Couple bought home in Seattle, then learned Comcast Internet would cost $27,000

adellario

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This is wild. I have never heard these people's names, nor have I heard this specific story. But I know exactly which house it is. The details in the story (location: Northgate, 90-second walk from an elementary school, half a mile from Northgate Mall, i.e. the Kraken practice facility, triangle-shaped block) tell me this was the house across the street from my old house that sold the year we sold ours, after it had been a rental for some time. I even found the listing on Redfin to confirm the date of sale (the listing definitely makes no mention of any internet service in the Property Details, which is where that would be). Insanity!
 
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lestatx3

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If there's a good view from one or the neighbour that have a good internet connection, just strike a deal with them for sharing their internet connection, add a WIFI bridge like EnGenius outdoor ENSTATION AC.
You just need one pole on each side with the small round antenna, a wire that goes from that pole to the router on one side and a wire from the other pole to a switch in the problematic home. Connect your computers to the switch or add a wifi router for smartphones and tablets.
I use that system to connect my house to my office across 300meters with direct view, it crosses two roads.
Easy to setup, been working perfectly for 10 years. The Engenius is the best I had since I started with this system.
The only set back is security has you will share you're neighbour network. Eventually you can improve that but that takes more work.
I don't know about the legislation over there, check if it's legal.
 
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solomonrex

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It seems like the issue is straight forward. It's not Comcast's fault that they would need to do underground work, tear up the road, and then restore the road to serve one customer. They won't ever see any return on the costs of that. Something that might help is asking the city to run overhead poles to his house and then Comcast can use that and it would probably greatly reduce the cost, but I'd doubt they'd do it for the same reason Comcast won't take up an 80,000 dollar project so one couple can get high-speed.

And yet all these houses are wired for electricity because America was a middle class socialist democracy in the last century. Is this really harder than the more dangerous electricity lines? Or just not regulated as a utility like it should be?
 
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SixDegrees

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IIRC this is something that can be added to disclosure documentation. You dont have to just have what the law requires - you can add to it anything you want.

Upthread, it was noted that it was in the disclosure docs.

It's also something buyers should be explicitly asking about. When my son bought his first house a couple years back, I told him to do just that, and he was already way ahead of me and had confirmed that the house currently had Internet via Comcast, and that there were competitive cable services also available for that address.

Final step would be to make it formally required in disclosure documents, like the presence of lead paint or basement flooding or poltergeists, but that's probably a ways off.
 
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graylshaped

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It seems like the issue is straight forward. It's not Comcast's fault that they would need to do underground work, tear up the road, and then restore the road to serve one customer. They won't ever see any return on the costs of that. Something that might help is asking the city to run overhead poles to his house and then Comcast can use that and it would probably greatly reduce the cost, but I'd doubt they'd do it for the same reason Comcast won't take up an 80,000 dollar project so one couple can get high-speed.


I would think they would do directional boring. It usually costs about $15 per foot for longer jobs. It would be much better than tearing up the road. I have had a lot of experience with installing fiber/cable for new businesses. Comcast is clearly up-charging for this cable run, as it should have run under $5k.

Ars has run a few prior such horror stories, and in at least some of them the homeowners have gone to third parties for bids for the trenching and conduit runs that cut the ISP's demands to a fraction.
 
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When Zachary Cohn and his wife bought a house in the Northgate neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, they didn't expect any trouble getting home Internet service.

What's not clear from my reading is whether Comcast told them service was available at that address before they bought the house. Buying a house without checking if service is available at that address is like buying a house without checking if it has city water or a well, i.e., moronic.

I don't disagree, but Comcast's quoted price for installation is way out of bounds here, unless they have to drill through 200 feet of obsidian to run the line or something.

It isn't just the cost of the actual construction work; it's the cost of permits, surveys, acquiring easement/ROW and such.
 
