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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.
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.
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.
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.
... 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.
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.
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