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

City "has no authority to require Comcast" to connect unserved homes.

Read the whole story

 

[SixDegrees]

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)

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.

The Rural Electrification Project mostly enabled and encouraged private industry to extend their reach to rural areas they had explicitly stated they wouldn't serve because of a perceived lack of profitability, and it was done largely through subsidies. The result was an unanticipated rural economic boom.

The same could and should be done for the Internet, for similar reasons, but it will take similar subsidies to private industry to make it happen.

This doesn't really apply to the Seattle area, though, which already has a very dense, very profitable customer base. The city - and possibly the state - ought to create the authority it needs and claims to lack that would allow it to force complete coverage.

 

[Derecho Imminent]

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?

Well they certainly dont want to spend $80k to install cable for one customer right before that customer gets snatched away by "fiber at no cost".

 

[BinaryMuppet]

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?

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...

At this moment my state is expanding it's fiber footprint to compete with cable. It simply requires the usual installation fees but not the cost to build the plant for the entire street, they recoup that cost in your bill over time. Comcast on the other hand is charging a price that seems closer to building the plant for an entire street to the customer vs recouping the cost in a monthly bill. So the home mentioned in the article may someday have a company lay fiber on that street and include the home Comcast chose to ignore.

Kind of like driving on a toll road. You don't pay the cost of the whole highway just to drive on it.

 

[crmarvin42]

“I was just flabbergasted that a house like this, in an area like this, could possibly have never been wired for Internet,”

Since there’s a small number of houses with significant space between them it sounds like they’re all on very large lots, maybe even small acreages. Which means this is likely an expensive house. Which, if true, makes the “house like this/area like this” comment sound very entitled.

Honestly, it's 2022, and if I was buying an expensive house (which mostly feels like redundant phrasing these days), I'd feel entitled to internet access too. In the same way I'd feel entitled to indoor plumbing, sewage, and electric.

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”.

Not sure why you go with "entitled" as opposed to "rookie mistake".

Inspections and due diligence take time, money and attention to detail. Mistakes can happen, and this case did.

I'd guess a lot of folks don't check the internet connection in tightly packed residential neighborhoods and things turn out just fine for them because situations like this are probably quite rare in those types of communities. Pre-covid, I'm not sure I would have been so insistent on fiber to the house when I was looking, because pre-covid it had never occurred to me that I would be working from home while all 4 of my kids would be attending school virtually at the same time my wife was streaming 4k video in the living room.

You look out for the hazards that occur to you, and this one is an easy one to overlook. No entitlement required.

 

[adespoton]

When I was purchasing a home, I checked that the house could get FTTH before I even made an offer. Sounds like they didn't do their due diligence before the purchase.

How did you check? My experience in cases like this is that if you use their availability finder, it will state "service is available on your block".

Then when you actually go to get a service tech to hook it up, you get notified first that there's no hookup at your home, and then if you chase them down on it, they'll tell you that a hookup is not available at all unless you pay $$$ to run a line.

So unless they actually attempted to kickstart the process with Comcast prior to putting an offer on the house, there's no way they would have known, unless they got the previous owner to outline the current situation or talked to the neighbor who had been sharing their access.

 

[XSportSeeker]

It's a difficult case, but the couple would definitely have better chances if they weren't stuck in a regional monopoly situation, as most of the US is...
The price tag was just a way to justify the company trying to do nothing about it, it's not a real value. Costumers should never pay these kinds of costs because it's already a sum distributed among subscribers of the service.

Dunno if people realize this... yes, all this contract work that requires infrastructure changes are costly, and there are several special cases that appear every now and then that the ISP has to cover. But that's exactly why they charge the prices they do. It's how the business is set up. The fact that ISPs in the US are charging extra for particular cases just shows how scummy they are... the costs for cases like these are supposed to be part of the responsibility of ISPs as a service, and it's an actual justification for the prices they charge all other people in subscriptions.

Proof in the pudding, the record profits these companies are always having is because of that. They do have major infrastructure costs every once in a while, but it never gets close to how much they get from costumers, no matter how extreme exceptional cases are.

See, I just so happen to have experienced a similar situation not too long ago... don't live in the US though.
The situation here isn't great, we have a ton of oligopoly practices going on in the telecom industry, and mobile carriers plus ISPs are also all in the top 10 consumer complaints list.

