Comcast's Incompetence, Lack of Broadband May Force Developer To Sell Home 536
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.
domain name error (Score:4, Informative)
It's http://broadbandmap.gov/ [broadbandmap.gov] (singular)
We should lobby to break the cable companies (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
But if Comcast doesn't service that area then Comcast calls it "nowhere".
Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies (Score:5, Insightful)
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: (Score:3)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
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: (Score:3)
Re:We should lobby to break the cable companies (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
I think that we should lobby to break the cable(and other incumbent monopolistic ISPs) companies.
The Kitsap County cable franchise ordinance is online [codepublishing.com]. "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.)
Re: (Score:3)
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.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
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: (Score:3)
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 a
Not faultless (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
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: (Score:3)
Re:Not faultless (Score:4, Insightful)
He tried; Comcast doesn't do that (and I suppose this is why).
Re: (Score:3)
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: (Score:3)
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)
Re: (Score:3)
Same Thing Almost Happened to Me (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
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: (Score:3)
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: (Score:3)
Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Same Thing Almost Happened to Me (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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: (Score:3)
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: (Score:2, Interesting)
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
Re: (Score:2)
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: (Score:3)
Get a T1 (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Informative)
He explored that solution, and it turned out to be a huge pain in the neck. Quoting Consmerist [consumerist.com] (first link in the OP):
I could see his employer saying "no," and $600/month for 1.5 mbps is highway robbery.
Why? Because... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Comcast (Score:2)
Help us, P2P Kenobi, you're our only hope. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Help us, P2P Kenobi, you're our only hope. (Score:4, Interesting)
No one is forcing anyone to do anything (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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: (Score:3)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
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.
No, welcome to the "edge case" of living in a very low density area outside of town rather than in a suburb.
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: (Score:3)
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
Utter nonsense (Score:2, Insightful)
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
this is a solvable problem (Score:5, Informative)
... 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: (Score:3)
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? (Score:5, Informative)
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
The article is wrong (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Regarding the state law about municipal providers. (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously???? (Score:3)
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
DSL might very well be available there (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Not forced to sell. Just stupid home owner. (Score:3)
Become your own WISP (Score:5, Interesting)
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 can sympathize (Score:3)
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!
Pay To Install It Before Closing? (Score:3)
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: Invisible hand (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
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: (Score:3, Informative)
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 y
Re: Invisible hand (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Think about this: You're a contracting company that specializes in pulling cables. You have two options:
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.
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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?
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).
Re: Invisible hand (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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.
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.
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: (Score:3)
Likewise, some co
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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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
This. Hoarding of wealth. Keeping profits at the top. Bad for the economy, bad for everyone else but the people at the top.
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Re: Invisible hand (Score:5, Insightful)
Another problem are price controls.
Often the local franchise authority (set up by the city or state or county) sets prices for services. [fcc.gov]
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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:homeowner fail (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:homeowner fail (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
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.
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... 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.
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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.
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How about conditioning the deal like this: Doesn't already have broadband, I ain't gonna buy it.
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... 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.
Re:homeowner fail (Score:5, Interesting)
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).
Re:homeowner fail (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:homeowner fail (Score:4, Informative)
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 (Score:4, Informative)
The last time Comcast tried to pull that kind of shit with me, I got the Better Business Bureau involved... and won.
Re: (Score:3)
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.
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Re:Is it time for a nationwide class-action lawsui (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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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).
Re:homeowner fail (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
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 j
Infrastructure yes, service no (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Homeowner should be able to run his own cable (Score:4, Informative)
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: (Score:3, Funny)
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
Re: (Score:3)
And especially fuck AT&T. Never forget Room 641A [wikipedia.org] and their "retroactive immunity" [theguardian.com]
Yeah. Never forget. Remind others. Explain to the young.
Things have got to change, But first, you gotta get mad! [slashdot.org]
NSA and the Desolation of Smaug [slashdot.org]
I am Sam. Uncle Sam I am. [slashdot.org]
I really hated Men In Black [slashdot.org]
Am I the first to suggest... BLACKMAIL?? [slashdot.org]
Sherlock Holmes: training wheels for NSA surveillance [slashdot.org]
Stick a fork in the Republic, it's done. HR4681/309 [failed submission] [slashdot.org]
The backbone, then [1980s] and now [slashdot.org]
Whatever happened to the 'old' NSA? Directive 18? [slashdot.org]
The Day Israel Attacked the NSA [failed submission] [slashdot.org]
Last Wish (aka Th [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Read the article. They did that.