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The article mentions it, but doesn’t clarify. When Comcast does the work, they have to upgrade the landscape to meet the city requirements. My company is a Comcast partner and we have a client in Oakland CA that received a quote for a Comcast fiber install. The quote was $225,000. I asked our rep about the pricing. The city of Oakland wanted the landscaping upgraded after the work, and that was a large part of the pricing. Needless to say, they did not install fiber.
 
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SixDegrees

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When Zachary Cohn and his wife bought a house in the Northgate neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, they didn't expect any trouble getting home Internet service.

What's not clear from my reading is whether Comcast told them service was available at that address before they bought the house. Buying a house without checking if service is available at that address is like buying a house without checking if it has city water or a well, i.e., moronic.

I don't disagree, but Comcast's quoted price for installation is way out of bounds here, unless they have to drill through 200 feet of obsidian to run the line or something.

It isn't just the cost of the actual construction work; it's the cost of permits, surveys, acquiring easement/ROW and such.

Nah, I've had to have stuff like that done before, and we're talking hundreds of dollars, not tens of thousands of dollars.

Comcast's charges are their way of saying $FUCK.OFF and not much else.
 
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tucu

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When Zachary Cohn and his wife bought a house in the Northgate neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, they didn't expect any trouble getting home Internet service.

Well, no on ever expects the Spanish Inquisition, either.

But: $27k for a <200 foot run? That's absurd. I would press for a detailed accounting, and offer to run the trench myself. For comparison, a drain replacement on my property required excavating, removing, and replacing a 110 foot drain line, plus interconnects to the municipal sewer and to my house, and that cost under $4k - which I also thought was excessive, but several bids came in right around that same amount. And cable runs don't have to be 4 feet deep, like drain lines here in the north; the final run from pole to my house for Comcast is barely covered with dirt, thanks to loads of tree roots that make trenching a chore, and it's been fine that way for well over 10 years.

All that said: these days, I would explicitly ask if Internet connectivity was available before buying a house. It might even be considered a known defect if it wasn't, and the sellers would be on the hook (again, in my state) to disclose it or pay for remediation.

So, Comcast absolutely sucks here and ought to be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. But caveat emptor is still sound advice.
The benefit of having a Spanish Inquisition for companies: over here if the cable run to the nearest PON splitter is less than 400m you will get a connection; it might take a few weeks to obtain the cable (cable run are usually less than 100m) but it will be done.
 
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Derecho Imminent

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Would Starlink help in this situation?
The article discusses the possibility of Starlink at their address.

Yeah I missed it, thanks.

“Missed it” must be the new “I didn’t read the article” ;)

The Starlink section was pretty unmissable.

Yea trees in Seattle. What bad luck. :0)

Slightly OT, but SpaceX is saying if Dish gets to use 12Ghz for 5G then starlink may not work at all.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/23/tech/spa ... index.html

I suspect SpaceX will win this one though.
 
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In NYC we have a thing called NYC Mesh which uses line-of-sight fixed wireless to distribute internet access across nodes set up and maintained by volunteers. Those wanting a node must pay for the equipment, and a $20/mo donation is strongly encouraged but not required. The service is comparable in speed to a fast, symmetric cable connection. It's actually pretty badass, and it is serving as meaningful competition for the incumbent ISPs (Verizon, Charter, Altice). Maybe someone can do something similar in Seattle.
 
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SixDegrees

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People are suggesting sharing the neighbors wifi. What if Comcast installed a directional wifi just for this house? From pole or box to residence. Seems like that could be done for a lot cheaper than digging.

Comcast would probably do that for only $19,000! And monthly equipment rental fees.
 
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People are suggesting sharing the neighbors wifi. What if Comcast installed a directional wifi just for this house? From pole or box to residence. Seems like that could be done for a lot cheaper than digging.

They'd have to train engineers and technicians to install, monitor and service the equipment. The cost would not be trivial.
 
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crmarvin42

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This seems like a lack of due diligence on behalf of the real estate agent and the home buyer. The last two homes I bought, I made sure I knew exactly what my internet options would be and even pre-qualified the service before finalizing the sale. I'd suggest anyone who views internet as important to their job or entertainment to include that as part of the home buying process.

