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Broadband ISP Betrayal Forces Homeowner To Sell New House
New submitter knightsirius writes: A Washington homeowner is having to sell his new house after being refused internet service from Comcast and CenturyLink despite receiving confirmation from both that the location was able to receive broadband service. The whole process took months and involved false assurances and bureaucratic convolutions. The national broadband map database frequently cited by Comcast as proof of sufficient competition lists 10 options at his location, including a gigabit municipal fiber network, but he cannot subscribe to it due to Washington state direct sale restrictions.
Didn't we see this yesterday?
optical fibre
Quick and effective solution to this problem. Pass a law that if a service provider says that they offer service to an address they must do so by law. No fines, they have to install service. If that means $30,000 in new cable to be laid, then so be it. The service providers will get their service maps in order really quickly and we'd have accurate coverage numbers for the country.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
As annoying as the experience must have been, it still reduces to the home owner wanting a house away from civilization, but still requiring the products of civilization.
Cities and towns have perks because city and town living is more efficient.
If you want to live in the middle of nowhere, be prepared to make sacrifices.
... and we don't need to do it again.
Didn't the FCC Net Neutrality ruling pre-empt the sates bans on municipal fiber networks?
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/03/25/222258/comcasts-incompetence-lack-of-broadband-may-force-developer-to-sell-home
When I bought my home, I was assured by AT&T that they provided Uverse up to 18mbit at my address, and the employee on the phone actually directed me to the National Broadband Map.
After I moved in, I ordered service, and what do you know? I can only get legacy DSL at 768k. I filed complaints with FCC and FTC over the false claims and false representation on the broadband map, only to receive "thanks but we don't care" letters from both agencies, along with a courtesy call from AT&T confirming that 768k was the highest speed I could get.
The county fiber network runs right past my house, but since AT&T was able to get a municipal network ban passed as state law in SC (fuck you very much for signing it, Nikki Haley, you steaming piece of shit), I can't connect to it (only people who have NO Internet options from a major ISP can connect to it, and since I can get 768k DSL, I can't connect to the county network).
Fuck you AT&T
Fuck you FCC
Fuck you FTC
Fuck you Nikki Haley
Fuck you South Carolina
http://tech.slashdot.org/submission/4299331/boradband-isp-betrayal-forces-homeowner-to-sell-new-house?sdsrc=rel
Didn't we see this yesterday?
Yes we did
Duped again by /.!
If he really needed his porn that bad he could just get a 4g plan or something
This is a repost.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
That should have been the headline.
He chose to sell it. This is link bait Slashdot! Trashy!
Comcast would have gladly put in a node when they were building their current network, but it seems the previous homeowner didn't ask for their house to be served... either this property didn't exist when this was happening, or it was occupied with a Luddite. If whomever sold the house promised there would be Internet, it's cause to reverse the sale.
I love ISPs in France, price so low, so much functionnality in the box, and always the possibility to connect to Internet thanks to a satelite kit ... ;)
He can Dupe it in a nice new Duplex served by duplex fiber.
Was whether or not he offered to finance the build out. I don't know what closing costs are like in his area, but in my area, they're easily $6k-$8k. Comcast doesn't want to drop the money on him, but I bet they'd have jumped if he agreed to pay for the build out since it was already nearby.
America has no citizens. Only mindless massive consumers.
He could have just asked the previous owner what their internet service was like.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
That site claims I should have 12 providers, 4 wired. I've checked with all 4, they partition this area. Only 1 is available to me and barely. Any claims of competition by these monopolistic super powers are disgusting lies. They need to be bashed into little tiny pieces, forced to follow FULL common carrier restrictions including last mile services. Anything short of that is coercive theft against the American people. May the CEOs of these companies and those working to maintain these monopolies burn in hell.
As I noted in the OP Comcast's Incompetence, Lack of Broadband May Force Developer To Sell Home The guy failed to do due diligence in checking the physical ( is there a cable box anywhere nearby?), talking to neighbors or any other neutral observer. He put his faith in two organizations no one trusts. He got what we all expect: lousy service. I looked at moving out that way myself, but bandwidth limitations have kept me on this side of the Sound. This is a story of how not to buy a house. If bandwidth is THIS important, don't leave it to sales, or tech sales, staff to tell you there's bandwidth. He wanted to be convinced, he became convinced, he felt betrayed when he should have felt stupid for not acknowledging the obvious: there's no bandwidth in the countryside.
