This is a violation of the terms listed on page 58 of Comcast's King County franchise agreement and this couple should contact the franchise authority to have those terms enforced.
"The Franchisee must provide Cable Service to all Persons within its franchise area upon request...standard installation charge to all Persons within its Franchise Area where the drop distance is one hundred and fifty feet or less. "
https://kingcounty.gov/~/media/depts/it ... ashx?la=en
I wonder if they've looked at a point to point wireless link with one of the neighbors.
Pretty easy to do a very fast line of sight wireless link for well under $1k. Just need to find a neighbor that's agreeable to split their monthly bill (or the people could cover it entirely).
It is unfortunate, but it should be easily fixable with a pair of $50 Ubiquiti radios - just need to find a neighbor with LOS who would be willing to share their Internet.
This is the kind of thing that first time home owners are most likely to miss. If only there were an agent of some kind to advise and help them through the process./s
So, in my state real estate agents can represent either the buyer or the seller. The agent you contact from the name on the "For Sale" sign is the seller's agent. You can contact your own agent separately and they will represent YOUR interests, but this isn't all that common unless you've already contracted one to help you sell your existing house. Anyway, with your own agent, they'll split commissions with the seller's agent, and look out for your interests.
Or - probably better - your attorney can act on your behalf.
Not sure how this works in other states, though.
Ok, I always thought it was common practice for there to be a buyer's agent and a seller's agent.
It is unfortunate, but it should be easily fixable with a pair of $50 Ubiquiti radios - just need to find a neighbor with LOS who would be willing to share their Internet.
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.
$5k doesn't even cover dealing with the city.
A bunch of people are like "dig a hole" like that's easy.
The house is served by underground electric, which is two strikes against it. They can't run on poles, and that means there's buried electric utilities to conflict with. The road they have to tunnel under probably has utilities running in parallel under it (water, sewer, electric, possibly gas, pots, etc.). You need to know where all of that is before you "dig a hole"
But the housing market is so crazy, you might have to sigh before even checking out the build quality of the house.It’s gotten to the point where if I move, I will preinstall internet service before signing. Hard to trust availability websites, disclosures, etc.
Yes this. It seems that multiple people in the comments are suffering from amnesia and don't remember that houses were being sold in less than 24 hours in major cities, Seattle included. It was ultra common for people to wave all inspections to close on a house.
Now if they bought a house today in Seattle that might have about a week to think it over.
It was only after closing on the house in July 2019 that they learned the bad news.
and then...
Cohn told us the sellers disclosed in documents before the sale that Internet wasn't connected at the home
Which is it?
Likely they didn't read the disclosure form at closing. My closing docs are over 50 pages long and one page is a form with disclosures on it.
That would also be a strike against the buyer's. I had a lot of closing docs, I read every damn one of those trying my realtor's patience.
I even did checks on property taxes owed by previous owner, what internet services were offered at the location, what public utilities I'd have to use, etc. And that's for a five year old house in a 10 year old large development. During my first walkthrough of the house, before I put an offer on it, I looked at their internet connections, water heater, outside HVAC unit, shingles, siding, fence, etc. Despite looking at all that, the HVAC unit could've failed the day after I signed the paperwork. A storm could of taken off siding, shingles, wiped out the fence.
This is the correct answer. The cost is absolutely in line with what I would expect for the work involved here, and someone has to pay in order to get that done. Also, I'm sure the city would be happy to install poles and run overhead wiring. But here's a newsflash: the city will charge for that. And it's usually the requesting homeowner who would pay.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.
5G and Starlink are one thing. But how will fiber "roll in at no cost"? The fiber internet companies have to run the fiber lines somewhere too, you know...Wow this feels like deja vu.
In this day and age, why is this still a problem for new customers? Especially with 5G and Starlink. Plus why would Comcast not want to obtain a customer before fiber rolls in at no cost to the customer?
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 was only after closing on the house in July 2019 that they learned the bad news.
and then...
Cohn told us the sellers disclosed in documents before the sale that Internet wasn't connected at the home
Which is it?
Likely they didn't read the disclosure form at closing. My closing docs are over 50 pages long and one page is a form with disclosures on it.
That would also be a strike against the buyer's. I had a lot of closing docs, I read every damn one of those trying my realtor's patience.
