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

>"I have at least two homes where I have to build a half-mile to get to one house," Mauch said, noting that it will cost "over $30,000 for each of those homes to get served."

is this really a valuable use of taxpayer money? sending a wireless link over a half-mile isn't that difficult, surely there's a better way to spend $60k of public money than delivering internet service to two families. especially now that starlink exists.

i'm all in favour of scrappy upstart ISPs, but this just seems wasteful.

You can do that with 2 Ubiquiti Nanobeams 5AC gen2's for $130 each and get a ~650Mbps link (source, I've done this a number of times!).

Especially since he's burying the lede about the people he's servicing--its true 'in general' that the area is lower income, but most of the homes he's serving will be millionaires.

without knowing specifics, that's kinda what i assumed. i see the same thing near where i live - the "low income rural areas" that get infrastructure subsidies is cottage country or areas with a lot of retirees who've moved to the country.

the actual low income people living in rural areas have to move to a suburb or a trailer park if their region isn't serviced by a utility, they don't get assistance like this.

Washtenaw is certainly an affluent county, but not that rich. I live in another part of the county and used to work in Mauch's part of it; it's by no means mostly millionaires. I think the simplicity of the project's goal -- every household served, no exceptions -- is one of the reasons that it got off the ground.