But it's still the case here that wherever you live, you probably have at least a couple of choices to go for... we used to have more, but the market is collapsing, hopefully it never becomes a situation of single monopoly - our country doesn't have any strong precedent in anti-trust, it just somehow avoided some of the worst stuff so far.

In summary, my case was of one weirdly constructed new building a bit far away from downtown that most ISPs didn't want to handle. Because of competition though (the region has at least a handful of options), one of them did the work. We didn't have the best of connections due to a whole set of unfortunate circumstances which was thoroughly explained and shown to us, but we also weren't charged ridiculous extra fees and whatnot for it.

I'd have to write an entire other comment to explain all of it... the floor my mom's apartment was in didn't have access to the building's common service shaft, it was a whole mess. It became even more of a problem when ADSL service started disappearing and getting replaced by fiber, but it was a rental, and she was about to move to her own apartment, so as we already had an end date for all the problems, it was easier to just suck it up and deal with the situation knowing it was going away in a few months. We left with all warnings and being thoroughly clear that the next people living there would have huge issues with that, but it wasn't our problem anymore.

Anyways, summary, thanks to we having at least a handful of options, one ISP decided to take it, and because of one of their excellent technicians, he found a way. It wasn't perfect, the speed wasn't optimal, and like I already said we had problems when ADSL service started being phased out, but it worked for a couple of years without fault, no ridiculous surplus charge, we didn't even pay anything over the regular installation fee everyone else does. And if I'm not mistaken, it's also because it would be unlawful for the company to even try charging extra for that.

And you know... I live in one of those shithole countries... xD It's just baffling at times reading one of these cases that happens in the US because of the late stage capitalism landscape. Seems to me that the bigger corporations get, and more monopolistic they get, it always ends up in consumer abuse situations. They do what they do because they simply don't care and don't see costumers as people anymore, it's just statistics.
Sad because we are going the exact same way, because our country seems to always be mirroring practices that the US has.

 

[Bash]

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.

Guess you didn't read the article -- they have to dig under an arterial road. I'd imagine this requires pretty specialized tools in a high cost of living area. I'd be surprised if they could even get a backhoe into their yard to dig a single hole (for something like a plumbing repair) for less than $10K -- this is way more complicated.

 

[Derecho Imminent]

When I was purchasing a home, I checked that the house could get FTTH before I even made an offer. Sounds like they didn't do their due diligence before the purchase.

How did you check? My experience in cases like this is that if you use their availability finder, it will state "service is available on your block".

Then when you actually go to get a service tech to hook it up, you get notified first that there's no hookup at your home, and then if you chase them down on it, they'll tell you that a hookup is not available at all unless you pay $$$ to run a line.

So unless they actually attempted to kickstart the process with Comcast prior to putting an offer on the house, there's no way they would have known, unless they got the previous owner to outline the current situation or talked to the neighbor who had been sharing their access.

Can you actually do that? Ive always assumed that they wouldnt start the order without proof that you are the owner.

 

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Come on!

Eight pages of Comcast-bashery, and no one has referenced the famous South Park Cable Company?

 

[sollus]

How hard it is in a US city to start a new ISP ? Really strange heairing these horror stories

There are laws passed across the country that makes this thing illegal in a lot of states. We can't have competition in our "free" market.

 

[BinaryMuppet]

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?

Well they certainly dont want to spend $80k to install cable for one customer right before that customer gets snatched away by "fiber at no cost".

Good thing it was $27,000 and do you think that price doesn't include markup? Their cost should be much lower unless the article neglects to mention several telephone polls, 1000ft of trunk cable, and line extenders to amplify the signal.

It's called investing into your plant to make a profit in total number of subscriptions.

 

[KtotheF]

I had a tangential experience also here in Seattle. We have Comcast but when the pandemic hit and we started working from home, I looked into fiber options that are cheaper, faster, and the same upload speeds and download. CenturyLink provides fiber all over the city but our house didn't qualify. With more research and a 6 month back-and-forth with CL (also only because our council member got involved) they told us they thought our utilities were underground and that's why we didn't have a connection. We corrected that misconception and got a little further but they still said, despite neighbors a block away with fiber, it would be expensive. They asked how much we'd be willing to pay (weird?) but never gave an actual number. So, even with Comcast available to us, we wanted a competitive option and couldn't get one. Telecoms are given the pleasure of access to operate anywhere within the city limits but, as this article and our experience shows, they're under zero obligation to fill in any gaps once they've achieved their self-determined ROI nirvana. This is the part that should be mandated -- start with the easy stuff but continue to invest and fill in those gaps. Or, in one of the most tech-heavy cities in the US, municipal broadband should be a given.