#-#
Ad Astra Per Aspera
A rough road leads to the stars
In Europe we have this thing called 3G and 4G which both brings you reliable wireless broadband without wires. Approx $30/month.
Shouldn't the headline be more like "Homeowner Chooses To Sell New House after Broadband ISP Betrayal".
...or does this not read like an Onion article?
We live in a somewhat rural area. Fiber isn't even close, and DSL service (6mbit max) only became available a year or two ago. Cable internet through Charter has been available for over a decade though, and we've had Cable TV since the early 1990's. About 5 years ago, relatives next door finally caved and wanted cable. They are literally one house before us, and equal distance from the road. (100ft or so). Every time we called they said it was not available for their address. It took 6mo of fighting, and a call/complaint to the local cable/communication oversight committee, to get them to send a survey crew (A single guy), who immediately got out of the car, looked, said "The f**k, there's no problem here you can get it" who then went on about a rant about how their database is so messed up and inaccurate.
Always verify everything yourself and don't trust anyone.
Pay for the previous owner's internet for a month or two just to make sure you can have it in the home. Ask for utility bills
A lot of sellers will try to hide major problems like mold and previous flooding which is why you need a good inspector. And don't trust the realtor
Granted it's not as fast as cable or fiber, but couldn't he have gone with Dish or DirecTV satellite internet? My father-in-law in northern Minnesota has it out in the country and he gets around 5-10 meg service. You'd think he could have gone with something like that until they do eventually get Comcast or Centurylink for his area.
And no, I didn't RTFA.
that's too simple
if you search that county's public records for property transactions you can probably find this person and the fact that they used an internet bank for the mortgage. i learned the hard way, back in my late 20's and early 30's not to completely trust the internet
and schitt walks. Always get a contract.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story...
It is one thing to blindly expect things to work out, but this person did their due diligence and made their decision based off the promise that the expected service was available. It is fair to want things that are promised to you after handing over massive amounts of money.
Or he could just go to work and work... like everyone else.
Give it a rest. He contacted the ISPs twice and both times they confirmed their service was available at the property.
that would either get their attention or get them replaced with someone more competent.
kind of like a kid who murdered his parent asking the court for leniency because he's an orphan.
That won't stop them from making the claim, however.
I'm having the same situation. AT&T swears up and down that they can give me U-verse service . . . until the tech gets there and finds out that the nearest box is miles away. They then tell me that they can probably get me DSL. But when I talk to the call center folks, they say they can't process a DSL order while the system says U-Verse is available. Don't worry, they say, as soon as the maps are updated, we can order your DSL. Almost a year later, the maps aren't updated. It's almost like they vigorously don't want my business.
I've had many incidents of this same situation with various telcos and cable companies over the years.
Specific to Comcast, they told me I could not get service at my house but yet came out 2 weeks later to disconnect service from the previous owner of the house.
Verizon with DSL, getting letters in the mail and calls to home to get DSL. I signed up and at least 5 times in two years. Every time they would send someone to my house and find out I could not actually get it. Another strange one with Verizon. I had a second line in my house that was active. It took me a few weeks to finally realize it though, That phone would never ring when the others did. When I called to inquire they knew nothing about it and refused to cancel it because it was not in my name. About 6 months later I got a bill to my house addressed to a different name. It was a bill for 8 months of service or it was going to be shut off. I did nothing and about 2 months later it was finally dead.
This one worked out to my advantage. Remember back in the 90's when long distance calls were expensive? They averaged 10-20 cents a minute? I used to get offers in the mail between ATT, MCI to possibly others to switch all the time. Many were giving checks that if you signed and deposited them, you agreed to switch long distance providers. I did that all the time but.. The old area I lived in on a military base was not capable of using other providers for some reason, my only choice was AT&T. I'd deposit the checks, get a welcome letter and still have AT&T. Even AT&T was sending me letters to switch back with a credit even though I technically never left them.
As annoying as the experience must have been, it still reduces to the home owner wanting a house away from civilization, but still requiring the products of civilization.
Cities and towns have perks because city and town living is more efficient.
If you want to live in the middle of nowhere, be prepared to make sacrifices.
