quality of an ISP.

That's because a develop who works a lot at home is also a sysadmin. They probably have a few systems, they probably know a lot more about networking than some guy just trying to get cable.

Re:Infrastructure yes, service no

[DigiShaman]

they probably know a lot more about networking than some guy just trying to get cable.

I wouldn't go that far. Sure, he probably RDP, VNC, or SSH into his remote servers with the occasional upload/download to them. But being in IT and knowing quite a a few devs, they're quite abstracted from the physical layer of things. But boy can they sure talk their head off about all the different programming languages they know.

Re:Infrastructure yes, service no

[sjames]

He probably also knows a lot more than Comcast's residential support staff.

Re:Infrastructure yes, service no

[Thorizdin]

Sysadmins know almost nothing about MSO operations, unless you've worked for an operator. Just because you've worked on a low end Cisco router and a few nix boxes doesn't give you any insight into how DOCSIS cable systems works. I know, I had to go through that learning curve myself when DOCSIS 1.0 came out and I looked at the modem and thought, "It's just a bridge, how complicated can it be..."

Re:Infrastructure yes, service no

[SuperKendall]

That's a really good point, I did some research into DOCSIS myself at one point to decide if I should upgrade my cable modem to support a newer version.

I didn't really think about corporate IT guys never encountering those day to day, in fact if anything they would be probably less inclined to dig into it since it's so close to work... at least for a programmer it's something a bit different.

The article is wrong

[gewalker]

The problem in this case is not that Comcast is incompetent. It is that they are flat out lying. This is breach of oral contract. IANAL and certainly don't know the penalties in this case, but I know that legal damages are quite limited in my state -- i.e.. $500 max. Why do you think they won't write out any guarantees?

Comcast screwed my over too as I had checked in advanced, was assured it was wired for cable and only required a phone call to turn it on, etc. Of course, when I made the call took several calls to determine that it was not in fact ready or had ever wired to their network. wired. Fortunately infrastructure was in place and I go service turned on only 10 tens late, but it was not pleasant for me either.

Of course they are incompetent. But they are also lying monopolistic crooks.

My story about Comcast

[Anonymous Coward]

For the last few months I get a monthly if not weekly call from Comcast promotional dept. Obviously trying to sell me more over priced packages at a teaser rate.
Every time until yesterday I politely declined and told the rep. I was more then satisfied with having only internet service with Comcast and I could care less about paying even more for other TV services or even a higher tier broadband service. I guess many people don't realize you do not need Blast tier broadband to do what you need to do. I have performance tier and its plenty capable of doing HD streaming on multiple devices simultaneously if I need. But obviously if you like to pay Comcast more then by all means sign yourself up! I told the rep. yesterday that if my area ever get's a opportunity to have another broadband service to compete with Comcast. I would drop Comcast in a minute. My Father in law is stuck in a worse situation then me. He has only access to a Wireless ISP which promises a whopping 1mbps up and down and believe me that is generous estimating in my book. Its funny what some ISP's can market as "high speed". The US is full of bad ISP's who prey on customers and charge ridiculous monthly fee's for lousy service and speed. We are quickly becoming the laughing stock of Countries have far better speed and coverage. For a free market society, the FCC has done no favors for the consumer.

Regarding the state law about municipal providers.

[Radical Moderate]

Seems like this would be a great case for getting that law stricken or amended. Most of those laws are justified so as to provide a level playing field for corporate ISPs, but since they're not interested in serving him the law shouldn't be enforced in this case. Maybe the EFF would be interested?

Broadbandmaps.gov is surely part of it

[damn_registrars]

After all, the website is broadbandmap.gov (no 's'). If he was going to broadbandmaps.gov he almost certainly did not get useful information.

Seriously????

[chriscappuccio]

Wow, an impossible problem to solve! Nobody who writes programs has ever installed their own wireless radio before? Drills and cat5 crimpers are beyond you, eh?

"Wireless is so exorbitant if I want to live here I have to have Comcast and they won't come!! I have to take a huge loss right now just to stay in business!!" -- Said some fucking idiot

what a cheap bastard

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy has a house and a job and Internet access is available to him. He just doesn't want to pay for it. No sympathy for this prick.

Old school frame relay not available? is this Mar

[Anonymous Coward]

bite the bullet and pay for a business frame relay. A couple hundred bucks a month for a business expense is worth it then paying closing costs again. As a developer 1.5 should be enough for his svn Commits and viewing javadocs. Then wait it out until when a residential line is available

I had the reverse experience with EPB.

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, the ISP operated out of Chattanooga. A family member lives on a private road with an unusual addressing. An extension to the main road. The customer service person was convinced they weren't serving that residence yet, even though I could go out and look and see their fiber on the pole. I could even make note of the residence on the road proper being covered. Just not the extension in their database.

Fortunately I was able to get a supervisor who knew the area on the line. He was willing to put an override on, and the tech came out, did his fiber thing, and presto, no more Comcast crap.

But damn, it was anxiety inducing.

However, I'm not sure who to blame, the addressing database, the county surveyor, or what.

Call them again

[Anonymous Coward]

Say you're somebody else, but give them your address. Basically, did what you did before buying. See if you still get positive answers. If you do, you might want to ask a lawyer what this kind of deception can get you. Hopefully another house (so you have two, one to rent out) :)

Seriously, he believed a Comcast rep?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rule number one: When dealing with ANY business and they promise you something, make sure to get it in writing! In today's modern corporate world, if it isn't in writing it never happened. And even if it is in writing, half the time figure you'll take it in the behind anyway because corporations know that most people can't afford to litigate.

How's that work in the rain?

[Radical Moderate]

Kitsap County gets 49 inches a year, and averages 153 sunny days. So it's fair to say most of the time the weather is crappy, and from what I understand that tends to kill wireless performance.

Re:How's that work in the rain?

[david_bonn]

Kitsap County gets 49 inches a year, and averages 153 sunny days. So it's fair to say most of the time the weather is crappy, and from what I understand that tends to kill wireless performance.

Yes, it does. However, most of the rainfall is more like a heavy mist than a serious downpour, and doesn't trash your wireless performance that much. My own experience is that snowfall and ice build-up on the antenna have been a bigger problem than rain.

Re:How's that work in the rain?

[Anonymous Coward]

Kitsap County gets 49 inches a year, and averages 153 sunny days. So it's fair to say most of the time the weather is crappy, and from what I understand that tends to kill wireless performance.

I'm going to clear the air here.

Wireless effects signals in the 10GHz and above range, primarily. You might see .25dB per loss of mile in a torrential downpour with hurricane force winds on 5GHz, but a properly engineered link is going to have 20-30dB of fade margin built in for just this kind of thing.

We are currently providing internet to ~1600 subscribers, many schools, hospitals, and remote locations... IN ALASKA, and have been doing so for over 10 years.

Signed,
CIO of an Alaska W/ISP

Re:How's that work in the rain?

[Anonymous Coward]

Kitsap County gets 49 inches a year, and averages 153 sunny days. So it's fair to say most of the time the weather is crappy, and from what I understand that tends to kill wireless performance.

I'm going to clear the air here.

Wireless effects signals in the 10GHz and above range, primarily. You might see .25dB per loss of mile in a torrential downpour with hurricane force winds on 5GHz, but a properly engineered link is going to have 20-30dB of fade margin built in for just this kind of thing.

We are currently providing internet to ~1600 subscribers, many schools, hospitals, and remote locations... IN ALASKA, and have been doing so for over 10 years.

Signed,
CIO of an Alaska W/ISP

s/wireless/rain/g in the above sentence, sorry :)

On another note, Ubiquiti's AF5X should be hitting the distros within another week or two. That's 500Mbps over a 50MHz wide channel, and is connectorized for whatever dish you want to use... in couple be a 2dBi patch, 5dBi omni, or 12ft dish if you want to.

Re:How's that work in the rain?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your informative and succinct comment has no place on Slashdot!

Seriously - thanks. If we had just a slightly higher concentration of comments like this, Slashdot would be a much nicer and less stupid place.

Re:How's that work in the rain?

[phorm]

Where I used to live: fog, rain, and snow were fairly prevalent. However, of the more common internet access solutions was long-shot wireless bounced off a transceiver on the local mountain. Heck, the local school district used it for a number of their schools, and it was surprisingly reliable and fast.

(we're not talking pringles-can wireless with a Linksys router, but rather the type that requires a mast on the top of the building).

Re:How's that work in the rain?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing you are the CIO of Alaska Power & Telephone, unless they have competitors I don't know about.

I used to work for their tech support department, and downtime was a pretty regular thing for their wireless links. I don't know what you want to blame that on, but let's not pretend these links are totally reliable, or anything close to it.

Re:homeowner fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Having worked for Comcast as a phone rep THREE TIMES (it's complicated and just as stupid as you're imagining) I can tell you that their shit is jacked.

Their order system is so complicated that it's almost impossible to complete an order without fucking it up.