I even did checks on property taxes owed by previous owner, what internet services were offered at the location, what public utilities I'd have to use, etc. And that's for a five year old house in a 10 year old large development. During my first walkthrough of the house, before I put an offer on it, I looked at their internet connections, water heater, outside HVAC unit, shingles, siding, fence, etc. Despite looking at all that, the HVAC unit could've failed the day after I signed the paperwork. A storm could of taken off siding, shingles, wiped out the fence.
This is all proof that America is a failed country where we can’t trust anyone to be competent to their jobs or tell the truth. Including your own home inspector and real estate agent. We shouldn’t have to all be experts in home construction and internet and HVAC and law and investigating reporting. It cannot be expected that every person is even half capable of all that shit. That’s why we have society.
That's right. They have to jackhammer up the street, with all of the accompanying permits, cautions about not hitting other utilities, city inspections, and the rest that comes with doing so. The cost of digging large holes can add up surprisingly quickly, doubly so when it involves city streets and property. There is nothing surprising at all about the quoted cost.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.
I think the issue is its not a trench, it has to be tunneled under a road? I recently had my cast iron sewer pipes replaced under my house and the tunneling was $200 a foot.
5G and Starlink are one thing. But how will fiber "roll in at no cost"? The fiber internet companies have to run the fiber lines somewhere too, you know...Wow this feels like deja vu.
In this day and age, why is this still a problem for new customers? Especially with 5G and Starlink. Plus why would Comcast not want to obtain a customer before fiber rolls in at no cost to the customer?
That's right. They have to jackhammer up the street, with all of the accompanying permits, cautions about not hitting other utilities, city inspections, and the rest that comes with doing so. The cost of digging large holes can add up surprisingly quickly, doubly so when it involves city streets and property. There is nothing surprising at all about the quoted cost.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.
I think the issue is its not a trench, it has to be tunneled under a road? I recently had my cast iron sewer pipes replaced under my house and the tunneling was $200 a foot.
Did you catch the "underground" part of the sentence you quoted? They're talking about tearing up and running it under the city street. That's the cost."Comcast ultimately said it would require installing 181 feet of underground cable to connect the house and that the couple would have to pay Comcast over $27,000 to make that happen. Cohn and Zenobi did not pay the $27,000, and they've been relying on a 4G hotspot ever since."
181 feet is not that long. Cable plants can use RG11 cable to run drops up to 300ft from a pole or pedestal to a customer's residence. A 1000 ft spool of RG11 costs around $170. 181 feet would be about $30 of that spool.
I'm struggling to understand the markup from $30 to $27,000. Even if labor was included in the final price, either Comcast is smoking crack or we're missing a key piece of information.
From the technical side this can be dealt with just by putting it on a tower (or at the top of a tree for that matter with top branches appropriately pruned). It's possible to do something quite nice and cosmetic for a lot less then $27k. The bigger issue is simply that Seattle is quite dense and Starlink can't do density. It can handle the exact same number of people per 100 square miles in Seattle as it can in rural Montana. I suspect they're already saturated there for residential usage (even if they could keep up with terminal demand and it wasn't a year or multiyear wait already). Starlink down the road could get a lot more density acting as the uplink for some local distribution system but it's still early days. 5G/LTE fixed service, a micro-WISP type thing (sharing someone else's connection in exchange for helping pay for it), and so on would be what I'd investigate.Apparently starlink doesnt work if there are trees in the way. Seattle has trees.Starlink?
City "has no authority to require Comcast" to connect unserved homes.
Then maybe the City should stop renewing Comcast's franchise license that gives the ISP a regional monopoly.
This is correct though you can actually do air blasting, water/mud assisted and so on now too. A lot of horizontal direct boring techniques for dealing with exactly this kind of situation have been refined over the last decade, though as always knowledge and tech percolates out quite unevenly.That's right. They have to jackhammer up the street, with all of the accompanying permits, cautions about not hitting other utilities, city inspections, and the rest that comes with doing so. The cost of digging large holes can add up surprisingly quickly, doubly so when it involves city streets and property. There is nothing surprising at all about the quoted cost.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.
I think the issue is its not a trench, it has to be tunneled under a road? I recently had my cast iron sewer pipes replaced under my house and the tunneling was $200 a foot.