 

[Sideshowjr]

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.

As someone who has some experience with trenching costs (across roads, in large cities), $27k is actually pretty cheap. I don't think Comcast is lying when they say the actual costs will approach $80k. I work with NYC, Chicago, San Francisco, and many other US cities on trenching projects and these kinds of things regularly exceed $1000/ft in trenching costs when it's all said and done. Your suggestion that he offer to do the trenching himself... across a Seattle DOT and/or King County Road Services Division managed road? Oh boy, good luck with that. You can't even get your own licensed & bonded GC to do it, you have to go with the one or two city-approved contractors for this kind of stuff. At least Comcast is offering to taking care of the project management and shoulder most of the cost.

Of course that doesn't discount the fact that it is an extremely unfortunate circumstance for this homeowner. I don't think it was particularly naïve of Zach to assume he could get some kind of decent home internet when he is well within the city limits and all his neighbors have Comcast just fine. I hope your water heater (and furnace, and roof) looks pretty new... and I hope your inspector didn't see the knob-and-tube wiring in the attic, or it'll be a challenge for your home owners insurance. Sorry Zach, welcome to home ownership! I've purchased older homes in Seattle & San Francisco over the years, it's all par for the course.

 

[Deleted member 221201]

Since we are talking about digging under a road.

Anyone know when the Boring Co, make a tunnel if they are also laying down conduit to hold fiber, in case they plan to us that later on or lease that part out to an existing ISP ?

I mean if you are digging a tunnel to host cars & have air/electricity etc in there, them might as well lay down some cable.

Also, if the above is correct then do they (state gov) also do that for public projects like train tunnels, subways etc ?

 

[Bash]

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.

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.

Contrary to what some of the posters in this comment thread suggest, this type of situation, while not commonplace, isn't exactly uncommon either. In cities like Seattle and plenty of other large and otherwise well developed cities, there are all kinds of oddball issues with access to various utility services. I've experienced this myself: I happen to live in a six square block void where the city never bothered to run natural gas mains. There's natural gas just about everywhere else, including neighbors across the alley, but not in this little pocket. The city was just out a couple years ago doing some work on the gas main under the nearby road, but not to extend service or anything like that. They are willing and capable to do it, but here's the problem: it's expensive to start digging under roads and sidewalks in cities and the city won't do it gratis either.

If someone, or a group of people want to pay the city to do that work, they more than happily will. Sort of like, well... Comcast. Because that costs a lot, people aren't enthusiastic about ponying up thousands of dollars to create a utility service where there was none before, so it hasn't happened. In the meantime, everyone simply lives with alternatives. In nearly every case, that's oil heating.

How about sewer services? Again, you don't have to live in bumble-wherever to realize that in large cities all over the place, there are odd pockets where sewer mains don't fully extend, or where the technically-private lines that connect to mains (but still run under city sidewalks and streets) are ancient or whatever. If you need or want to mess around with that, never mind create a new hookup, it's going to cost a fortune.

I feel for these folks, I really do. That's an incredibly frustrating issue to have on account of weird, goofy artifacts of how lots were divided and utility services run. But that's hardly Comcast's fault. The suggestion that Comcast is somehow responsible for or should be compelled to pay significant costs to hookup service to a single customer because the city, in the past, happened to allow these lots to be divided and hooked up to utilities in this particular way makes even less sense than laying the cost at the city's feet. And that doesn't make much sense itself.

I've had Comcast internet service at various points over the last two decades. Its customer service and billing practices have driven me to madness on more than one occasion. My frustrations with Comcast are legion and, after identifying a serviceable alternative, I quickly switched and no longer use Comcast's service. But I fail to see how the issue described in this article -- including the cost of doing an underground hookup over the described run -- can fairly be blamed on Comcast.

I 100% agree with everything you say here. The only counterpoint is that cable companies have been granted an actual monopoly in some locations, and a practical monopoly in others. Industry collusion has also significantly contributed to keeping multiple players from operating in one area. The entire broadband industry needs to have much stronger regulations. This may not solve this specific problem (** caveat emptor when buying real estate **), but proper regulations would move broadband out of the "we only server high profit areas, and would prefer to shut everything else down" attitude.

