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Ask HN: Charter wants $7100 to make my new home serviceable. What gives?

19 points by kfrzcode ↗ HN
Specifically, I live in a residential neighborhood in a moderately sized city in Minnesota.

I'm willing to go as far as to start a WISP if I can get enough community support; but my question for the telco HNers is this: what specifically drives the decision to burden the consumer with a significant cost? I can understand if this parcel were somehow drastically outside the ISP service area, but I am certain that isn't the case as I have personal friends within .5 miles that have 1-gig service.

Wouldn't the ISP benefit from investing by expanding their available service, given most of the lines (AFAIK) around here are aerial, pole-to-home.

Side note, relevant to my ultimate goal of non-DSL internet.... Anyone have advice or ideas on how to get reliable fiber to my community?

47 comments

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giantg2
"what specifically drives the decision to burden the consumer with a significant cost?"

I wonder too. I know this is how most utilities work. My guess is that they want part of the cost covered up front in case your house burns down and nobody rebuilds there. And of course profits.

kkielhofner
Go to city hall and see if you can get a copy of the agreement Charter has with the municipality. Sometimes there will be clauses that cover minimum densities per cable mile, etc.

It may be possible they’re required to provide you service.

b0o
Could you explain in further detail?

I have a friend who is in a similar situation. 10 years ago he was being charged $2500 for a line from a major street to his place last year he got another quote and they're asking for $15k. He's just using cell data right now as its simply cheaper than dishing out 15k for a line and then having to be locked into a $150-$250/month internet plan.

kfrzcode
This is what I'm doing -- hotspotting with a thankfully-strong signal is decent enough but... still brutal!
b0o
ugh yes. It's horrid. They're older but they want to watch netflix and modernize and stuff. But it's brutal to have to shell out that money per month.
kkielhofner
They're called cable franchise agreements. Google found this example[1] with the provider in this case (Comcast) being required to extend service to any area with a minimum of 30 dwellings per cable mile. You should be able to get a copy of the franchise agreement between the municipality and provider.

They're typically for cable companies but they may apply to "fiber" providers as well. Not sure about that.

[1]https://www.ccgov.org/home/showpublisheddocument/3328/635960...

kfrzcode
I did find my city's agreement by querying "cable franchise agreement $ISP $CITY" and was led to a PDF. There is a clause about "Standard Installation" within 125 ft being requirement, but I can't find anything about beyond that; which leads me to think they have reign to charge what they want.

Also requires something about 25 residences per cable-mile, which we definitely would have here. The public school 2 blocks from me also has a franchise-agreement for dedicated fiber connection.

kfrzcode
Great idea. I was pondering when my next city council meeting is, didn't occur to me that Charter would have an explicit agreement with the city, duh!!
kkielhofner
Get a copy of the cable franchise agreement the provider has with your municipality. From what you've said in other comments if it has provisions for requiring service as long as there are "X dwellings per cable mile" or similar you can probably get your city government to require them to build it out at no cost to you or your neighbors.
kfrzcode
Awesome, it does have this provision for 25 dwellings per cable mile, and I have also made some social-media-tweets to our city council leadership and mayor because why not!
aurizon
Do they have others in this same position that they also charge a $7100 hook-up fee? If so, they are abusing the process. That said, once they put it in, will they maintain against ice/snow/etc. or will you get bills for thousands each year for weather outage? If you put in a WISP, how many co-wispers can you arrange and who will supply your internet connection to share the cost? How long do you plan on living in that house? What will your monthly bill be? Are you allowed to subdivide your internet connection with 1 or more neighbours? If you get Starlink will it be economic on a 10 year basis if you share via WiFi with 1-10 neighbors? There is a super Starlink as well.
kfrzcode
Great questions.

I can only assume they'll maintain it; this was quoted to me as a "construction co-pay". I would have to do some digging on if others have this high of a cost, but I'm literally two blocks from a school, there are hundreds of single-family homes around me, and I had Charter when I rented here only eight blocks up a hill. Baffling.

Co-WISPers might number in the dozens if I'm lucky and ambitious; I know of some high quality colocation spots and we have a lot of line of sight opportunities but I'm sorely unqualified to actually run a WISP but out of principal I might have to just to stick it to Charter/Spectrum......

I was looking into Starlink Premium, $2500 for each hardware + $500/mo for "premium" service which looks to be for low-latency (20-40ms) around 300mb/s. Potentially could recruit some neighbors to split that cost, but I would be better off with T-Mobile-supported 5G hotspotting, which is my current approach. It's enough to get by, certainly not enough to support a significant home power user network.

I purchased with the intent to live here until I'm rich enough to buy a second home cash; so, ostensibly 10+ years. It's a great neighborhood as far as all things go.

hindsightbias
Start with the cost of 2500’ of fiber + whether it is trenched (surveys, trencher crew) or on poles ($250/hr for a lineman).

Am sure that’s at least $5k.

kfrzcode
I'm not an expert to be fair, but I'm thinking we're talking about twisted-pair coaxial, not fiber; I'd love that option. That said I don't really know what I'm talking about.
sidpatil
I've never heard of twisted-pair coaxial.
kfrzcode
I probably am making it up, sorry -- it's whatever "cable internet" at say 500mb/50mb speed would run on; as opposed to "fiber" proper, with symmetrical speeds.