Re:homeowner fail

[AaronW]

I have had the same experience with Comcast Business. The business service for me has been the exact opposite of their residential service. The business technical support's first response isn't "have you rebooted your PC" and usually the first level support person has been able to resolve everything. The few times they've had to come out they were prompt and resolved the problem, having had to replace the line from the pole a couple of times (apparently the squirrels like to chew on the cable).

Residential just plain sucks.

DSL might very well be available there

[Caviller]

DSL might very well be available there but for "new development", there is a trick you have to do in order to get it.

When i moved into my new house a few years ago, I was told that there is no DSL service in my area. I told them that it was BS since the CO is less then a mile from my house (i pass it going to and from work each day) and the dang pedistal was in my front yard. Over and over again..."Sir we don't serve your address/area and have no plans on doing so." Each time i respond..."You put a new pedistal in my subdivision when the road/utilities were layed....want the number off the pedistal?" Them..."No sir since we have no service there...." This went on for three damn months threw 3! different support levels.

Finally, i realized that by law, they HAVE to hook me up if i requested standard POTS phone service. I called, gave them the address, they told me they don't have service there and would have to set up a service man to survey and figure out how to get me phone service where i live. The next day the guy came out and said..."Well this is easier then i thought....you just need a line buried from the ped to the house (50ft). He was done in 10 min. I then asked if DSL was available here. He told me yea, it's just down the road, want me to turn that on too and add it to your bill, i have a new modem in my truck. 20 minutes later....i had 12Mbits DSL service to my house.

I then asked why in the world i could not get this done MONTHS ago. He said that if a address never had regular home phone service, as far as ATT was concerned, DSL was not and never would be available. There system was incapable of turning up dsl before phone service....the computer system would just plain not even allow it.

The next day...i canceled my home phone and kept the DSL

So my advice to you is that get the mandated by law to provide POTS phone line, and then see if magically you can get DSL service now. I would not be surprised if you can now get it. When I told all my neighbors (who have been trying to months like me) how to do it, BAM!, a few weeks straight of ATT trucks at all the houses, and a whole lot of very thankful neighbors.

Re:DSL might very well be available there

[Anonymous Coward]

You are quite lucky I suppose. I faced similar problem when I moved into a house (rent ofcourse, in Australia). I requested for ADSL, Telstra said cant provide. I requested for a phone line and ended up getting one only to realise later that not all phone lines can support DSL! Thinking of moving house again!

Re:DSL might very well be available there

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a trick we've been using for years in Seattle. I live and work in downtown Seattle, and Comcast doesn't offer service. The lines to both my house and work were not good enough to support DSL. So, in both locations we had to use dial-up until we ordered ISDN which CenturyLink is legally required to provide in this state. After digging up the street in front of my house to replace cabling and replacing all of the 66 blocks on the street and in our building at work, we can now get DSL to work. It's only 576 kbps at work and 160 kbps at home, but it's much better than an analog modem!

I wish this city would allow competition so we could get faster Internet access.

Re:DSL might very well be available there

[T.E.D.]

He tried that. Their DSL there is so oversubscribed they won't allow new customers on it under any circumstances. If that's truly the case, I suspect managing to trick a phone installer into giving it to him anyway would not provide him a very usable line.

Re:DSL might very well be available there

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct, the databases for phone and cable will not show availability unless the address exists, and if there's never been service at that address, it's not in the database. I've dealt with this for almost three decades.
The local service manager/tech people are the only ones who can tell if you can get service. If you must, order a service that is regulated. That will usually get a tech out to survey your location. Then you can find out what's available and will work as expected. Sorta like taking your car to the mechanic. You could offer to buy coffee or beer to the next guy you see in a company truck working down the road from your house. That's even faster than calling in an order.

Buying a house without knowing if service is available is a crapshoot if all the wires are underground. When they're on a pole, you can see if a tap is close, and go to a house that has a drop to (politely, as in "want a beer?") ask if they are using the service and how well it works. Too bad this guy relied on the 'promises' made by the sales slugs at Comcast. They only say what they're told to, which is never "No, we don't" do that.

Re:DSL might very well be available there

[Anonymous Coward]

Its like in independence day when they figure out how to kill the aliens. Broadcast it to everyone now! We know how to kill the monster!!! lol...

Re:DSL might very well be available there

[FrankieBaby1986]

AT&T should pay you a commission!

Re:Regarding the state law about municipal provide

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the solution is "simple" Municipality cannot have internet on a area that Comast services.
If they don't service it municipality will make the development and provide internet if in the future comcast wants to use their lines muncipiality will rent it to comcast for a more expensive price.

Granted if the municipality does like the guy in the article did and calls Comcast to check if they do service it they will say yes so the whole "solution" is pointless.

Re:homeowner fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, no: Comcast knows exactly what they're doing and it's their business model and it's how they make money.

I was forced to use Comcast for 10 years. Never a-fucking-gain. Ever. Even if I have to go back to tin cans and string.

Not forced to sell. Just stupid home owner.

[bhlowe]

Just walk around and meet the neighbors. Ask to run a wireless link to one in exchange for some or all of the network charges. Great outdoor wireless radios are cheap and reliable.

Re:homeowner fail

[Anonymous Coward]

it's still the homeowner's fault for not getting a contract signed ahead of closing.. but all is not lost...

from tfa...

The state law in Washington limits the sale of muni broadband service to the wholesale level, meaning Kitsap PUD can only sell network access to resellers.

easy enough. he signs up as a reseller, gets hooked up to the fiber with a small block of ip's, add a router and an outdoor hotspot on his roof, then he can sell access to neighbors for a share of the wholesale cost. problem solved.

centurytel, btw, does likely service the area.. but they're at max capacity or service distance and don't want to add more hardware to cover that particular address. we run into that all the time here. not until someone with serious pull gets involved will they spend the 50k+ to do it.. not even a state public utilities commissioner is high enough on the food chain.. but if a regional centurytel executive was in the same situation, there would be dsl live within 6 weeks (true story!)

Kitsap County resident here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, Comcast is incompetent, but there's more to the story than meets the summary. I took a look at his website, and found his resume, and a couple of things leapt out at me...

- All of his previous employment was in Southern California. To residents here on the Peninsula that's almost always a huge warning sign with flashing red letters. We've all seen too many folk move here from big cities who don't grasp that despite the apparent nearness of Seattle and Tacoma, Kitsap County is still pretty much country/rural. Not so much as it was when the Navy brought me out here nearly thirty years ago, but it's still not a city. It's not even close.

- His address turns out to be out in the boonies, in the kind of place big city folk like to buy houses and then complain that it's not like living in the cheek-by-jowl suburbs. Sorry dude, but when you live at the end of a quarter mile long shared driveway off of a back country road, it should be pretty obvious that you don't live in Palo Alto or Mountain View anymore.

Re:Kitsap County resident here...

[tompaulco]

Yeah, Comcast is incompetent, but there's more to the story than meets the summary. I took a look at his website, and found his resume, and a couple of things leapt out at me...

- All of his previous employment was in Southern California. To residents here on the Peninsula that's almost always a huge warning sign with flashing red letters. We've all seen too many folk move here from big cities who don't grasp that despite the apparent nearness of Seattle and Tacoma, Kitsap County is still pretty much country/rural. Not so much as it was when the Navy brought me out here nearly thirty years ago, but it's still not a city. It's not even close.

- His address turns out to be out in the boonies, in the kind of place big city folk like to buy houses and then complain that it's not like living in the cheek-by-jowl suburbs. Sorry dude, but when you live at the end of a quarter mile long shared driveway off of a back country road, it should be pretty obvious that you don't live in Palo Alto or Mountain View anymore.

You are exactly right. However, if someone tells you multiple times that they can provide you a service and then reneges, they are responsible for damages, whether it is in downtown L.A., Kitsap County, or Timbuktu Michigan.

Re:Kitsap County resident here...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not once did Comcast make any promises. Sending an installer and finding that the installation is unfeasible did not represent any sort of contract. He has no case against comcast at all. Then there are the limitations of liability. Suppose your flight was cancelled/delayed and you lost out on a million dollar business deal. Are the airlines liable for your million dollar loss? Only an idiot would believe so.

shibboleet

[Anonymous Coward]

Also not sure why a 'Developer' would be qualified to judge the quality of an ISP.

That's because a develop who works a lot at home is also a sysadmin. They probably have a few systems, they probably know a lot more about networking than some guy just trying to get cable.

They would also probably know more than a good portion of the Level 1 phone support folks who often just follow a script.

Saying turn-it-off-and-on-again is fine for Aunt Millie, but when I've telnetted into the modem and and amlooking at SNR ratios and such, please bump me to Level 2. A shibboleth would be handy at times: https://xkcd.com/806/

Is it time for a nationwide class-action lawsuit ?