This guy wasn't living in a rural area, there's even municipal fiber running right past him but because of those asinine laws he can't even pay to be connected to it.
I moved into nice apartments in Westlake Village, California. Called Verizon, had them hook up DSL. It was fast and worked well... for 12 hours.
My service was shut off.
I called and they said "Service is not available in your area.
I told them I had service yesterday, and they confirmed that I did, but that it was a mistake, and service was not available.
We went around and around, I finally gave up after 2 hours on the phone, vowing to sign up with someone else. No other service available, and since I was at the bottom of a valley, EVEN SATELLITE was not available.
After a few more days of phone calls and escalations, I finally straight up asked them "Is the CO/RT full and you didn't realize it until you hooked me up?" they admitted that yes it was.
I made a deal with my neighbor, bought her network equipment and paid her phone bill every month just for letting me use her wifi.
THEN to add insult to injury, I got a contract cancellation fee bill from Verizon in the mail, because I terminated my contract for DSL before a year was up.
If I was in this guy's situation and desperately needed Internet, I think I'd try to be more resourceful. There's a number of things that you can do before going to the extreme of selling the house. Unless I'm wrong, I'd try:
1) See if any neighbours get DSL/Cable Internet and negotiate with them to share the connected. Then, use either a powerful WiFi (think Mikrotik or Ubiquity) connection to connect to the net through that house. If it's further, then consider using an unlicensed spectrum microwave link (like Ubiquiti's AirFiber).
2) Consider satellite Internet. Well, it's available almost anywhere. Latency is much higher than a regular connection and there are bandwidth caps, but the bandwidth issue could be alleviated by use an internal caching proxy and organizing yourself well through scheduled downloads (most providers offer unlimited or high bandwidth periods during the night).
3) Lastly, consider getting quotes from more non-traditional methods such as getting a T1 connection, actual fiber link or local WiMax provider (if available). Yes, these are way more expensive than traditional residential connections, but it might be cheaper money and time wise than selling and buying a new house just because of connectivity.
What do you guys think? Or am I unreasonable.
If the previous owners and/or their neighbors don't have service then assume you can't get it. Especially if you're livelihood depends on having broadband at home.
This is EXACTLY why we regulated the phone companies. We feel these services are needed by EVERYONE, so much so that we force the companies to provide reasonable access to every single address that is practically feasible. We do this so people can live anywhere in our great nation. It has nothing to do with market forces, We The People decided its too important to let companies pick winners and losers. Part of the deal with granting them right of way is that they have to do things that arent always profitable.
Good-bye
Whenever buying a house, I always ask about the types of Internet available there, and I contact the ISP and verify it. Then, if it's not good enough (it never is) then I contact the home seller and lower the price.
Form another LLC that resells internet, and connect that to the utility district telecommunications... Then sell yourself, and anyone else hosting hardware, legally at your home, service as well. You don't have to be a successful wholesaler to be a wholesaler. Later contact your similarly bound neighbors and sell them. Might have to get a variance for a shed for connections on the property. And maybe you can be a no facilities reseller. Contract to a third party, the utility district, for the installs. Pay them a bulk price, and resell their service to your customers, including yourself. Hoops to jump through, but likely would cost less that the realatorsmcommision and cost to move.
Fining the Cable Companies won't get very far as they simply have enough cash to buy all the politicians they need to stay ahead of the curve, particularly since they only need about 1/3 of the politicians to stymie any positive solution.
However, there is an interesting twist to this and being a resident of Kitsap county it has made me curious.
Under state law, the KPUD (Kitsap Public Utility District) can not sell its internet connections directly to customers, but must sell to resellers. The question then becomes, how can citizens of Kitsap County organize into an effective collective for the purposes of "resale" directly to other citizens within the community?
What are the requirements for becoming a "reseller" as far as KPUD. One could envision a corporation that is created by those who want to buy a share and then access can be sold directly by the corporation to Kitsap County residents no longer interested in paying high fees to Comcast for access. I figure I am an average Comcast user. I pay about $250 per month for their service, which in my case uses their TV and phone platforms. For internet I pay about $50, but if I drop the TV and phone I get to pay about $85-100 for exactly the same internet service. If I could pay about $35 for 1G/sec internet (I know get 50MB/sec), it would be a good deal as far as I am concerned and I suspect that with the money made the new citizens corporation could maintain the service and expand to cover new users, as well as finally give Comcast some competition, which they currently lack.