 

[stimp]

When I was purchasing a home, I checked that the house could get FTTH before I even made an offer. Sounds like they didn't do their due diligence before the purchase.

How did you check? My experience in cases like this is that if you use their availability finder, it will state "service is available on your block".

Then when you actually go to get a service tech to hook it up, you get notified first that there's no hookup at your home, and then if you chase them down on it, they'll tell you that a hookup is not available at all unless you pay $$$ to run a line.

So unless they actually attempted to kickstart the process with Comcast prior to putting an offer on the house, there's no way they would have known, unless they got the previous owner to outline the current situation or talked to the neighbor who had been sharing their access.

I looked for the box on the outside of the house. Looked at the what the current owners were using. When I was house hunting there were houses with cable, and the houses with FTTH/Cable. If a house wasn't wired for FTTH, it wasn't in my consideration.

My previous house was Cox Cable or slow DSL. FIOS expanded all around my neighborhood for the last ten years or so, but never inside. I was not going through one provider territory again. We have 3 different cable companies and one FTTH company available in my current neighborhood.

 

[sc99]

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.

Still probably fine as "CenturyLink offers Internet service at Cohn's address"

 

[TomTc]

Just get Starlink and be done with it! I'm sure a location could be found SOMEWHERE on their property where it would work...

 

[kaleberg]

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.

The disclosure sounds fair to me. You can't expect someone who doesn't want a fast internet connection to go through the entire rigamarole of finding out whether it is possible to set up internet service when SELLING their house. How about requiring them to find out if they could add a couple of new rooms or put in a swimming pool while we're at it.

Finding out whether you can get internet service is something one does when BUYING a house. ISPs may lie about it, but at least one has done due diligence. If one is unsure, put a contingency clause in the P&S allowing the buyer to pay for an internet installation as a condition for the sale.

 

[_GntlStone_]

Considering they both work from home (exclusively?), shouldn't tbey be dealing with Comcast Business? And isn't this a tax deduction?

Silly first time buyers.

If it was the roof and they hadn't had a good home inspection done they'd be in the same situation.

 

[ready_load$81]

pretty stupid of them to assume _anything_ when buying a house. ALWAYS check all utilities with current owner, before you purchase. Too bad, so sad.

 

[ColdWetDog]

They may want to check the cable franchise agreement Comcast has with Seattle.

Comcast may be required to provide "Television Cable" service to every dwelling within a certain distance of a cable drop. However, that does not explicitly cover "Internet Cable" service.

So maybe they should request "TV Cable" service from Comcast.

-----------

Edit: re: posters that state that the Free market would have solved this problem.

No, if there were a true free market, it would not solve the problem in the way that you would think. It would just mean that there would two or more suppliers asking for >$20,000 to wire up the location for internet since it's what would probably be the minimum to make a profit.

I think what people are misunderstanding is that a true free-market, AKA true capitalism is about as evil as things can get since there are NO Regulations in a "true" free market and all decisions are based on what is technically legal and company profitability.

Honestly, I'd gladly take the existing cable/telephone duopoly for high speed internet over a true free market any day.

As noted above, the agreement with King County is that Comcast has to supply everyone within a 150 of a drop with service without extra costs.

The house in question is supposedly 180 feet.

Oops.

 

[Sideshowjr]

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.

No, its not, I get quotes for this kind of stuff all the time.

Trenching & backfill: $115/linear foot
Cable installation: $23/linear foot
Road removal & replacement: $48/square foot
Permitting fees: $3500
Inspections: $1000
Pedestrian & Vehicular traffic protection during construction: $2500
Site investigation & architectural design fees: $6150

...it adds up quick... and thats without having to pour concrete for an above ground junction box or underground vault.

 

[shonthom]

While I feel for them... Running the line costs and it's for their benefit alone, so they should pay if it's required. Going under a significant road complicates and therefore increases the price and should be expected.

The United Stats benefits from increased GDP when everyone has good speed. That's why it should be covered under Title II until a more fitting regulation is created.

 

[SixDegrees]

They may want to check the cable franchise agreement Comcast has with Seattle.

Comcast may be required to provide "Television Cable" service to every dwelling within a certain distance of a cable drop. However, that does not explicitly cover "Internet Cable" service.

So maybe they should request "TV Cable" service from Comcast.