[Anonymous Coward]

With federal regulation, state laws, local municipal rules, incompetent ISP and whatnots, the entire broadband thingy in the USA has become a big fucking mess

Isn't it time for a big fucking class-action lawsuit - perhaps all the way to the fucking SCOTUS - to get this thing to untangle, once and for all?

Re:homeowner fail

[jimmydevice]

Centurytel operates the same way. The sold and billed for DSL to my rural address that they didn't service. They even had a turn on date. A day before turn on, I received an email saying that, No, DSL is not available in your service area.
It took flaming hoops to get the deposit and first months fee returned.

Re:What a dolt.

[halltk1983]

If you need faster, contact your WISP (the ones running the canopy system), and ask about a point to point connection using a ubiquiti pair. Most are willing to do it, though you'll pay for it. Canopy system I used to help run gave 7 mbps burst (1 mbps base, but if you were browsing normally, you were almost always in burst) which worked great until everyone started using netflix. Then we had to get more radios, more towers, and more frequencies to cope. The new-at-the-time 3.65 lightly licensed band was a huge boon, since we could give more bandwidth more reliably. I liked working there, knowing that I was helping people whose other option was dial up.

Ugh

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a love hate relationship with comcast. As far as the internet goes, I have never had a single problem in probably 4 years. If there was an outage, I wasn't aware. And the speed has always met what I am paying for. But most of the time it clocks out much higher. I'm paying for 50mb, and I would say I get 85-90mb about 1/2 the time. I use google's DNS, and everything is peachy. Pricey, but peachy.

But the TV is god awful. Just horrible. The quality of the hardware, the poor design of their software and interface. I would consider something else, but it looks like dish is my only real option, and I live in FL. So when it rains, you lose signal. It rains here probably more than anywhere else in the US. If I could find a good option, i'd drop the TV service.

what the cable franchise laws? in some areas they

[Joe_Dragon]

what the cable franchise laws? in some areas they let any in the area get cable with out force them to pay any kind of high cable run fee.

Re:Is it time for a nationwide class-action lawsui

[anagama]

Are you fucking high? The same SCOTUS that ruled corporation are people and opened the floodgates for same corps to buy elections?

Should have moved to the Highland's

[Anonymous Coward]

www.highlandsfibernetwork.com community owned fiber network east of Seattle and pretty cheap too.

Become your own WISP

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in a fairly rural place, but still work from home for a large tech company. When I built my house, the ONLY internet available was through a local WISP. I was paying ~$160 / month for 3 Mbps service. It was completely unreliable (the WISP actually didn't employ a network technician, just occasionally contracted one out). It wasn't horrible though when it worked, and I was able to do my job, so I lived with it. After 7 years I had totaled that I had spent over $13,000 on 3 Mbps internet. I figured it was time to do something about it.

What I did was contact a local business owner in town. He happened to own a 250 foot tower next to his small business (not necessary, a tall building will probably work in most cases). In exchange for providing him free internet in his building he allowed me to purchase a business connection and run a line up 100 ft up his tower. I put up a single 120 degree 5Ghz sector. I didn't really need to go that high just for me though as I had line of sight and very few trees.

All my neighbors needed internet though and were paying outrageous rates too. Putting up the sector allowed me to connect them as well. Some of them are 8+ miles from the tower. They pay me $20/month (plus the cost of their QRT5) and pretty much pay for my new line completely now. Proper QOS rules ensures no one hogs it all but still allows any of them to utilize the line to its max if no one else is. In the last 8 months since installing it, not a single connection problem even though power went out in town for a few hours. Everything is on battery backup.

I now plan on doubling my bandwidth and moving the sector another 50 feet up the tower to reach a few more of my neighbors. Another option I have thought about is going 200 ft up the tower, and hitting the datacenter 50 miles away that I currently have a rack with 1 Gbps internet. The datacenter owns a 10 story building next store, and would allow me to put a P2P on top of it. Having even 100 Mbps connection at the house would be a dream come true at this point.

Tower side - RF Elements Sector MIMO 5-120 paired with a Mikrotik RB912UAG-5HPnD (and case)
House side - Mikrotik QRT5

Re:Become your own WISP

[Thor Ablestar]

I have a gut feeling that you reside somewhere in ex-USSR, probably in Baltic country. In Soviet Russia it would not work for 2 reasons: 1) The business link is expensive. My employer pays 3000 Roubles a month for 3 MBit/s for 20 persons department, I pay 600 Roubles a month for 20 MBit/s for my beloved self (really 10, but it's my fault, not provider's). 2) Due to specifics of Soviet Russian law, I risk severe penalties for everything extremist posted by clients but the tax service may turn the blind eye to me.

In USA it's much more serious than in Soviet Russia since you cannot legally collect Internet fees without proper taxation and US tax is severe. You should consult a lawyer and maybe establish a non-profit.

Re:Become your own WISP

[Anonymous Coward]

The taxation in the United States on internet service is based on local and state sales tax. And all the GP has to do is count profits as income or do an S Corp if he wants to save taxes.

I love how people have no clue say consult a lawyer or accountant etc.

Re:Become your own WISP

[Anonymous Coward]

Your gut is definitely wrong, I am in the US, in Texas specifically. Its a very business friendly state. I am currently running it as a Sole Proprietorship but plan to move to an LLC later. I have a CPA who ensures all the taxes are in order. Everything is properly reported as income and finding deductions is super easy. I made a profit but since I am under the minimum, I technically didn't owe any taxes on it. There are also a few reasons I kept the price low, since Texas has a few nice provisions such as

Sec. 151.325. BASIC FEE FOR INTERNET ACCESS SERVICE. (a) The sale, use, or other consumption in this state of Internet access service is exempted from the taxes imposed by this chapter in an amount not to exceed the first $25 of a monthly charge.
(b) The exemption provided by this section applies without regard to:
(1) whether the Internet access service is bundled with another service, including any other taxable service listed in Section 151.0101(a); or
(2) the billing period used by the service provider.
(c) The exemption in this section applies to the total sales price the service provider charges for Internet access to a purchaser, without regard to whether the service provider charges one lump-sum amount or separately bills the purchaser for each user.

There was coax in place

[Radical Moderate]

It went to a box that used to be hooked up to a satellite dish, which had been removed.

100% availability by 2017

[aggles]

There is no good reason for everyone to have the option for at least residential class internet service in the US. In unserved areas, the property assessment and tax should be reduced, and document the deficiency for buyers doing research. If it takes public funds to reach 100%, so be it, but keep track of where it is missing and get it done in the next year or so.

edit... (oops)

[aggles]

That is "There is no good reason for anyone to NOT have the option of internet"

There was another way

[SuperKendall]

After reading the account, it seems the real issue was that Comcast never got around to bringing out an engineering team to the area to run a cable drop to the house.

Well what if the local cable infrastructure was accidentally damaged? It seems like then they'd already have trucks out repairing the line anyway, so they could also do a run to the house...

Star Touch liars

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh god, he trusted anything from that Star Touch company. What a lying bunch of bastards.

Suspicious: really a software engineer?

[SuperKendall]

From the story:

I was floored. âoeTimed out?â How can that even happen?

Excuse me, but are you REALLY a software engineer to just some dude who badly wants Netflix access?

Re:homeowner fail

[Nkwe]

I was expecting this to be a homeowner fail, but:

Q: Why Didn’t you check this before you moved? A: Oh, but I did. Having broadband of some kind was an absolute requirement for our new home. Before we even made an offer, I placed two separate phone calls; one to Comcast Business, and one to Xfinity. Both sales agents told me that service was available at the address. The Comcast Business agent even told me that a previous resident had already had service. So I believed them.

Another option would be to write availability of high speed internet into the purchase contract for the house - make it a condition of purchase. I took this approach to ensure I wouldn't find out after closing that my house could not get high speed Internet. My offer and contract basically said that I would buy the house if I could successfully have high speed internet installed in advance of the purchase at my cost. The seller accepted the contract, I paid the ISP (in this case DSL from the telephone company) to install the service, the ISP installed the service, and then we closed the house sale. My realtor didn't like it because it was an "unusual" offer, but I said it was a contract and I could put any conditions in it I wanted - the seller just had to agree (and did).

and there cable tv sucks! even next to other cable

[Joe_Dragon]

and there cable tv sucks! even next to other cable systems. It's said then there premium HD line is just about 1-2 HD feeds per pack. Even other cable systems in smaller ares have 3-5+ Feeds per premium pack.

Channel map is a big mess.

Most areas no FOX sports 2 HD

WGN America SD only in Chicago land added in 2014!

no CLTV HD (rcn has it)

No ESPN GOAL LINE in HD

epl extra time on Comcast is a VOD only mess for live events when other systems have it as real part time channels.

They don't even have all in market feeds of there OWN RSN in HD. CSN CHICAGO + 2 HD is only on DIrectv and u-verse.

No big ten alts in HD

No pac12 HD (out of market areas)

Out of market sports packs at best 1-2 HD channels

ask a neighbor

[Zecheus]

I wonder, if he had any doubt, why he didn't ask a neighbor? If he could not FIND a neighbor, well, that should have been some indication.