I am learning a lot different things than I thought I would by buying a new home :D

icedchai
The cable network is hybrid fiber and coax (HFC.) It's fiber from the head end to the "neighborhood" node, then coax to the home. You may be out of range from an existing node, so they'd have to run fiber, install a new node, run power for it, then obviously run coax to connect you to the node. That's a lot of equipment and labor for one home.
kfrzcode
That MAY be what we're looking at. Will know more when the tech calls, if they do.
icedchai
Good luck! In my experience getting any real technical details out of the cable company is almost impossible, unless you have an inside connection, like a friend who works there. The "house" techs don't deal with the cable plant / stuff on the poles: they handle from the "drop" on down. The "plant" techs don't seem to talk directly to customers: that's not their job (at least not around here.)
hindsightbias
Well, he said fiber. But isn’t above ground coax $1/foot?
shoo
For Australia's national fibre rollout, from about 8 years ago, back-of-the-envelope costs for running fibre were something like AUD 20 / metre to run aerial lines between existing poles, around AUD 100 / metre for new trenching, and perhaps AUD 30 / metre for installing fibre into existing underground duct with enough free capacity in an existing trench. That wont directly translate into costs in the US, I believe Australia's cost of labour is relatively high. I don't believe the costs would be dramatically different for installing different kinds of wired comms connections other than fibre, most of the cost would be labour & moving earth out of the way, etc. Some of those per-meter cost estimates may implicitly assume that you're constructing new fibre network at scale with a multi-billion dollar construction budget.

So $7100 might be plausible for the up-front cost of running new line 800m or so aerially along existing poles just to connect your house. Another potential issue could be if the telco is able to cheaply get access to reuse existing poles.

If the new line would pass a number of premises who could potentially also become new subscribers, then clearly the telco could amortise the construction cost across a number of new potential or actual subscribers rather than trying to lump you with the whole thing. But I don't have any tips about how to negotiate (unless you can convince a bunch of your neighbours to go in with you as potential new subscribers and collectively try to reach a bargain).

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hedora
By California standards, that's cheap, for new construction.

There are engineering and permitting fees, along with doing the actual trenching. I'd expect that to run a least a few thousand in "normal" markets.

Are they laying fiber to the home for that price? (They should! Labor is ~100% the cost of laying new lines.) Guaranteed minimum speed?

(If it's an existing house that used to have phone/cable service, then it sounds like they're ripping you off; check with city council, etc.)

kfrzcode
Brand new house; but it's coaxial on an aerial pole line; cable internet not fiber. That's how the bulk of connections around here have worked in my experience. I heard from a friend that CA has the JCB (?) or something that is an extra-governmental oversight board for poles etc.
relaunched
Adam? I was just having this conversation at work.

I've also been told. that the ISP's will prorate the fees if you sign a contract. If it gets you business grade gigabit, it might be worth it.

kfrzcode
Ha! Nope; but I'm glad-ish to know it's not just me...
np_tedious
Sounds like something Adam would say
colechristensen
It would be entirely believable that the charge reflects their actual cost and wouldn’t be recovered by your subscription for decades. Local laws and agreements with your local governments might mean they have to do it for free in exchange for the privilege / local monopoly.
kfrzcode
Yes, the monopoly part seems to be the key here; we do have a franchise agreement so that's the thread I'm going to pull on to see if there's reasonable request for the ISP to pay cost (or city).
consumer451
Starlink seems like a potential solution… just curious if you had considered that and decided against it?
kfrzcode
I had considered it and had (incorrectly) assumed I'd be able to get my same 1 gig speeds from Charter; now that that's more of an expensive option I may be going with Starlink; that I'm not overall upset about, rather excited tbh.
bcrl
I've been on the Starlink waiting list since the initial signups open up and still haven't heard a thing. Starlink is not exactly something anyone can plan on presently.
CodeWriter23
You think running a half mile of cable for $7100 is unreasonable?

What I did in DTLA when they wanted $10k to cable the building, I used DSL and waited approx 2 yrs until I saw “TWC” WiFi on the sidewalk then there was no charge for connection.

sethammons
I bought my house with the intent of working from home. Spectrum confirmed serviceability until they came out to hook me up - turns out they serviced the other side of the highway. Long story short, I got to pay $5k and wait a year while permits and weather did their thing so Spectrum could bore a channel under the highway. Now I have high speed internet. I consider it part of my house down payment.
lotsofpulp
Is it even symmetric? Or is it the coaxial cable “high speed” internet that is 500mbps burst download for a few seconds while they lower everyone else and 10mbps upload capacity spread across a few hundred houses.
sethammons
Before, I had access to 10mbps down, 2 up from charter where I typically got 20% of advertised. That was rough but I made it work. Now we have 400mbps down but usually when I test I exceed that.
mtnGoat
Charter did all the work for me at no cost, even came and repaired the cable I cut with a shovel two weeks later. All during the whole three months I was a customer. I felt like my fiber provider needed to step up their game, so I canceled for a bit.

Funny how they pick and choose who to charge.

Scoundreller
Any of those friends within a few miles that want to make their 1-gig internet bill $0/month in exchange for a link/mount on (their existing?) TV tower?

Ubiquiti gear can get you an airfibre 1-gig+ link for $1k-$3k: https://store.ui.com/collections/operator-airfiber (+ tower costs of course)

Or less for the "consumer grade" stuff: https://store.ui.com/collections/operator-airmax-devices

From there, you can distribute your network. Backyard to backyard is easy. Across municipal rights-of-way is more complicated with physical cabling.

rasz
> I have personal friends within .5 miles that have 1-gig service.

Buy 3 boxes of cat6, ~4-6 POE repeaters and you are set.

kfrzcode
Update, tweeted the mayor. Further discovery into how to topple the monopoly to follow. Out.
Scoundreller
start a blog or microblog (twitter?) so we can all follow along.