Noted upthread, the seller's paperwork disclosed that there was no Internet available.

Not quite. The disclosure said internet wasn't connected, not that it couldn't be connected. Kinda scummy.
Yeah, scummy it may be, but that is why you need to perform your due diligence. I had 3 home purchases fall through due to stuff I discovered upon inspections or document searches that were not disclosed by the seller up front.
- transite used in the ventilation system (transite is literally made of asbestos and cement, and the pipes we found were HIGHLY friable, like 10x the safety limit)
- buried oil tank of unknown condition and content under the paving stones out back of the house
- predatory solar contract with Vivint solar that was mandatory, well above market rate for electricity, increasing at a fixed rate over time, and containing an early buy-out clause that would cost more than price to install a newer, more efficient, and higher capacity system from scratch.
- Massive termite infestation under an addition

It sucks spending that kind of money to just walk away, and I did it 3 times over the course of about 15 month. But it is FAR better than buying a home with a serious problem it'll cost 10's of thousands of dollars to remedy.
 
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mjeffer

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When Zachary Cohn and his wife bought a house in the Northgate neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, they didn't expect any trouble getting home Internet service.

What's not clear from my reading is whether Comcast told them service was available at that address before they bought the house. Buying a house without checking if service is available at that address is like buying a house without checking if it has city water or a well, i.e., moronic.

Ultimately irrelevant.

Service providers claim all sorts of coverage they don't, and won't actually provide, and it's often only once the initial stages and payments involved in setting up service are complete that they'll come back and say, "Well actually... no."

The only reason I believed AT&T when they claimed I could get fiber at my house was because I woke up one morning and discovered they were trenching through the front yard and actually installing a box and cable.

I usually don't like giving ATT too much credit, because they're customer service still sucks, no matter how good their fiber is...but when I had fiber installed, they had to trench about 100 yards including going under a major street (granted I think they had conduit already installed there) and a few driveways. At no cost to me. I've seen them regularly trenching cable across entire blocks to bring fiber to peoples homes at no cost to those homeowners. Granted part of that is because they only rolled the fiber out 5 years ago and they were going to have to do a lot of that last mile work to get the customers anyway.

But it's just insane that Comcast is claiming them going half a block is going to cost 80k dollars when other companies seem to get it done regularly and easily.
 
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Baumi

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For comparison, my mom lives in a 60,000-people town in Germany. They’ll be wiring up her neighborhood with fiber soon. If she gets it during the initial construction phase (which she will), they’re going to waive the connection fee. If she were to ask for a connection later, they would charge 700 EUR. That’d still be quite a bit of money, but it seems comparatively reasonable, considering that they’d have to dig up the sidewalk and potentially drill a new hole into the cellar wall of the building.
 
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momurda

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I wonder if costs could be reduced the next time the city repaves the roads. They're already torn up and have crews managing traffic.

It's a crappy situation to be in, but any sort of relief is good, though they may need to wait for a few years for that to happen.

This is Seattle, where no roads have been repaved i residential neighborhoods.... ever. Go drive in Ballard, Capitol Hill, Northgate. Where i live you can drive down Market Street or 24th and have to avoid the 100+year old brick layers. This despite the city receiving record tax revenue for 40 of the last 42 years. Regarding the topic, why wont this very wealthy (one of the wealithiest in the world) and tech centric(2 out of the 3 biggest tech companies hq are here) city buildout its own municipal network?
 
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How far away are their neighbours? Why can't they share wifi?

Why is this all about massive underground construction when you could just run a CAT6 wire from an adjacent house and bury it 1ft underground if you think it's unsightly?

You’d be depending upon your utility provided by your neighbor. Imagine getting your power or gas depending upon the neighbor. Temporary solution at best.

Exactly. What if you had a dispute with your neighbor? What if they moved and the buyer's didn't want that connected to their service?
 
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crmarvin42

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Would Starlink help in this situation?
The article discusses the possibility of Starlink at their address.

Yeah I missed it, thanks.