Re:ask a neighbor

[Gavagai80]

Even asking a neighbor won't always work. I once lived in an apartment where the whole area was serviced by AT&T DSL, but AT&T decided they'd oversold their capacity and wasn't accepting new customers there (fortunately comcast was available in that case).

Here's a thought

[msobkow]

Here's a thought. If internet access is that important to you, make sure you don't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a house that doesn't already have high speed installed.

Just a thought...

Re:Here's a thought

[MobyDisk]

Read the article. They did that.

Re:Here's a thought

[msobkow]

No, they listened to a sales droid who lied about it being available and someone having had it before.

I mean making sure it's currently installed and working on the say-so of the current house owner.

Re:Here's a thought

[MobyDisk]

In hindsight, yes. But who would have expected Comcast to lie? Oh.... well... good point then. :-)

This is because of net neutrality

[xiphosuran]

You pass laws than essentially make private investments subject to public control. Don't be surprised if there is less investment in infrastructure.

Re:This is because of net neutrality

[bledri]

You pass laws than essentially make private investments subject to public control. Don't be surprised if there is less investment in infrastructure.

Can you give specifics of how a law that is not on the books yet is to blame for the current mess in the US?

Re:This is because of net neutrality

[jbolden]

Rules not allowing differences in rates between residential customers prevent cable companies from recouping their investment effectively on more remote connections. They also don't allow apartment owners to do things like offer cable as an amenity for 1/2 of what it would cost to buy.

Re:This is because of net neutrality

[shutdown -p now]

Again, what does this have to do with net neutrality?

Re:This is because of net neutrality

[jbolden]

Net neutrality wasn't the entirety of GPs claim. GP's claim was about "laws that essentially make private investments subject to public control"

Net neutrality originally was a local claim, about the last mile regarding non discrimination. It was part of the regulatory framework for last mile. Some aspects of that regulatory framework, have decreased profits and thus decreased infrastructure investment. On first and middle mile it is harder to see the negative impact of net neutrality but it is also much harder to see any impact.

In Soviet Russia...

[Thor Ablestar]

... there is a legal obligation of any official or business entity to answer the letters (that has been abused by dissidents sitting in GULAG and DDOSing the Soviet power). If such obligation exists in USA, then you could just send all the local providers the registered letters with proof of sending and proof of receiving requesting the possibility of connectivity. Or enter their office and leave there an official letter, demanding a registration number on the copy. This bureaucratic magic makes wonders since the bureaucrats should either answer "Yes, we can" and really do, or answer "No, we cannot" that amounts to false advertising.

I live in similar conditions (suburbs) and have a similar 24/7 requirements. Before I moved I checked for connectivity and there were 2 already working options - state monopoly ADSL and a quite competitive CDMA. Now I have 5 links total - CDMA, ADSL, 2 WiFi's with quite big dishes and a VDSL where I was to hang cables myself.

And the last: You may establish a nonprofit entity that would buy a wholesale.

Re:Regarding the state law about municipal provide

[Thor Ablestar]

Well, write Comcast a registered letter requiring them either install you the internet or officially confirm that the internet will never be installed. Then keep the answer and go to the Municipality with it.

All you Comcast® haters ...

[CaptainDork]

... quit it.

We're people, too.

Re:All you Comcast® haters ...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are not the company.

If you choose to represent the company, then you represent the whole company, good and bad, and it looks like a whole bunch of people have a sour taste in their collective mouths when it comes to Comcast.

Re:All you Comcast® haters ...

[CaptainDork]

Ever read, say, The Onion?

Re:All you Comcast® haters ...

[CaptainDork]

Anyway, the pinch line is "SCOTUS."

Re:All you Comcast® haters ...

[CaptainDork]

Seriously, mods? Remember SCOTUS and "corporations are people, too?"

Re:Is it time for a nationwide class-action lawsui

[ScentCone]

The same SCOTUS that ruled corporation are people

Was that in a novel or something? Because it didn't happen in real life.

They have, though, ruled that you as a person don't give up things like the first amendment's protections just because you, say, start a neighborhood landscaping business and (gasp!) incorporate it.

$1,500 per month

[tepples]

In order to get the same level of service that Comcast provides in those areas that Comcast serves, an LTE provider would charge $1,500 per month. That's 300 GB per month, the cap that Comcast applies to home customers in at least some areas, times $5 per GB.

Re:$1,500 per month

[Overzeetop]

Yes, but a better question was: does he *require* 300GB of data a month, and is it really that ping sensitive? Most things which require huge b/w and low pings are entertainment related. LTE if you need lowish pings, Sat if you just need data.

"Latency is 650ms-750ms on average"

[Anonymous Coward]

== goodbye usable ssh sessions. Sorry, you can't tell me that for interactive, terminal use, that's ok.

That's completely unacceptable except if it's an emergency.

Same shit, different ISP.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have Comcast in my area, but the ISP (Suddenlink) in my area does the same. I currently get 50Mbps, every time I talk to them they offer 75 for $10 more and supposedly offer 107Mbps for even higher. Too bad the node I'm on is oversold and I barely get 30-40 during normal hours. Normally I wouldn't complain, given I do live outside of the city limits, but a friend that lives right beside the hospital in town signed up for the 107 and 3 months later was told they couldn't offer it to him yet.

This call may be recorded

[tepples]

Is it still an "oral contract" if you recorded the call, including the notice that it may be recorded for quality assurance purposes? Under federal law, 17 USC 101, a sound recording is considered "fixed in a tangible medium".

Re:This call may be recorded

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it a contract if nothing of value has been exchanged?
After all, he didn't pay them yet and they haven't installed anything.

Re:This call may be recorded

[Anonymous Coward]

There is so much missing from this that there is nothing close to a contract. Now, there are some differences between the old common law and the UCC, but either way, there isn't a meeting of the minds or manifestation of mutual assent. Imagine that instead of asking Comcast if they can service a house, he asked a car dealership if they had any Mustangs, they say yes but it turns out they didn't. Can you now demand that they sell you a mustang?

I can sympathize

[Chas]

I currently have a $250 bill in collections from those jackasses at AT&T.

Several years ago, my landlords booted Comcast out and went with some fly-by-night Satellite/DSL reseller.

I'm eligible for 4G Service through Clearwire, but I'm on a SW facing of a brick, concrete and steel building, with the nearest antenna being NE of me. So I would get 1 bar connectivity most of the time. Totally untenable for anything other than web surfing.

As such, I'm stuck on AT&T DSL. I'm currently grandfathered into a 6Mbit/512K plan.
Recently I'd started getting notices about exceeding my bandwidth cap.
So I took a look at their business DSL. A bit more expensive, but at least it was a controlled cost, unlike capped consumer service.
I ask to make sure I can still maintain the same speeds I have now, as my upstream speed is BARELY able to accommodate my IP phone (heavy internet traffic causes my phone to start chopping up).
I get told "yeah yeah yeah" to pretty much everything I ask.
The day they show up to do the switchover, I get told that I'm getting 3Mbit/384K and went "whoa".
Apparently they stopped offering 6Mbit in my area because most of the lines are in need of replacement. And AT&T isn't going to invest in infrastructure in this area until they are FORCED to (due to fear of being getting fucked over the way Comcast was).
I immediately cancelled. Yet they stuck me with a $250 bill.

For what? A service I never used and never should have been sold? All because one of their sales-fucks wanted to make quota?

Uh uh!

Re:I can sympathize

[Thor Ablestar]

1. If you can not locate your antenna on a proper side of your building - it's really terrible. At least in Soviet Russia I never had such a terrible problem, some solution has been always found, be it a box installed in a lobby on other side, be it a rooftop installation or a long antenna protruding from the balcony. You also may inebriate an elevator technician or a landlord himself. If you have so bad relation with every one of your neighbors so that they don't let you install the box on their balcony - maybe you should relocate to Soviet Russia?

2. The 512kb/s DSL uprate is a political, not technical decision. The technical limit is 1200kb/s.

Re:I can sympathize

[Anonymous Coward]

My home connection is currently ATT DSL, and the max speed available when installed was 3 Mbps. So a few years ago I get a notice that they have been upgrading in the area and called - and am told they have 6 Mbps available, but I need to switch to U-verse. Not excited about the U-verse, but double the speed would be nice. The tech shows up for the install and we review exactly what is going to be done... except the top speed is still 3. Reminds me of a Q: how do you know someone in sales is lying; A: their lips are moving...

I still have DSL.

Last year while setting up internet for a remote site in Texas for my employer, I contacted all the local ISP's and Time Warner indicated that they has service available at the address. Installation was scheduled, but when the tech arrived I received a call... oops, no service available anywhere in the area. If it hadn't have been for a local WISP provider we would be running the site on Verizon DSL (or maybe not - we kept the DSL to use as a backup connection and do have working "internet", but the site to site VPN is blocked somewhere on their network or in their equipment).

