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

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.

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?

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.