No you dig on either side of the road and pound a steel rod across the road to pull the conduit through. Dig safe marks utilities.
Did you catch the "underground" part of the sentence you quoted? They're talking about tearing up and running it under the city street. That's the cost."Comcast ultimately said it would require installing 181 feet of underground cable to connect the house and that the couple would have to pay Comcast over $27,000 to make that happen. Cohn and Zenobi did not pay the $27,000, and they've been relying on a 4G hotspot ever since."
181 feet is not that long. Cable plants can use RG11 cable to run drops up to 300ft from a pole or pedestal to a customer's residence. A 1000 ft spool of RG11 costs around $170. 181 feet would be about $30 of that spool.
I'm struggling to understand the markup from $30 to $27,000. Even if labor was included in the final price, either Comcast is smoking crack or we're missing a key piece of information.
I'd be knocking on my neighbors doors and offering to help pay for internet if they would allow me a point to point wifi bridge to their network.
Would Starlink help in this situation?
Maybe, if you don't mind that particular brand of scum oozing into your life. Maybe a tough call against Comcast's brand.
Has Starlink been abusing its customers? If it's just about its jackass owner I have some bad news about literally every provider of every service in the United States.
City "has no authority to require Comcast" to connect unserved homes.
Then maybe the City should stop renewing Comcast's franchise license that gives the ISP a regional monopoly.
Is that still a thing in Seattle? Internet monopolies are pretty rare these days, at least those codified through municipal agreements. There are still some markets where Comcast - or some other provider - is the only player, but not nearly so many that are locked in by local laws as there once were[...]
Apparently starlink doesnt work if there are trees in the way. Seattle has trees.Starlink?
Their next project - StarLaser - will start addressing that problem.
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?
Another option is to find a 3rd party that will bore the hole for the cabling following Comcast's specs. Should be orders of magnitude less expensive than Comcast's price.
Michael Powell - son of Collin - as head of the FCC , destroyed rural internet. Where communities have gotten together to create community ISPs, the GOP rural govt - steps in to block and make it illegal. As far as electricity: a lot of that was done by the federal government via projects like the TVA.I wonder why we never see these sorts of articles about people getting electricity or water at their houses, even in remote rural areas. Maybe the government should look into what happened there and figure out how to fix these crazy internet stories.
/S (in case you can't feel my eyes rolling through your screen)
If I was buying an expensive house I’d make sure to do my due diligence first. Along with paying for a detailed house inspection I’d also inquire about Internet (as numerous people have pointed out in this thread already).
Entitled people often forget to do this because, well, they’re “entitled”.
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?
There's a state law prohibiting it. I'll give you three guesses which company lobbied for that law and the first two don't count.
The fee is outrageous - BUT (and I feel gross just saying this) - it's hard to blame Comcast here. It is not their fault that a road exists between the end of the current service and the homeowners property.
I still think these homeowners are lacking creativity here. There is always a way to achieve something given ingenuity and effort. What about working with a neighbor to share costs and setup a point-to-point high speed wireless connection? Sure those aren't perfect systems and it's legally murky, but if it is that or DSL my ass would be knocking on every door around me to find a solution.
Would Starlink help in this situation?
edit: apologies I see it was in fact addressed - missed that bit at the end of the article.
The article does address this but I bet there is an avenue to do something much cheaper than $27k that makes Starlink viable. Going out on a limb here... based on the age of the home (1964), they may be safe from the tyranny of an HOA. If so, we're in business. Depending on codes and restrictions about detached buildings/structures/etc: it could be possible to have a 20ft (or taller) "antenna" constructed with a platform to mount a starlink dish at the top. Not allowed? What about a "light post" and do the same thing? Not allowed? Maybe build a "tree house" (AKA wooden platform near the top of the tree), prune branches to give starlink a good view from the top and securely mount it - probably would need a very large, stable tree to keep the dish from moving much in a storm (related story from a user on reddit).
The point is Starlink is low voltage/PoE, so you can do (almost) whatever you want with mounting and not run afoul of local codes or ordinances. It might be an eyesore, but you can certainly find a solution for far less than $27k - one that does not involve abysmal DSL or hotspots.