So, how many levels of wrong are here? A pattern of incompetence on the part of the large providers? Check. The fact that the best service available in a subdivision is 3 Mbps (and I'm thankful that I have that since without it the next option is 4G, and at least I have a 150 GB data cap).

Connectivity is a basic utility. I could argue that it is more important than public water, sewer, natural gas, since one can dig a well, install a septic system, and bury a propane tank. But without connectivity there is no alternative!

And sorry, due diligence should not include writing a research paper on the availability of connectivity before purchasing a property.

When it comes to connectivity, we either need true competition with real choice or complete regulation that guarantees service at all locations. What we have now isn't working.

Re:Is it time for a nationwide class-action lawsui

[Anonymous Coward]

The same SCOTUS that ruled corporation are people

Was that in a novel or something? Because it didn't happen in real life.

Actually ... they did rule that a corporation is a "semi" person. A friend of mine (with money & a sense of humor) wanted to have fun with it, and had his corporation papers on the passenger seat - in the car pool lane. Never did get pulled over though (to test it).

It's the home thing

[SuperKendall]

I wouldn't go that far. Sure, he probably RDP, VNC, or SSH into his remote servers with the occasional upload/download to them. But being in IT and knowing quite a a few devs

If you work at home much or have more than one system you are having to do quite a lot more than that.

You are at the very least, figuring out port forwarding on your router... also diagnosing reachability and DNS issues from your ISP.

Not to mention that any developer doing much with servers at all is going to be pretty familiar with tracing and examining networking traffic - even if it's mostly HTTP and not much UDP.

Over the years just because I do so much from home, I've had to learn to diagnose networking issues the cable support reps just could not understand.

Re:It's the home thing

[DigiShaman]

The industry may have changed, but when I lived in Austin, TX (2004), I was employed with Time Warner Cable as a TSR (Technical Support Representative). Effectively, all of us TSR agents were Tier 2 with a few specialized in head-end equipment as Tier 3. When the phones got busy, it was not uncommon for the CSR (Customer Support Representative) to take the front lines as act as Tier 1 in order to clear the queue of silly stupid issues. This was in regards to both Internet, Cable TV, and Digital Phone Service. Anyways, the TSR guys had access to a whole lot of stats to the DOCSIS side of things including upstream, downstream dbmv and SNR levels from the coax side. Configurations could also be pulled. Yes, a dev can do basic TCP/IP troubleshooting from his end and isolate problem via a "divide and conquer" troubleshooting technique, but modem flapping, line noise, and overall infrastructure issue? No. You really need to be contacting a TSR for any known local and regional issues.

As for me, I'm a sysadmin working in the MSP IT industry. Server, networking, migrations, anything and everything short of dev work. We have 3rd party connections for that, and thats only what they do, and they do it well.

Good luck !!

[Anonymous Coward]

.... selling the house after all this publicity of not having internets. might as well just burn it for the insurance money.. o wait, sorry, now that option is publicized too. i guess you're stuck with it now.

Re:homeowner fail

[snowgirl]

... hm... my next home purchase might just have to have a conditional clause that if I can't get broadband, the deal is off...

You know, like how you can back out once you get an appraisal and learn that there are termites.

Re:homeowner fail

[Bartles]

He can't set himself up as a reseller. There's no way in hell a small reseller could survive under Title II regulations, exactly as designed and intended.

Re:homeowner fail

[tompaulco]

Well, then he simply needs to sue the company for the cost of relocating him to another home of equal value in an area where they do provide service, plus court costs, time and expenses and mental anguish.
I certainly believe this could happen. I once signed up for a long distance plan with AT&T and month later I got a bill for $600. It turns out that they did not offer that plan in my area, despite the fact that their representative sold it to me. Apparently after having determined that the plan was not available, they did not call and discuss other options with me but just defaulted me to "no plan" with charges approximately 10 times the amount of the plan that I had purchased from them. Not only would they not honor the contract which I and they had signed, but they would not even retroact the first month to that plan, and would only agree to reducing the bill by half. I told them I would only pay what the plan that I had purchased would cost and they said that would be fine and they would report the difference to the credit agencies and send the bill to collections. They claimed no responsibility for what the agent under their employ and trained by them had sold me and apparently it was entirely MY responsibility to figure out what plans AT&T offered in my area, despite the fact that finding that out would have also broken computer hacking laws.

Re:homeowner fail

[tompaulco]

it's still the homeowner's fault for not getting a contract signed ahead of closing

I'm sure that would be easy enough to do. All you have to do is prove that you own the house or show them a lease agreement. Oh, wait, you can't do that until you buy the house.

Re:homeowner fail

[turbidostato]

"it's still the homeowner's fault for not getting a contract signed ahead of closing."

As if these kind of contracts held any value. I'm sure there's not a single case in the whole USA where Comcast has single-handedly dismissed a contract because, you know, there's no contract clause saying that Comcast can cancel it at any moment.

Wireless service

[Dr J. keeps the nerd]

I'm still lost as to why wireless service isn't viable.

Couldn't one keep the development boxes remoted somewhere, and just access them through remote terminal over LTE? The latency is okay, and even a lot of remote access isn't going to blow through a 15GB data plan.

Re:Wireless service

[bobjr94]

Because it's super expensive and you don't get much data.
Someone working from home, especially if they vpn, will go though a 15gb plan in a few days. Sure you can buy a 80GB+ plan from verizon for $600 per month. We are stuck using verizon lte for internet and its sucks. You have to bring all your laptops into work to download updates, bring everything else home on usb drives. Block youtube, itunes, netflix, windows update and all those sites on your router to keep kids from burning though your monthly plan in 4 days.

Re:Wireless service

[gatkinso]

http://www.squid-cache.org/

Re:Wireless service

[Dr J. keeps the nerd]

I think we're not entirely communicating. The suggestion was to run a thin client at home. The only thing being communicated is changes to the screen. I realize this won't accommodate streaming media, but I wouldn't sell my house over lack of YouTube or Netflix. It may be against one's company's policy to run a thin client.

a _______ and his money are soon parted

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, that seriously sounds like a reasonable price to you? Seriously?

In that case, I have some seriously great oceanfront property to sell you in Nebraska.

Same story here

[bobjr94]

Comcast stops a few miles down the road, Centurylink dosent offer dsl. Brodband.gov says we are served by 6 providers, we are not. Satellite and 4G internet from a hotspot should not count as broadband. One good windows update or 20 minutes of youtube will use up a entire day's of data on satellite, 4g data is no better unless you want a bill from verizon for 800$.

How so?

[rsilvergun]

it's incredibly expensive to deploy that last mile. You need to run cable through and over dozens of people's land. It's cost prohibitive. Yes, there's money to be made, but anyone who has the money to enter the market also has the money to invest in much less risky and more profitable ventures. That's where the monopoly came from in the first place. The gov't steps in to make sure the lines are run (and largely pays for them either directly or indirectly in the form of tax breaks and free services) then hands it all over to a private company in the name of "the incredible efficiency of the free market"... We did it with the railways too. Damn, but we never learn do we?

Ironically I had sort of the opposite problem

[jfern]

When I moved to my present location I ordered AT&T UVerse a couple of weeks ahead of time. Well, it never showed up. I had multiple employees tell me I could get it at my address, and multiple tell me that I couldn't. Finally I gave up and got Comcast instead.

Pay To Install It Before Closing?

[brian.stinar]

Why didn't the purchaser pay to install Comcast before he bought the house? This would have been a few hundred bucks, which is significantly less than the cost of reselling a house (normally.) This makes no sense to me. An reasonable seller would totally allow a potential buyer to pay for the installation of high speed Internet...

I work from home as a software developer too, and I'm aware of my Internet connectivity. I also helped a friend run a wireless ISP, and the cost of setting up unlicensed wireless equipment capable of carrying the kind of bandwidth necessary to run an ISP is probably less than the lose on a house.

If a criteria is critical to buying a house, it's a good idea to make sure that the criteria is met, or that there are major consequences to the entity "promising" that it is met (such as another posted mentioned, the closing of the house being contingent on wired high speed Internet being installed before closing.)

This sounds like buyer's remorse.

Re:Pay To Install It Before Closing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds more like you didn't read the article.

US broadband is deplorable

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't give me that crap about the size of the US, it's broken down into states and each stae could very easily provide high speed access. You guys have 0 infrastructure. Hope you liked your empire while it lasted bros! LAWLS

Re:US broadband is deplorable

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, no, we didn't like our empire while it lasted. There were protests against imperialism throughout the latter half of the 20th century. Women, blacks, hippies, teenagers, everybody had something to complain loudly about. The 21st century so far has been characterized by unquestioningly blind patriotism due to a combination of wars without conscription and prolonged economic recession.

Re:US broadband is deplorable

[gatkinso]

If you actually read the article, you would know that the infrastructure is not the problem, it is the providers willingness to hook him up to said infrastructure.

