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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.
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.
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.
Have gnu, will travel.
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.
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.
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.
Is that reliable for the VPN he requires to work?
Finding God in a Dog
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.
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?
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
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
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).
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":
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.)
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.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Even that may not be sufficient. After this story, I would:
A little paranoid, but it's a minor inconvenience compared to having to do without broadband at all.