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Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes

(arstechnica.com)
1135 points carride | 4 comments | 10 Aug 22 13:23 UTC | HN request time: 0.62s | source
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boplicity ◴[10 Aug 22 16:59 UTC] No.32415153[source]▶
He's getting $2.6 million to set up access to 417 homes. That works out to $6,235 per home. At $55 per month, it would take 113 months, or over 9 years just to get $2.6 million in revenue.

Horrible economics! What a crazy business to be in. No wonder grants like this are necessary.

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jrajav ◴[10 Aug 22 17:09 UTC] No.32415334[source]▶
So taxpayer dollars are necessary to make this business viable, and the product of that business is something that, realistically, everyone absolutely needs access to - certainly seems like this should not be a private business at all but a public utility. Have we ever asked this kind of question for interstate highways?
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1. asiachick ◴[10 Aug 22 17:17 UTC] No.32415460[source]▶
given the state of the roads and streets in most places in the usa I have very little confidence that public internet will keep up with maintenance, upgrading the equipment to the lastest speeds and standards every 5 yrs.

Commercial ISPs have issues and they should not be given local monopolies but even shitty Comcast is better today than it was yesterday. The same is not true of most of the roads in my state.

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2. ViViDboarder ◴[10 Aug 22 17:44 UTC] No.32415826[source]▶
My experience is a bit different. The roads where I live (San Francisco) are better than my AT&T options. Roads here seem to be repaved every 5-10 years and AT&T still doesn’t offer a plan that the FCC would classify as broadband to my house.
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3. jrajav ◴[10 Aug 22 17:47 UTC] No.32415864[source]▶
I disagree with you on the basis that I can get in my car right now and be confident that I'll be able to drive with speed and safety to any city on the map, and that when I get there I'll be able to drink the tap water and to plug my electronics into any wall socket without them getting fried. Maybe some local municipalities aren't that great at keeping up with their last-mile pothole maintenance, and maybe that should be an issue the locals prioritize more when choosing their representatives - but that doesn't represent the average experience.

But also, we're already talking about publicly funded infrastructure. We've subsidized broadband to every home multiple times by now, and we still continue to write those checks. Maybe if we want it to be private we should actually enforce that and then see how it goes.

4. asiachick ◴[10 Aug 22 17:54 UTC] No.32415956[source]▶
I don't know what parts of sf you're referring to but my experience of sf is it's pothole hell. Market, Misson, anything between market and van Ness, and plenty of others

to add, I lived on the east coast in the 80s and I found some fellow Californians where we co commiserated about how shitty the roads were in Baltimore and how nice they were in southern Orange County but now I drive though southern Orange County and the roads are clearly in need of repair.