“Missed it” must be the new “I didn’t read the article” ;)

The Starlink section was pretty unmissable.
I dunno, I missed it. By that point of the article it was getting a bit repetitive and I had already switched from reading every word to skimming.

Of course if you are going to suggest a specific remedy, and one as obvious as that, then it might be worth a quick ctrl + F (CMD + F for my fellow Mac users) to ensure you didn't miss something.
 
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Nilt

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At the previous places he's lived in Seattle, Cohn could choose between two ISPs and threaten to switch if one raised the rates.

Yeah, he's been lucky. There are loads of places here in Seattle where only a single option exists. I live on Phinney Ridge smack in the Greenwood neighborhood, surrounded by major multifamily complexes and half a dozen new ones are being built within 4 blocks of me. Yet despite this, the townhouse complex I live in hasn't even got friggin' DSL available because it's the only thing other than a park on this side of the street for several blocks. Our sole broadband option is Comcast.

This city is ripe for municipal broadband but darned if we seem to be able to get sufficient impetus for it.

Edited to add: We have fiber owned by someone running by on our side of the street, I should note. They just installed it a couple years ago. There's definitely the possibility of serving this complex but with under 40 units, it isn't profitable so they all refuse to even consider it.
 
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This seems like a lack of due diligence on behalf of the real estate agent and the home buyer. The last two homes I bought, I made sure I knew exactly what my internet options would be and even pre-qualified the service before finalizing the sale. I'd suggest anyone who views internet as important to their job or entertainment to include that as part of the home buying process.

Noted upthread, the seller's paperwork disclosed that there was no Internet available.

Not quite. The disclosure said internet wasn't connected, not that it couldn't be connected. Kinda scummy.
Yeah, scummy it may be, but that is why you need to perform your due diligence. I had 3 home purchases fall through due to stuff I discovered upon inspections or document searches that were not disclosed by the seller up front.
- transite used in the ventilation system (transite is literally made of asbestos and cement, and the pipes we found were HIGHLY friable, like 10x the safety limit)
- buried oil tank of unknown condition and content under the paving stones out back of the house
- predatory solar contract with Vivint solar that was mandatory, well above market rate for electricity, increasing at a fixed rate over time, and containing an early buy-out clause that would cost more than price to install a newer, more efficient, and higher capacity system from scratch.
- Massive termite infestation under an addition

It sucks spending that kind of money to just walk away, and I did it 3 times over the course of about 15 month. But it is FAR better than buying a home with a serious problem it'll cost 10's of thousands of dollars to remedy.

I had a part timer working for me in the lab doing mostly paperwork, no real STEM background. He was also working part time as a newly minted real estate agent. Some of the conversations I’ve overheard are just like, “Let’s just close this, I want my money “. I’m sure they all have inspectors they like to work with that expertly and legally gloss things over. I did construction while in school, would have to poke around quite a bit myself to look for disparities.
 
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Had a neighbor with the problem. Ditwitched a trench to the closest location where he could put in a very small shed. Ran shielded ethernet and outdoor wire (plugged in at his house so was in effect an extension cord so fewer restrictions). Used soft conduit. Comcast ran the install to the shed which was designed solely to hold the cable connect box. Couple hundred and a day or two of work saved him tens of thousands. Rural location though so might be why this was OK.
 
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When Zachary Cohn and his wife bought a house in the Northgate neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, they didn't expect any trouble getting home Internet service.

Well, no on ever expects the Spanish Inquisition, either.

But: $27k for a <200 foot run? That's absurd. I would press for a detailed accounting, and offer to run the trench myself. For comparison, a drain replacement on my property required excavating, removing, and replacing a 110 foot drain line, plus interconnects to the municipal sewer and to my house, and that cost under $4k - which I also thought was excessive, but several bids came in right around that same amount. And cable runs don't have to be 4 feet deep, like drain lines here in the north; the final run from pole to my house for Comcast is barely covered with dirt, thanks to loads of tree roots that make trenching a chore, and it's been fine that way for well over 10 years.