The salient point here is that the educational system of the backwater tribe you are a member of is questionable at best, judging by your reading comprehension.

Re:homeowner fail

[mrchaotica]

The last time Comcast tried to pull that kind of shit with me, I got the Better Business Bureau involved... and won.

Communication?

[xlsior]

In my experience cable company internal communications are pretty much epic in their non-existence.

A few years ago, I needed to sign up for internet with Charter Cable, which had been available in my neighborhood for many years. However, I knew that there was no physical cable in place between my house and the cable junction box in the neighbors yard (Maybe 50 feet, tops. Previous owner accidentally ripped it out during landscaping work) But because of that, instead of just signing up for service online I actually went to their local office to order it in person, making extra sure so explain that the old cable that used to be there was damaged beyond repair and would need to be re-run to the distribution point in the neighbor yard -- sure, no problem!

Yet despite being very clear about what needed to be done, it took no less than four separate installers to show up at my door, each of which would stand there scratching his head confused by the lack of the main incoming cable and escalating to a supposedly different tier of installers to take care of that issue first

(Of course, cable company appointments give you a time window of "some time between the dawn of time and the death of the universe" in the first place, so that also entailed four separate wasted days of having to hang around the house waiting for them to show up)

In the end they got everything connected and activated, but it was blatantly obvious that there was some HUGE structural failure to communicate within the company itself... There is no excuse for the exact same issue to be "discovered", "diagnosed" and "escalated" four times in a row, despite me spelling it out to them in the first place and also calling the main office in between appointments to supposedly verify that the next person coming out understood what needed to be done, and would be capable of doing so. It also shouldn't take a month for them to finally get their act together.

Re:Is it time for a nationwide class-action lawsui

[Anonymous Coward]

The same SCOTUS that ruled corporation are people

Was that in a novel or something? Because it didn't happen in real life.

Actually ... they did rule that a corporation is a "semi" person. A friend of mine (with money & a sense of humor) wanted to have fun with it, and had his corporation papers on the passenger seat - in the car pool lane. Never did get pulled over though (to test it).

Corporations have had many of the rights of people since the early 1800s. SCOTUS hasn't changed that in at least 100 years for the most part.

What changed is that they removed the limits on contributions - effectively saying that money=speech (which has really been true a long time now) *and* that there's no limits, so the more money you have the more "speech" you get.

*only* $60,000?

[whoever57]

Just a couple of years ago, Comcast quoted $200,000 to hook up to my office in the middle of Silicon Valley. On a positive note, the monthly charge would only have been $99/month.

Seriously, $200,000. There is a big datacenter just across the street, which must have massive capacity. There are businesses all round that must be using lots of bandwidth.

Re:*only* $60,000?

[jbolden]

Did you ask the data center what providers were in there or check a fiber map? It probably wasn't Comcast.

broadbandmap.gov is horrifically inaccurate

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears to only work by ZIP code. So if access is available somewhere in the ZIP code, then it is listed. It shows more than 15 providers in my ZIP code in downtown Seattle when in reality, there are ZERO. I'm too far from the phone CO for DSL, and Comcast doesn't offer service to my block or any of the adjacent blocks. I am using dial-up because there are no other options. A few lucky neighbors are using satellite because they have a view to the south, but I live on the north side of the building. I'm really tired of paying almost $3k per month in rent for a place that doesn't have Internet access available. Seattle is still stuck in 1995 when it comes to Internet access.

Re:homeowner fail

[CrankyFool]

The problem is that you can't back out of a home purchase after closing; during escrow, you can, based on any arbitrary rules you put in during the offer (assuming it got accepted). And of course, since you can't technically order the service until you own the house ... that probably won't work as well as you expect it to.

Re:homeowner fail

[AK Marc]

Comcast lied and caused a loss. That's fraud (in civil, but not criminal court). He should sue Comcast for the price of the house. Chances are, they'll build whatever they have to to make the lawsuit go away. If he gets the "recorded for quality purposes"recording, it should be a slam-dunk.

Re:homeowner fail

[Trepidity]

My realtor didn't like it because it was an "unusual" offer, but I said it was a contract and I could put any conditions in it I wanted - the seller just had to agree (and did).

Fwiw with real estate this is tricky; not every contract rider is allowed in every jurisdiction, and some may be allowed but cause complexities. Not saying this particular one wasn't allowed in yours, but you can't generally assume that you can write anything you want into a real-estate transaction and not end up with problems.

Why not use WIMAX?

[fred911]

Looking at Clear's coverage map there looks to ample coverage for most of that county and all of the county if you care to engineer a custom antenna solution. It's cheap and unmetered. Might not be a perfect solution, bound to be better than LTE costs.

Re:Why not use WIMAX?

[toygeek]

I'd say that's because Clear are at least as incompetent and every bit of a liar as Comcast is. Clear will say anything to get a customer and very little else. WIMAX? Please. He'd get less latency and better reliability with TCP over Carrier Pigeon.

Re:homeowner fail

[AK Marc]

Yeah, like your ISP lays separate fiber for residential backhaul and business backhaul. Nope, it's all "converged" and QoS is (hopefully) used to separate the tiers.

This is a load of crap!

[fustakrakich]

Why is anybody calling this Comcast's Incompetence??!

Yeah yeah, I'm late to the party, and this is most likely redundant (it sure as hell should be by now), but what the fuck? Who are the incompetent motherfuckers that elect (reelect!) the politicians that make these laws? I simply can no longer sympathize when this shit happens.

you just have to trick them

[Jenos]

Once the work order is generated it will happen anyway, my address had never gotten a cable run to it and Comcast wanted to charge for an install. I signed up with a similar address, then called and corrected the addres. Their own installer called and ordered the trenching when he got there and it was free. :)

Wireless Point-to-Point

[Anonymous Coward]

Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP) tech here... A pair of directional high-gain 2.4GHz or 5.8GHz wi-fi radios cost less than $200 from several manufacturers. They provide reliable L2 bridging with less than 5ms of latency. It's nearly as good as 100Mb ethernet. Make friends with someone in your neighborhood who has internet and a willingness to mount a small dish (tiny compared to satellite) on their roof. Point your dish at your new friend's house and power it up. A 1 mile link is easy, and greater distances can be covered with good line-of-sight. If I were a beginner, I'd try a pair of Ubiquiti PowerBeam-M5-300s or M2-400s (lower frequencies cut through foliage better, but are also more cluttered). They'll mount on a pole out-of-the-box and run off power-over-ethernet. Cut the cord. Go wireless!

internet = utility

[Anonymous Coward]

Internet should be considered a utility like water, electricity, etc. Wireless doesn't cut it due to the limited spectrum/exorbitant costs.

It's time to accept having an internet connection is one of the more essential needs to a household.

Re:homeowner fail

[war4peace]

How about conditioning the deal like this: Doesn't already have broadband, I ain't gonna buy it.

Re:homeowner fail

[Anonymous Coward]

False dichotomy, strawmen, overcompensation... and I didn't assign blame, merely state that this could be no regular property purchaser.

Last time I moved somewhere rural, I made sure it already had working broadband - not a promise about the past or the future. This took me all of one minute. I also hired experts to survey construction, plumbing, wiring, etc. If I'm spending a few $100k of money saved up over 15 years, as I last did, of course I'm going to go the extra mile. The only "kid" is the guy who called a couple of broadband sales agents with maybe a day's training and bought a house on their word.

Yes, but not Canopy

[ProfessionalCookie]

BTW, Canopy isn't use as much any more. Lots of Ubiquiti and Mikrotik gear- both of which are capable of much much faster than 7Mbps if you can find a willing WISP.
With Ubiquiti a pair of PowerBeams will push ~80Mbps for less than $200. AirFiber will go to about 800Mbps for about $2100 a pair

Come to Columbus OH

[Ice Station Zebra]

I just dropped my internet cost by $20 and increased the speed to 50Mbps down/ 5Mbps up.

Re:homeowner fail

[Bob_Who]

... hm... my next home purchase might just have to have a conditional clause that if I can't get broadband, the deal is off...

You know, like how you can back out once you get an appraisal and learn that there are termites.

That's right. It's called a "contingency" - it's a rider on the contract. All contingencies must be addressed to close escrow.

Disclosure of all facts (such as no broadband available) must be clearly stated by the seller or else there are grounds for a lawsuit, should an unhappy buyer care to waste even more time and money in court.

American telecomms area joke

[Anonymous Coward]

As a European I can say that I am absolutely flabbergasted at the pathetic state of the American telecommunications industry.

Why do you even put up with such piss poor shite ?

I've seen African mud huts with better broadband service that the average American dwelling.

Re:homeowner fail

[csnydermvpsoft]

What does a "win" at the BBB give you? They're not a government agency. The worst they can do is take away Comcast's BBB accreditation or A+ rating.

Not that BBB complaints are useless—I used them with Blue Cross once, and it allowed me to get in touch with a different department of the company that was able to resolve my claims. However, the BBB itself had no real power to help me.

