Back then, likely. Now 4k UHD and 5.1 Dolby sound is larger than a zoom meeting – at least the ones I am on. I have never been on a giant 16 people brady bunch screen thing. I hate video chat.
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And they fight municipalities trying to solve the problems they’re refusing to solve.
It’s been a PITA where I am, not specifically, but regionally. Assholes.
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I also have to add that i have a friend in NM where he ran into this exact same issue with an ISP. They thought that they were close enough to have internet but they’re juuuuust outside of their service area, though i think the cost to get internet is something like 1200 bucks. They’re fairly low income so to them 1200 might as well be a fortune.
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Gig City, baby!!
eta: 30 years ago, when DH and I moved to a studio at the very top of one of the hills around Diamond Head, cable service stopped at the business end of the dead-end street the unit was on. We contacted the local cable company to find out how much it would cost to finish running the cable 300 feet to the end of the street (we thought we could do our landlady a solid). In 1990 dollars, that was $2500. Yikes. AFAIK, cable never made it there.
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We’re like that, but with sewer service. Our next door neighbor is hooked up, then it ends, so we need a septic system. I guess it’s akin to needing a hot spot for internet. Hadn’t thought of it that way before!
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For those of us working hybrid, video chat has become a permanent feature of our work days. Not every day.
I hear you.
I doubleplus unlove video chat and I am writing a eulogy now for a hybrid memorial in July. Live attendees at the service plus the whole Brady-Bunch x 1000 screen, projected onto one wall (20’) for those who will be attending virtually. I’ve never even spoken at a virtual memorial before (but plenty of regular memorials in meat space).
Still wondering if I should mask up and go, risking a superspreader event, or just show up on that Zoom platform I unlove soooooo much.
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I wonder if there are programs that can help minimize the cost to get certain utilities to some homes, like in your case, but i suppose that would make sense in a country that actually cared about infrastructure and rights to access some basic needs 
Did you ever find out how much they estimated the work for?
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While the cell companies still have fault, in many cases certain areas don’t have great cell service because of (a lack of) planning from 20 or 30 years ago. Most cell tower locations are that old and who would have known that cellphone usage would be so ubiquitous. Most cell towers are plotted an equal distance from each other, and thus geography has now become an issue, especially with low powered data driven signals. Data takes up bandwidth and requires good reception. The worse the reception, the lower the bandwidth as the system compensates for the lose. This is why for years many cell phone companies have been marketing at home cell hubs. Never really took off.
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Fkn late stage capitalism digital divide:
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No. My neighbor said being hooked up to municipal sewer was a PITA bc he needed an integrated pump to get it over the small rise, and sometimes (esp. in winter) it could fail/freeze up. We’re a little downhill, so I ended up feeling lucky that we had our own system.
Our water lines running under the street (so, their responsibility) used to freeze up until they insulated them, so I can only imagine what a sewer line with a pump would do 
I mainly brought it up because it made me think of things like wells and septic fields as akin to hot spots and other rural solutions to not being “wired in.”
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It’s wild how even cell reception is so bad, so close to Silicon Valley.
Not just close to Silicon Valley, but in Silicon Valley.
I live in the East Bay and, until last year, worked in Sunnyvale/Mountain View. There were three points along my commute home that calls were guaranteed to be dropped–I assume that’s from failed tower handoffs. Two more spots worked sometimes. At home, there’s nothing. Well, there was signal when I moved in in 1999, but it would often go away depending on the direction of the wind. In early 2009, all of the providers upgraded, and we essentially lost coverage. You might’ve gotten a bar or two standing outside on a clear day, but then the tallest building in the area was condemned and demolished. It had hosted the cellular antennas that had purportedly covered our neighborhood. All of the providers claim they cover our neighborhood, but those are lies, plain and simple. I now receive my text messages once a week when I drive over to the grocery store.
Having spent more than two decades without reliable cell service, I never got hooked on cell phones (as it seems the rest of the world has). I wouldn’t even have my “dumb” flip phone if my wife didn’t insist I keep something in the car for emergencies.
So I’ve never been able to justify the expense of a smart phone, especially since adding data to a basic cell phone plan greatly increases the monthly cost. Even if I could get past the monetary cost, it would take quite a bit to convince me that the costs of the spam, telemarketing, scams, surveillance, increased latency, and crappy audio quality that infest the cellular networks are worth any advantage over my landline.
Having been a software engineer at major Silicon Valley tech companies for all that time, I can confirm that the folks designing the products see absolutely no reason to design for the have-nots.
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Yeah, and having a septic tank isn’t the worst thing. And yeesh i can’t imagine what can happen with a sewer + pump if it has a failure these are the things i would never know about, me not being a homeowner and all.
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Why can’t Comcast just put in a point to point system for the last few hundred feet? We used one at work to connect internet to a building much farther away than that? Oh yeah, Comast, competition.
We hit the goldmine with 5g wireless. A tower went up a few blocks away and we get around 300-800 mbps down, 60-100mbps up, no caps and no throttling for $50 a month with no hidden fees or taxes. Comcast said they’d match the price for a limited time (ugh). Telling them to get bent felt so good.
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I;m in a middle of a move and trying to figure out the best option for internet. I don’t think I will have lack of access, but maybe not great access/service. There are 2 games in town I think… plus TMobile doing a 5G thing but that sounds like it wouldn’t be great for work.
Because that would make sense. Also, they’d have to negotiate the rights to put the endpoint in place, provide power to it, etc. etc. etc.
last year, I actually had fiber run around most of the perimeter of my house (I live on a corner, with an alleyway where most of the utilities reside), but I can’t actually use it because it’s for some other project, and the micro-tower that Verizon incorporated into the street light.
I did get something in the mail a couple weeks ago that Centurylink’s (aka Qwest aka US West) fiber to the home subsidiary would be available in my area “soon”. I’m seriously considering taking them up on it, if they can actually promise better output that what Cox is providing me for not much more money…
Yeah running fiber in a neighborhood, I can see that being the price. Running a dark fiber ring in a city was only cheap for where I used to work since we could hang off some existing stuff. Still had to get some contracts that are still being paid after I left. If I had been told no internet I would not have even looked at that house. Like no, need to have gig waiting and ready.
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I’d be tempted to rent a trencher and lay the cable myself.
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Sounds like these people are just exceptionally unlucky with the property they chose:
A Comcast spokesperson told Ars that the company never received a request to wire up the house before the current homeowners moved in. The spokesperson described it as a major project because of the requirement to dig underground to cross the street, which has two lanes plus a center turning lane.
The $27,000 price is “based on directional boring for the underground work, as well as engineering, permitting, mobilization, and restoration costs required to do the work,” the email said. Because the “existing distribution plant is on the opposite side” of the street, it would “require 181 feet of underground construction to get to the property,” the email from Seattle’s IT governance advisor said.
Comcast told us it first installed cable in the neighborhood in the late 1970s or early 1980s. (The wires were installed by a predecessor company as Comcast entered the Seattle area when it bought AT&T’s cable division about 20 years ago.) Though it’s not unusual for Comcast to install underground wiring, it only used aerial wiring in that neighborhood, the spokesperson said.
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how does plumbing and sewage work? surely there has to be underground infrastructure of some kind?
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I’ve been very happy with my $55/mo CenturyLink Fiber service. Served us well with two teens in remote learning, me and Ms. KiltedDad working remote during the pandemic.
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