All that said: these days, I would explicitly ask if Internet connectivity was available before buying a house. It might even be considered a known defect if it wasn't, and the sellers would be on the hook (again, in my state) to disclose it or pay for remediation.

So, Comcast absolutely sucks here and ought to be the first against the wall when the revolution comes. But caveat emptor is still sound advice.

It would, but Caveat Emptor is meant to address fraud normally found among hucksters and grifters. That it applies on a regular basis for all the major players in the marketplace I consider proof positive that the US is too lax on antitrust regulation and consumer protection by far.

I find it extraordinary that the regular business model of Comcast would be the basis of utterly ruinous legislative sanction just about anywhere in the rest of the OECD. And just to complete the ironic shit-show this sort of thing goes down in the country which once coined the phrase "The customer is King"
 
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Sounds like the disclosure in the purchase agreement was pretty shaky. There is a difference between "does not have internet service" and "cannot get internet service". In California I am not sure that would be considered a full disclosure. I don't know about Washington but they might want to talk to a real estate attorney.

Why a house is still on the market:

A ) It's the house where Jason the ax murder slaughtered his whole family.
B ) It's haunted by freaking ghosts and is featured on "Ghost Hunters".
C) It lacks either running water, electricity - or both.
D) It is in a no-internet-can-have location.
 
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SixDegrees

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This seems like a lack of due diligence on behalf of the real estate agent and the home buyer. The last two homes I bought, I made sure I knew exactly what my internet options would be and even pre-qualified the service before finalizing the sale. I'd suggest anyone who views internet as important to their job or entertainment to include that as part of the home buying process.

Noted upthread, the seller's paperwork disclosed that there was no Internet available.

Not quite. The disclosure said internet wasn't connected, not that it couldn't be connected. Kinda scummy.
Yeah, scummy it may be, but that is why you need to perform your due diligence. I had 3 home purchases fall through due to stuff I discovered upon inspections or document searches that were not disclosed by the seller up front.
- transite used in the ventilation system (transite is literally made of asbestos and cement, and the pipes we found were HIGHLY friable, like 10x the safety limit)
- buried oil tank of unknown condition and content under the paving stones out back of the house
- predatory solar contract with Vivint solar that was mandatory, well above market rate for electricity, increasing at a fixed rate over time, and containing an early buy-out clause that would cost more than price to install a newer, more efficient, and higher capacity system from scratch.
- Massive termite infestation under an addition

It sucks spending that kind of money to just walk away, and I did it 3 times over the course of about 15 month. But it is FAR better than buying a home with a serious problem it'll cost 10's of thousands of dollars to remedy.

I had a part timer working for me in the lab doing mostly paperwork, no real STEM background. He was also working part time as a newly minted real estate agent. Some of the conversations I’ve overheard are just like, “Let’s just close this, I want my money “. I’m sure they all have inspectors they like to work with that expertly and legally gloss things over. I did construction while in school, would have to poke around quite a bit myself to look for disparities.

Here, the buyer usually hires the inspector, although agents will always be happy to recommend one. Sometimes the seller will share costs and keep the inspection for subsequent bids, if it it comes to that, to speed things along. But at the end of the day, the inspectors are independent, and tainting their reputation with sketchy reports isn't going to serve them well in the long run.
 
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I appreciate a good Comcast bashing story. But this one is a little hard for me to get behind. Quick search of Zillow for houses recently sold in that area of Seattle show most way north of $800,000. And Northgate would be a location I would consider moving to if I was working for a certain employer based out of Redmond.

Now that is probably irresponsible conjecture on my part - even people making $500k per year may not have thirty grand laying around to sink into Comcast’s pocket.

But this couple probably had much more mobility and choice in where they could live than many many other people in Seattle, where affordable housing is harder to find. And the fact that the government was willing to step in on their behalf is a little ‘icky’.

That said, I consider high speed Internet a basic necessity- even for rich people. So I hope this couple finds a happy ending.