-----------

Edit: re: posters that state that the Free market would have solved this problem.

No, if there were a true free market, it would not solve the problem in the way that you would think. It would just mean that there would two or more suppliers asking for >$20,000 to wire up the location for internet since it's what would probably be the minimum to make a profit.

I think what people are misunderstanding is that a true free-market, AKA true capitalism is about as evil as things can get since there are NO Regulations in a "true" free market and all decisions are based on what is technically legal and company profitability.

Honestly, I'd gladly take the existing cable/telephone duopoly for high speed internet over a true free market any day.

As noted above, the agreement with King County is that Comcast has to supply everyone within a 150 of a drop with service without extra costs.

The house in question is supposedly 180 feet.

Oops.

I wonder if there's >30 feet of setback surrounding the house? Have Comcast terminate the run right at the property line, if so, then work off the rest yourself. You could even build Comcast a cute little miniature "cable house" to connect to.

 

[Starouscz]

How hard it is in a US city to start a new ISP ? Really strange heairing these horror stories

pretty easy, just open a LLC with a state, get your tax ID numbers and then just raise tens of millions or billions of dollars to apply for the permits and run the wiring and sell your service. and rent some space in a central office and pay to hook up to the backbone internet providers

So weird....about twenty or more years ago some people around where i live had it as a hobby to make homemade antennas to connect over air to places with strong internet connection and checking today there are 48 ISPs in the local area serving this part of city. I do live on a edge of city in Prague, Czech Republic. Big ISPs sucks alot, but they cant ignore small local players too much.

Monopolistic capitalism seems kinda close to centrally planned communism. My parents had 1 choice of car to get during that time and if they wanted it, you had to wait a couple years on a list. This sounds absurdly similar.

 

[maxoakland]

When I was purchasing a home, I checked that the house could get FTTH before I even made an offer. Sounds like they didn't do their due diligence before the purchase.

Most people don’t read Ars Technica and most people would never imagine this is even an issue because it makes no sense at all. You’re blaming the victim here and that’s ridiculous

 

[ready_load$81]

When I was purchasing a home, I checked that the house could get FTTH before I even made an offer. Sounds like they didn't do their due diligence before the purchase.

Most people don’t read Ars Technica and most people would never imagine this is even an issue because it makes no sense at all. You’re blaming the victim here and that’s ridiculous

How to say you were born yesterday, without saying you were born yesterday.

Welcome to the real world, sweet summer child.

 

[SraCet]

...
The article mentions that the house in question is on one edge of a triangle, and the neighboring houses are on the other edges of the triangle; presumably the neighbors aren't adjacent to this house in a way that would make such an arrangement feasible. ...

Yeah, except, the article says they're currently running a cable from the neighbor's house to get internet. Presumably they didn't just string it over a street. If they can do that, it seems like Comcast should have no problem running a cable underground between the houses.

Besides that, Comcast's HFC (hybrid fiber coax) network increasingly relies on small headends pushed closer to residences, with each residence getting its own tap at the headend, both for bandwidth and conditional access reasons, though the conditional access is largely handled by the CPE (customer premises equipment) these days. Making him piggyback off of someone else's tap would probably introduce a whole lot of engineering problems that Comcast would have to solve. For just one customer.

The cable connecting all the neighboring houses was installed 40-50 years ago, so I can't imagine it would be a problem to simply add one more house to that circuit. Any newer technology that Comcast is implementing seems like it would be irrelevant to this scenario.

 

[stimp]

When I was purchasing a home, I checked that the house could get FTTH before I even made an offer. Sounds like they didn't do their due diligence before the purchase.

Most people don’t read Ars Technica and most people would never imagine this is even an issue because it makes no sense at all. You’re blaming the victim here and that’s ridiculous

It doesn't matter if it was FTTH or cable, they still have no internet. For people that WFH this is a priority. It's one of the first things you look at. Can I work from home/can I make money. I'm not hoping that cable/FTTH is available. It's either available or I'm finding a different house. Same with electricity/plumbing/water, etc. If the previous owner lived like a caveman without running water and electricity, I'm not taking his word those are available. I'd just pass on the house if I'm not 100% sure those are available.

 

[Sideshowjr]

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?

Well they certainly dont want to spend $80k to install cable for one customer right before that customer gets snatched away by "fiber at no cost".

