This is just an example of what people mean by “market efficiency”. When you let the market provide what should obviously be a public service, the market will look at the most difficult 1% of customers, give them the finger, and pass considerable savings on to YOU, the shareholder.
Providing a service to all of society is fiscally irresponsible. It’s a shame if some paups have to go without basic services but what are you going to do, not reward people for happening to own shares?
My brother once had a house in Petaluma CA. The previous owner of the house was an insane racist who ripped out the Comcast cable from the property line to the house because he believe it was spying on him. Unfortunately Comcast refused to reconnect the house to the Comcast network after my brother bought it. Not for any amount of money in the world. My brother had to live off of satellite internet for years.
A friend of mine lived in a rural development which had a private road. No Internet or cable for any resident. Comcast agreed to bring the cable up to the beginning of the road, the community took responsibility for laying the cable in the community (like 10 houses) to each house. Sounds like this couple should be able to negotiate a similar deal with Comcast and avoid the $27,000 cost.
I have TMobile 5G and love it. My office puts all our files on Onedrive and sync times have been great. Did have some issues using voip, but got them sorted out.
If only Comcast had spent all those FCC subsidies (our money) for rural broadband more wisely.
Is 550mbps/90mbps not a reasonable speed for ADSL (except it’s going away?)
I realize it’s not a popular position to defend an evil, faceless, monolithic corporation but I don’t get the singling out and piling on of Comcast for having the audacity to attempt to recoup their costs to run cabling to a single, inaccessible property.
Comcast is not the only Internet provider in the Seattle area and equal criticism of CenturyLink for not upgrading DSL lines or Verizon for not installing a 5G tower nearby should be likewise forthcoming if we’re going to throw stones at companies that take taxpayer subsidies but fail to deliver on their promise of expanding infrastructure.
But hey…Fuck Comcast! Amirite??
Ummm, just spitballing here, but maybe because Comcast is the company specifically named in this article?
Right? It’s their turf and thus their responsibility. They lobby regulators to defend their local monopoly. If they then redirect infrastructure into their own pockets instead of using it for the stated purpose, they seem to pretty clearly be the bad guys here.
Other companies are mentioned but Comcast is singled out in the headline.
So there is a different cable internet provider who can provide service to this residence? Because that’s not what I got from the article and it’s not been my experience a few hours south of there. Comcast has a functional monopoly on cable internet. Other companies can provide service but with different technology, and the article explains why those other providers weren’t viable options in this case.
The house, built in 1964, is also about 10 miles from both T-Mobile Park, where the Seattle Mariners play, and Lumen Field, the Seattle Seahawks stadium named after CenturyLink’s Lumen brand. T-Mobile doesn’t offer its new home Internet service at the house. CenturyLink offers Internet service at Cohn’s address—but only its ancient DSL with download speeds of up to 3Mbps and upload speeds up to 500kbps. Cable and fiber just aren’t available at the house.
The issue is not whether the couple can specifically get cable internet service - they would be happy if they could get high speed Internet service at all.
The article is just part of a series of Comcast bashing so of course that’s what they are focusing on.
I guess I’m as equally confused by your seeming defense of Comcast as you are by the seeming “piling on” of Comcast.
No one here or, afaict in the Ars Technica article, is cheerleading for any of the other ISPs, they’re just pointing out that Comcast sucks. And they really do.
So does PG&E, so do a lot of utility providers, but that isn’t what this article is about.
Sounds like it’s general ISP bashing, which is perfectly legit. Most if not all of the private big ISPs are shit.
CenturyLink isn’t a real option for them. As noted, it’s not really high-speed. Second, if anyone can make Comcast look good, it’s CenturyLink. Their business practices make Comcast look like Mother Theresa. There are few companies that have such horrible reputations that they have abandoned their brand twice in as many decades because their reputation was unrepairable with any amount of money. Such is (USWest/Qwest/CenturyLink).
But the precious ISPs!!! Who will speak for the ISPs!!! /s
I’m tired of the lack of balance when it comes to these stories. This couple has other (albeit crappy) Internet alternatives but Ars decides to focus on the sensationalism of “OMG! Evil corporation wants to charge exorbitant fee to provide a luxury service that is still not available at all in other parts of the world.”
Without the Comcast bashing this would be non-news. Sucks to be this couple and Comcast is definitely shitty for lots and lots of other reasons but this particular situation really isn’t one of them.
What would be the balanced approach? Ignore that Comcast and other ISPs across the country have taken public money for infrastructure and redirected it to their executives and shareholders? Ignore that they’ve abused regulatory capture to create and maintain virtual monopolies to the detriment of the public? Both of those aspects of their behavior are specifically relevant to this story. And they are both newsworthy.
Your line about internet service being a “luxury” is pure misdirection and derailing. Let’s stick to the topic if we’re going to have a conversation, shall we?
I’m not sure why anyone would want to defend corporations which constantly screw over the public to enrich the bottom lines of their executives and shareholders. Like, these corporations are not going to do anything good for you unless the federal government forces them to.
Is there some reason why parts of the world that don’t have internet access are remotely relevant to passing judgement on the adequacy of an internet service provider?
Should I let people know to put all movie, game, and restaurant reviews on hold until 16 hour workdays and hunger are abolished worldwide?
Fine, fine…point made.
I wish, maybe in laboratory conditions, over 5 meters of vacuum sealed 4 pair solid gold RJ11 connectors? I’ve seen 150Mbps + easy in places pretty close to the POP, but more than that relies on quality infrastructure that just isn’t there.