They’re rich? Didn’t see that in the story. I guess they did buy a place in Seattle. Those rich people always insisting on having a roof over their head and buying food to put on the table!

Yeah, houses are expensive. People are stretching themselves thing to buy a home. Yeah, this couple is way better off than most people in the US, but so is almost all of Ars Technica’s readership.

The basic facts are this: This house is probably 70 years old. It’s in the middle of Seattle. It would never occur to anyone that Comcast, which offers services to every other house in the neighborhood, can’t offer it to this one.

And if they called Comcast and asked, Comcast would have looked at their coverage map and told them they can provide service to this house without mentioning it’ll cost $27,000 to do so. It probably doesn’t say that on their coverage maps. After all, there have been multiple stories on this website of people being told the house has cable service, they bought the house, and the cable company then informed them they can’t provide service without the new owner paying tens of thousands of dollars.

I bet Comcast could wire the house for way less than $27,000, but that might require a bit more planning than Comcast wants to spend on the issue. After all, it’s just one customer, and they can’t go to a competitor. They’re going to bite the bullet and spend that $27,000.
 
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kolepard

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What I have for some time recommended to anyone who will listen to me when buying a house is that the purchase contract include a condition that requires a broadband internet connect to be installed and functioning (at buyer expense) prior to finalizing the sale agreement.

It's sad you have to do that these days, but it's the only way to be sure, but Comcast and others will tell you they can provide service, then fail to do so without an outrageous charge like this.
 
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The city must have some sort of contract with Comcast. They need to review that and stipulate that ISPs must connect every home in the city limits or every home that has water service at a flat rate.

Those kinds of stipulations are a) rare, and b) ineffective even when they do exist. Just ask New York City about how that went with Verizon FiOS.
 
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ColdWetDog

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It’s gotten to the point where if I move, I will preinstall internet service before signing. Hard to trust availability websites, disclosures, etc.

Word. I suppose on the day of the inspection, or heck, final walkthrough before heading off to the attorney to sign the papers, have an internet technician show up to route up a line in your name. You'll know real quick what the situation is before doing the final signatures.


Have Comcast (or anybody else) roll a truck with a technician for someone who isn't a customer?

Goodluckwiththat.
 
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ColdWetDog

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What I have for some time recommended to anyone who will listen to me when buying a house is that the purchase contract include a condition that requires a broadband internet connect to be installed and functioning (at buyer expense) prior to finalizing the sale agreement.

It's sad you have to do that these days, but it's the only way to be sure, but Comcast and others will tell you they can provide service, then fail to do so without an outrageous charge like this.

Might work OK in some markets, but in a market where buyers are getting 5 or more offers in 24 hours, that isn't a winning strategy.

Of course, the real winning strategy in that market is not to play, but sometimes that isn't an option.
 
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ElCameron

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It seems like the issue is straight forward. It's not Comcast's fault that they would need to do underground work, tear up the road, and then restore the road to serve one customer. They won't ever see any return on the costs of that. Something that might help is asking the city to run overhead poles to his house and then Comcast can use that and it would probably greatly reduce the cost, but I'd doubt they'd do it for the same reason Comcast won't take up an 80,000 dollar project so one couple can get high-speed.

It's very unlikely they need to tear up the road. We were once on a well and switched to city water; the city line was on the other side of a road, and then had to run underneath our circular drive, twice, before reaching the house. No pavement was touched; they used a directional drilling rig to run the line, even though it had to be several feet underground for frost protection in this part of the country. Cable has no such requirement, so it would likely be even easier.

I’ve done lots of such work. Directional drilling versus an open cut is not a guarantee. It is really a site by site option.
 
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icrf

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When my parents built a new house, they needed something like 300 feet run. Comcast was going to charge several thousand dollars for it, but if they signed up for three years of business service, they'd do it for free. Business service wasn't functionally different than residential for them, and it wasn't much more expensive, so was totally worth it. I think the TV and phone they also got through Comcast was through their residential division and could use the same line. That was a decade ago, and the other side of the country, so no idea if things like that are options.
 
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