Sounds like...

[Anonymous Coward]

...the owner should have investigated a lot more before buying the home if he's looking to sell it after 2 months.

PPP on his part does not constitute an emergency/overreaction on everyone elses.

buy business not consumer class

[jbolden]

It is tough with inaccurate broadband maps. The government site is terrible. People really need to confirm.

First off he needs to get an agent this is not something that an individual is going to be able to successfully navigate easily though it is possible. This Seth guy doesn't seem to really understand what he's doing which is understandable but he's in over his head. The article mentions he is 1/2 mile away from Comcast's access point. That's going to be an expensive buildout, the $50k-60k he's objecting to sounds right. That doesn't mean that Comcast might not eat a percentage of the cost for example neighbors also want broadband.

There may also be other fiber near him, for example that CenturyLink fiber. If he's marked as on net there may be another access point for Comcast near him (for example fiber that Comcast is selling to a 3rd party provider who might thus be able to give him access)

His comment about XO at $600 / mo being exorbitant is crazy. If there is no fiber in the neighborhood then the internet over bundled copper (which the article doesn't say they are doing but XO specializes in and makes sense given they started with a T1 quote) seems reasonable. Again he might be able to bring that down by engaging an agent to something like $200 / mo / 1.5mbs but he's not getting 50mbs for $50 / mo other a copper bundle.

Re:homeowner fail

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't fucking stand kids on the internet anymore.

In my experience, the most ignorant people on the Internet tend to be older rather than younger.

Surprised they called to cancel

[Bruinwar]

As someone who had Comcast call to cancel on the day of my closing (two days before my scheduled install) because they didn't offer service to my house after all, I can sympathize.

They called you to cancel? You mean you close on the house, take a day off work to meet the installer? You didn't sit there for half a day waiting for them while CS rep claims they can't escalate until after the 4 hour appointment window? Then they say they have no idea why the installer did not show, can you hold please, then your disconnected after 20 mins on hold... fuck me I've been through this way too many times.

Re:Surprised they called to cancel

[nehumanuscrede]

Chuckle.

Fun Comcast story. My next door neighbor decided to plant some trees without knowing where their coax cable was buried.
They found it pretty quickly after they cut through it with their shovel :|

So they call up Comcast who sends a tech out X days later.

The way he " fixed " it was to disconnect my line from the pedestal and connect my neighbors new line instead. Knocking out
my TV, Internet and Alarm System all in one fell swoop.

When I called Comcast to tell them what happened, they informed me it would take two weeks before a technician could be
dispatched out to " fix " my problem. Even after I told them it was their GD technician who caused it not half an hour ago.

I ended up fixing it myself after toning out the lines ( since the pedestal is in my yard ) but the incompetence of the entire support
process is amazing. ( The thought hit me about how much havok you can cause were you to connect a high voltage source to any
cable that feeds the pedestal. :| )

They just don't care because their monopoly status pretty much means they don't have to care.

Re:homeowner fail

[Spamalope]

I have Comcast business connections at three locations. There is a quality option, but it's not cheap or what you'll get if you just order through the retain website.

Two locations are retail Business accounts. Those are home connections with an extra charge fixed IP and slightly less crappy customer service.

One location is fiber and seems to be run by an entirely different subsidiary of the company. It costs 15x what the other connections do, is fast, low latency and problem free.

I have great Internet thanks to Rich People

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in a nice area out in the mountains of California. A bunch of rich people live out here and we paid for our own line of site wireless towers that are now operated by an independent private ISP to bring broadband into the community. It's damned fast. Maybe you guys could get together with the local homeowners and set up your own private ISP?

I wonder if the FCC should be pissed

[sabbede]

The federal government has a pretty lousy track record with websites, but I have to wonder if broadband providers are intentionally giving false information to the FCC to inflate coverage stats. As much as I'd like for him to be able to sue to recover the money he's going to lose, I think it would have to be shown that Comcast lied to the FCC first. And that could take years.

I have 15 options for broadband

[Anonymous Coward]

Comcast + 14 comcast resellers.

Work arounds

[gatkinso]

Satellite. 4G LTE. Share with a neighbor. Panera.

All have their problems, but this is only a stop gap until he gets his own service.

Bureaucratic magic

[Thor Ablestar]

The correct bureaucracy makes wonders, at least in Soviet Russia, and it should work in the most lawyerist country of the world. File a written request to brodband.gov to list the providers. File a written request to listed providers. Either at least one of them will serve you or your lawyer would do something against brodband.gov.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Bad Compensation Model

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what happens when you tie everyone's variable compensation to sales activity. Being a part of a sales organization, I'm not saying that there shouldn't be those that "comp'd" on sales - but there has to be a model that rewards customer success, for certain roles in the organization. With this type of an experience, it's clear that there is no reward for customer success at Comcast, and quite the opposite - it appears to be widely understood that there's no point in giving a damn about the customer, especially when there's nowhere else for the customer to turn.

The only fix: competition, and more specifically, satellite.

Re:homeowner fail

[mrchaotica]

It got Comcast to honor their salesperson's promise, netting me $20/month 20Mbps Internet for a year.

BBB may not be a government agency, but (for some inexplicable reason) Comcast does actually care about its rating.

Re:homeowner fail

[DuckDodgers]

Sorry, but I would have trusted the people on the phone too. It's an expensive honest mistake. I wouldn't have thought to look for physical proof. You really went to the house and asked the seller to let you test their internet connection before making an offer?

I consider that totally separate from a normal home inspection for construction, plumbing, wiring, and so forth. Maybe it shouldn't be in the 21st century. But it didn't cross my mind.

Re:homeowner fail

[DuckDodgers]

Yeah. I'm glad I read this flamewar, actually, because I think I'll factor that exact conditioning into my home purchases for the rest of my life.

Now if only I was unethical enough to try to foist my existing home on some poor sap...

Re:homeowner fail

[deathguppie]

My wife had an office built out in a building in West Seattle that only offered Comcast as an option. There were plenty of small tech companies in the building so we figured it was a no brainer. It took 8 months of calling them over and over before they even sent anyone out to look at it. It took less than an hour to actually hook up. But that was 8 months of her using her phone to connect to the internet. Not only that but more than one sales person actually lied to her about having sent someone, or not having heard from her. It was indignant and awful.

Re:Is it time for a nationwide class-action lawsui

[ScentCone]

And how is that different for labor unions, huge non-profits, people like George Soros...? It's not. What the court did was strike down a law that was allowing SOME people to pool resources in the context of political communication while preventing other people from doing the same thing. Which is a clear violation of both the first and fourteenth amendments. If you want a law that limits speech, come up with one that applies to everybody in the same way, and which doesn't violate the constitution's protections.

Re:homeowner fail

[Anonymous Coward]

AT&T and Time-Warner are the same as you say, in the Milwaukee area. You gotta know who to talk to (and order from) to get good service. Now, if lawyers only had that kind of business structure.....

Re:homeowner fail

[Bob the Super Hamste]

It has been my experience that the residential plans and service suck while the business class ones are wonderful. I like being able to call up customer service state what I have tried to solve the problem and get them to check the connection from their end instead of endlessly rebooting my equipment again. Granted I don't have comcast in my area but instead have Charter and Frontier. Not being on the same circuit as the rest of the neighborhood with charter is nice as I don't have that shared bandwidth problem. Then toss in that I am free to run servers and a static IP address and the 2.5x to 3x cost is worth it. As an added benefit the business class plans don't seem to have the hidden caps that residential ones do.

Re:homeowner fail

[Coren22]

BBB, small claims court, many ways to settle that issue.

If you have a contract, it binds them just as much as you, and many companies just figure you won't bother fighting it.

Mobile broadband

[Anonymous Coward]

Would be a reasonable alternative to selling a house, surely.

Re:Regarding the state law about municipal provide

[silas_moeckel]

That is not a solution, municipal fiber is the fix for the last mile. Comcast could use is as well as anybody else that cares to, either colocating gear in the muni co or just running a fiber trunk. CWDM is cheap, simple, and requires no active (powered) components at the muni level. Macsec and similar can keep the muni from tapping into the traffic. The only thing they need to do over the fiber is keep track of what colors are in use for a given run so they can assign unused ones.

From a homeowner perspective one fiber gets them everything.

Business get the same plus intown point to points for less than the cost of a couple phone lines.

The muni gets a network to connect itself with (I know many that pay absurd amounts for DS3 etc). If the muni chooses to put a L2 network in they could resell that to small providers etc etc, while giving lifeline internet access and a universal service (think the town services, schools, library's state and federal level gov probably expand it via a review process to medical facilities serving the area etc etc. Muni's are also in it for the long haul so the cost of buried fiber can be justified with it's less frequent outage and more aesthetically pleasing nature.

Other cable/internet/phone providers could come in and compete as the build out costs to the muni CO are pretty trivial.