The advantage of this approach is that it could be done county wide, so Kitsap County users wouldn't have to fight Comcast in every county in the state, just to see competition in Kitsap county.
Are there any other Kitsap county residents thinking the same thing I am thinking? If so, please respond. Maybe something worthwhile can come of this story.
If anyone betrays me, I never forget.
Yep, always the liberal argument. I let you live now give me free stuff before I revoke that...
goatse*
Should have gotten it in writing.
Exept the part where he verified service with two broadband providers before buying the house. Both lied then claimed they'd made an error. Error or lie, he relied on their information to his detriment. There's even a phrase for that in the law. Detrimental reliance.
I just went throught this crap last year when I was shopping for a house. I had a wonderful region picked out but had to scrap it completely because nobody down there could tell me what internet service was available. "That's the first question people aske these days." "So what's available at this location?" "No idea." They seemed to think that satellite and 3 meg DSL were acceptable options. I started doing my own research and quickly learned that most providers lie, lie, lie. Frontier was the worst. Every address but one came back as "25mbit fiber". Even the place that was 10 miles down a dirt road. The only one I trusted was the cable company but their footprint was tiny. If I didn't buy a place in town, I was SOL.
I ended up looking closer to The Big City and only requested viewings of places where the cable company assured me they provided service. And the first thing I looked for was the cable company's box on the side of the house with a fat coax line coming out of the ground. If the place didn't have existing service, I didn't bother going inside. Except for that really creepy house that was more of a dare than a serious look. Who puts the kitchen in the basement???
But getting back to the point, good internet service is as important as a good water supply. Without it, the property is useless for most people. I'd even look at a place without electric service before I'd look at a place with no internet. I could set up a solar/diesel/battery system for power but I can't build my own high speed, low latency internet service.
You, sir have just described the plight of the midwestern farmer with one railroad serving his Town. Some things don't change :)
In my experience that's usually futile. There's a good chance the previous owner, if still alive, didn't have service or even know what it is. Having been in a similar position, rural telecommuting, I assert that the guy's both being jerked around with and being a twat. Both cablecos and telcos don't give a shit about sparse customer density areas. Where I lived a few years ago, VZN refused to drop a DSLAMM in the local box. Comcast was a mile away and wouldn't even return calls re extending. What one can do: o Buy another place instead that has demonstrated connectivity available. Trusting the providers or the ludicrous gov site was just plain stupid. o Get ISDN and live with the speed. o XO is hardly the only leased line provider, is Broadwing still around, or Speakeasy? $500/mo would hardly be onerous. Either he could write some of it off, or makes enough $ for that to not be a burden.
I am constantly amazed by articles on terrible US internet connections, and the amount of people that insist regulation wont help.
I live in New Zealand, we have about 7 million people spread over a country with very low population density so infrastructure costs are high.
Until about 10 years ago we had a single company monopoly on the copper phone network, a couple of local cable solutions and a bunch of companies reselling the monopoly product. Speeds were approx 2.5mbps/128kbps with a 1-10GB monthly bandwidth limit. The government passed a local loop unbundling law and within a few years we had plans with unlimited bandwidth and reasonably cheap VDSL connections, we have around 100 ISPs to choose from with any one address generally having dozens of choices.
We are now in the middle of a nationwide fibre rollout, the government is contracting out the installation work and wholesaling the bandwidth to any ISP that wants to offer service with several set product prices to ensure a minimum service level. We can now get unlimited fibre at 200/30mbps at the same or lower prices than an unlimited DSL plan for around 75% of the population, ADSL covers another 20% or so with satellite and 3G for the remainder.
We also have one of the better average LTE connection speeds in the world, I regularly pull in 50mbps where I work.
It isn't perfect, we generally still have data caps on most plans, usually around the 80GB mark with a premium for unlimited, and our international bandwidth is limited as we only have one international cable. But we have gone from one of the worst first world average speeds to one of the best with huge competition levels in a decade due to breaking up the monopolies and regulating to ensure competition. Internet is a utility and the free market does not do a good job with utilities as the barriers to entry are far too high for competition.