Good thing it was $27,000 and do you think that price doesn't include markup? Their cost should be much lower unless the article neglects to mention several telephone polls, 1000ft of trunk cable, and line extenders to amplify the signal.

It's called investing into your plant to make a profit in total number of subscriptions.

The cost includes markup, but probably not markup (if any) from Comcast. I'm the last person to defend Comcast in any circumstance, but trenching cables across a road managed by a municipal DOT is pretty expensive. I'd ballpark it myself in the $60k-$90k range based on my experience on similar projects. Comcast won't be doing most of the work, a city DOT approved general contractor will be doing the trenching, at whatever markups they typically charge. If anything, Comcast typically gets the work done at discounted rates relative to what the approved GC would quote a single homeowner for a single project.

 

[Baz1]

Even though it's grossly overpriced and run by a raving loony, the price that Comcast quoted is how many months of Starlink?

 

[countcracula]

ITT: Lots of people with the Arrested Development meme: "INTERNET, MICHAEL, HOW MUCH CAN IT COST, $10?"

I don't work for Comcast and can't speak for them but in a tangential industry. I am not surprised at the quoted cost, irrespective of the wire distance. I'm actually pleased to see, that the overall cost or impact to Comcast is $80,000 and they are only asking for a "contribution" (this word has specific meaning) of $27,000, sounds like a great deal.

I like reading all the anecdotes about people putting in french drains or burying something across their property and getting it done for $4000. Yeah, this ain't it

 

[numerobis]

pretty stupid of them to assume _anything_ when buying a house. ALWAYS check all utilities with current owner, before you purchase. Too bad, so sad.

They did; they thought adding Comcast wouldn't be a big deal.

 

[numerobis]

Even though it's grossly overpriced and run by a raving loony, the price that Comcast quoted is how many months of Starlink?

About 20 years.

But that would be 20 years of bad service due to high trees nearby, according to the story.

 

[lurknomore]

Pay for your neighbor 's internet if they let you run an Ethernet cable to your house?

I don't know why it's so hard for American people to fathom, honestly.
It's like their internet is their bathroom, underwear, or adult toys. The idea of sharing with a neighbor is dirty.
Pay for the neighbor to upgrade to Gig service, use a router (WiFi or wired) to share, and if there's any worry, use advanced router functions to set BW quotas between you. Save hundreds of dollars a year, and the ISP will never know.
How is that so hard people put up with this kind of bullshit ?

 

[real mikeb_60]

Definitely dodgy disclosure. But also a failure of due diligence. Absent nasty disclosure laws as in CA there may be no recourse.

In CA, when I go to sell, I will have to disclose that, while the house is equipped for cable and has conduit to a connection box, it never has actually had cable connected and therefore a large connection fee will be charged by Comcast. How large is hard to determine, as in the article, until (and sometimes after) you sign up for service.

In my case, the signup process ended when I was quoted $5K (about 3 years ago) to pull a cable through existing conduit from the existing connection point across the street. 50 mbps from AT&T has turned out to be adequate, most of the time - though it gets a little dodgy when the kid's visiting and has the laptop and phone mangling bits as fast as the wifi can provide them - and it's a little more affordable than what Comcast was quoting as a monthly rate at the time, too.

 

[terrydactyl]

Many here are talking about "digging a hole." But keep in mind what a trench for fiber is like. These days, with the right equipment, a lot can be laid cheaply.

 

[OrvGull]

Even though it's grossly overpriced and run by a raving loony, the price that Comcast quoted is how many months of Starlink?

As the article notes, they're surrounded by trees, which are apparently Starlink's kryptonite.

 

[OrvGull]

Pay for your neighbor 's internet if they let you run an Ethernet cable to your house?

I don't know why it's so hard for American people to fathom, honestly.
It's like their internet is their bathroom, underwear, or adult toys. The idea of sharing with a neighbor is dirty.
Pay for the neighbor to upgrade to Gig service, use a router (WiFi or wired) to share, and if there's any worry, use advanced router functions to set BW quotas between you. Save hundreds of dollars a year, and the ISP will never know.
How is that so hard people put up with this kind of bullshit ?

This is Seattle. No one talks to their neighbors.

Also, that would violate Comcast's terms of service. If Comcast catches you, NEITHER house will have Internet. I've known people who did it and got away with it but I'm not sure I'd risk it for some rando neighbor. Not to mention the uncomfortable conversations every time one of you gets a DMCA notice.