As this grows providers will bridge muni co to muni co, the muni's may well cross connect to the towns bordering them.

Satellite is capped too

[tepples]

Sat if you just need data.

Exede.com says satellite caps are similar to those of LTE.

TL;DR

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucking idiot buys house that prevents him from doing his job. Boo Hoo.

It's a price you pay ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I too am a software developer who has been working from home for the better part of a decade. In the last 6 years I have lived in an area where broadband isn't available via your typical sources and have accepted this fact and paid the ungodly price for having a T1 (two channel bonded for 3.0Mbps) running to the house. Yes, it's expensive ($645/month via ATT) and I too was told when I purchased the home that other broadband services (Suddenlink and ATT UVerse) were available (which it turns out they weren't). It's just the price you pay for living in the area.

Trade offs of living in the country

[Anonymous Coward]

Having looked at moving to Kitsap county to telecommute I understand what made this guy move out there. However, the absolute lack of bandwidth or other services has kept me from seriously considering it. I have little sympathy for someone who buys a house on the 'West side' of Puget Sound expecting to have wide and cheap bandwidth.

If you've seen 'War Games' and recall where (spoiler alert) the Professor lived? That's the kind of remoteness this guy sought out. The Consumerist article does us all a favor in highlighting how hard it is to validate access to any given development. The builder doesn't consider it their problem, the phone company probably doesn't, Comcast certainly doesn't. The latter both have the same problem: they cannot afford to provide IP services to remote locations on a grand scale and should not be assumed to do so.

I didn't see any mention of the home buyer checking for any cable boxes on his block, or talking to his neighbors about internet access, or doing what I would normally consider due diligence in the face of companies known for their poor customer service. He asked for assurances from customer support and sales and he got them.

Comcast recently asked me to ask them to upgrade the modem. I did so. Months later nothing has arrived and they ask me to ask them again. I was not surprised.

The combination of buying a nice house out in the country, unrealistic expectations of the level of support from the Comcast and telco availability of broadband in new and/or remote areas, and limiting the effort to emails and phone calls makes the guy sound the kid who got a BMW for Christmas and is annoyed it didn't have clearance to make it over the unimproved road to his house. Or, the guy I saw last night go in to buy printer ink from Staples and couldn't provide the make/model he needed ink for.

True

[phorm]

I've noticed this locally as well. There's a chain called Loblaws in Canada which runs stores such as Superstore, Extra Foods, etc.
There's essentially the same thing, except that Superstore is usually a bit bigger, and in the higher-end neighbourhoods. Extra Foods are in the slightly lower-income areas, but for common items actually seem to have have *less* sales than Superstore.

I bet their system is coded like

[phorm]

if ( DidAddressPreviouslyHaveSubscription($address) = 1 )
{
    print "Yes";
}

Those double-equals screw me up sometimes too.

Uh... why is this news?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, i know I'm that guy.

I just suffered the same thing, no one gave a shit.

I bought a home after investigating thoroughly, comcast reported that they serviced the address MULTIPLE times, confirmed on phone. When I actually bought the house and tried to set up service, it miraculously changed. I now pay, because it's my JOB, an exhorbirant amount for wireless speeds that make most people cringe. I do of course sympathise with this guy as well. It just doesn't seem newsworthy. It's life. Shit happens.

Title II Fear

[nehumanuscrede]

This is one of the reasons the big broadband providers fear the Title II regulations so much.

One of the prerequisites under Title II for the POTS systems were you couldn't cherry-pick where you could install them.
You didn't get to choose the high density areas where you could maximize your profits, then ignore everyone else.
Everyone had to have equal access to a telephone.

The broadband providers KNOW if Title II comes to pass for this technology, the same thing will likely happen
and they'll be forced to start providing the service ( with realistic definitions of what constitutes broadband ) to
outlying areas they have been carefully avoiding due to the predicted costs involved.

It will be a serious wrench in the profit engine they currently enjoy.

This is why they will fight it tooth and nail. The only way Broadband Title II regs will survive will be to expose the real motivation
behind their attacking it in the first place. It'$ all about the profit$ folk$.

Re:homeowner fail

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I looked at Comcast Business, they had a whole slew of ports blocked from serving content. What's the point of a business account if you can't run servers on it? (Rhetorical question, for someone just running a VPN client I imagine it would be OK.) Wound up going with a local ISP instead.

Are You Kidding? Set Yourself Up as an ISP...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're the only one in the area who has Internet and you had to pay for it!? I'm so sorry you can't see the opportunity. The title says it all.

"years just to make back that $3000."? Hardly. You've been handed money on a platter.

Re: homeowner fail

[Anonymous Coward]

As a developer (and former network technician for a sprint sub), thank you for this.

If you don't deal with the level 1/2 shit professionally, you have no idea what it takes, regardless of your technical understanding of a spec.

Re:homeowner fail

[Shortguy881]

I for one welcome our new ICOMS overlords

Re:homeowner fail

[Shortguy881]

I do the same thing with Charter cable. I have business internet and my whole block can go down, but I'll still have service. If mine does go down, they have someone onsite as soon as humanly possible. Its pretty awesome.

Normal Charter sucks.

Re:homeowner fail

[Cramer]

Or, perhaps, going to the prospective new home and looking for signs of cable access . If there's no coax cable running into (and to various places within) the house, odds are it's not serviceable. Looking on the poles and along streets for signs of Comcast infrastructure also isn't f'ing difficult. It's as if this guy did the entire transaction "over the internet".

CenturyLink's refusal to provide service should've been disclosed up-front. It's not like they ran out of ports in the time between his call(s) and moving in.

Re:homeowner fail

[Cramer]

He has NOTHING in writing. Comcast legal would roast him in seconds.

Re:homeowner fail

[AK Marc]

You don't need anything in writing. A recorded call would be sufficient for a win. So the question is whether he could get the call recording from when he was lied to, causing the loss. That's more than enough for a win in court.

Broadband is not a right

[mbeckman]

Neither is food or shelter. We have the right to _pursue_ these things. Nobody is required to guarantee them to us.

Re:homeowner fail

[Anonymous Coward]

The funny thing here is if this were done, the title company will be able to persue the false reliance claim.

so what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Verizon lied to us 6 times before we bought our house. They said we'd have DSL but we don't. I think this kind of stuff happens all the time. Not sure why it is news now. That was 10 years ago. We still have only 2 options for internet- dial-up and satelite. No DSL, no broadband, etc...

Don't close on the house until sellers can demonst

[Anonymous Coward]

I work as a software engineer from a home office. I download 8 GB disk images on a nearly daily basis to get my work done.

About 5 years ago I moved fairly far out in the country and the house I really liked did not have broadband service. I called up Time Warner and they gave me an initial estimate of $10,000 to run a couple of miles of new cable. I just considered it part of the cost of buying the house. When I called them back to place the order they came back with a new estimate almost twice that. When I asked how their first estimate could have been so far off they said "Well, once we got up to $10,000 we figured no one would pay that so we didn't bother to fully cost it out." After some more negotiations they agreed to foot part of the cost.

We actually wrote it into our purchase offer that we would not close on the house until Time Warner had completed the work and they could demonstrate a working broadband connection of at least 10 mbits/sec at the house. It took them about a month and we ended up knowing the project manager by name by the end of it but it was done before we closed, and if they had not been able to deliver we would not have purchased the house (since I couldn't work without Internet and I would've blown through sattelite monthly bandwidth caps in a day.)

A few years later and I can now get 50 mbit service here, and it actually delivers better than advertised speed for me most of the time because there are very few other houses on the local loop (and the rest of the neighborhood all benefited because when they ran the line they put pedestals in front of every house so they can all hook up easily now.)

You dont know who you're talkin bout

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no, no, no, oh no! He is a goddamned expert for 20+ years. HE is the only person here that gets to call out other people for being know-it-all liars. You better learn your place, son.

So lie

[Anonymous Coward]

Lie. The comic you linked to told you as much. What works for me is that I tell them I was talking to Jimmy over at tier 2 and we got disconnected so if they could xfer me back, that would be great. Has only not worked for me a couple times but that was quickly resolved with my backup method. Your big companies usually have a customer retention department who are the last chance to keep you from cancelling. They can pretty much do whatever you want, so you tell them that the frontline jackass wouldn't transfer you to tier 2 and if they won't, you'll cancel. They will xfer you because the only metric their department cares about is retentions and they appeased you so they get to mark you down as retained. I get what I want damned near every time I call any place and I don't have to be a dick about it. They use a script so you should to. They stick to theirs, you stick to yours. Don't get descriptive about anything just keep repeating whatever it is you want word for word. When you repeat it a second time and they blow you off, you ask for a supervisor transfer. You then repeat the same thing to the supervisor and if they blow you off tell them you're cancelling and to xfer you to customer retention. If at any time during the process no one wants to transfer you, you hang up and call the next help desk jockey. Someone there will be lazy or just not care and they'll get you where you need to be.