6 ms·

MS's findings largely lineup with my parent's experience in rural Montana. Their only non dialup (yes, dialup) was an experimental microwave connection that was

MS's findings largely lineup with my parent's experience in rural Montana. Their only non dialup (yes, dialup) was an experimental microwave connection that was expensive, line of sight and peeked at about 5 Mbps down, and far less up. It was also very tempermental, subject to weather outages in snow or rain. The local cable internet provider wouldn't run cable, as it wasnt cost effective. They'd have had to run around 5 miles of cable to serve less than 50 households. The cable TV provider did run some cable, and made it obvious they didnt care or plan to really service it. Personally, dont know why they bother other than to possibly meet a regulatory requirement as they didnt run it until 2000-2001 and anyone that wanted "cable" already had Directv or Dish by that point. After every rain storm or snow melt, a different section of cable became exposed (they ran the cable in the ditch alongside a dirt road on the side of a mountain with less than a foot of top soil on average before you hit bedrock, so cant complain too much they didnt go deeper).

rayiner 7y ago
Running five miles of cable would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars: https://www.reddit.com/r/networking/comments/7mp9gz/comment/drvn3ad https://www.reddit.com/r/networking/comments/7mp9gz/comment/.... Then, if you’ve got 50 houses, how many will subscribe? Hint: not many, since folks who buy houses in places without broadband probably don’t prioritize broadband. Say you get 20 houses though, with $200,000 invested. That’s $10,000 per house. That’s an optimistic figure. Will you ever make that money back? No. Charter has a market cap of $5,000 per subscriber. If you blow double that on capital costs alone per subscriber, you’ll never come close to making it back. (Especially in a scenario like the above with high maintenance costs.)
- hermitdev 7y ago
  Oh, I am well aware of the costs involved. Hence why I stated they likely only ran the cable to fulfill a regulatory check box and appeared to have done it as cheap as possible where you could see dozens of yards of cable exposed in a ditch, or even exposed to vehicles driving over it. But that's also why Congress has passed acts to compel providers to provide service. Hell, I currently live in an affluent Chicago suburb, and I have exposed wires from both Comcast and AT&T just inches from the sidewalk out my back door. My dog literally takes dumps on the internet/TV cables to the townhouses I live in. Haven't had AT&T service since they sold AT&T BI to comcast, but Comcast has the balls to tell me when I complain about an outage I should upgrade to business class if I want fewer outages (lower speeds, more money, supposedly service guarantees).
  - rayiner 7y ago
    > But that's also why Congress has passed acts to compel providers to provide service. There are no federal level universal service mandates for broadband. In any event, mandates aren’t free money. Consumers end up paying for it, the cost is just hidden and unaccountable. The mandate obscures the political question of: should we give a $5,000+ subsidy to people out of other peoples’ pockets, or are there are needier people who are more deserving?
    - cannonedhamster 7y ago
      Thee whole purpose of monopolies an the actual subsidies that they take with glee is to cover these costs. I completely disagree, Congress should compel these people to provide what they stated. If Romania can provide fiber for their rural populations for cheaper than we have there's no excuse for not being able to provide internet in the United States for all but the most remote locations.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - rayiner 7y ago
        Congress banned monopoly cable franchises in 1992. These companies have no legal protection from competition that would justify a mandate. They also don’t generally receive subsidies. The universal service fund only recently started offering subsidies for broadband. (Obviously, if a company elects to take those subsidies, it should build the infrastructure they say they will build.) And at least for larger providers, the “subsidy” really isn’t a subsidy. The money just comes from a special tax on the industry, so for say AT&T, the “subsidy” is really coming out of their own pocket. As to Romania—that country has vastly lower broadband penetration in rural areas (where more than half the population lives) than the US: https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2018/05/22/romanian-broadband-the-stats-2 https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2018/05/22/romanian-broadban.... Also, costs are not easily comparable across countries. The vast bulk of costs of building fiber in the US is labor costs, both for initial build and for ongoing maintenance. Building infrastructure in a blank slate with developing country labor costs is a very different proposition than doing the same thing in the US. (It’s also why China can build tons of high speed rail while the California HSR project ran out of money before getting out of Fresno.)
- opportune 7y ago
  You could charge $60/month and assuming there are no marginal costs to providing service and everybody subscribes (two big assumptions) that would be >7% yearly yield. Not bad at all, actually, in ideal circumstances.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    Those two assumptions are wrong. Charter’s (who I use as an example because they’re a most pure cable company) shows an EBITDA margin of about 36%. That means that just under two thirds of revenues get eaten up by operating costs. And that’s on average—maintenance costs will be higher in some respects in rural areas where you have to roll a truck every time a tree takes out a power line. You have to charge a lot more than $60 even if everyone subscribes. Which brings us to assumption 2. At > $100 per month, most people won’t subscribe. (Especially given that, as a matter of local law, in many places you’re required to offer a basic cable tier for $20-$30.) Atlantic Broadband, which covers rural areas around PA and MD primarily, has about 250,000 subscribers, but is available to almost 2 million people. (At least on a census-block basis.) My 40% assumption was quite generous.
- zanny 7y ago
  In rural areas at least it is not going to cost 40k a mile to run coax. Those kinds of areas are almost always serviced by overhead utility lines that already exist, and just running a new line on those poles just requires township permit. It would be probably an order of magnitude cheaper than the buried lines or new lines building required in other circumstances.
  - JoBrad 7y ago
    While I don’t know what providers have to do to actually access it, the Universal Access Fee is supposed to be there for exactly this kind of reason: providing internet to rural areas that wouldn’t otherwise get it, due to low population levels.
  - heavenlyblue 7y ago
    Typical MBA-type way of calculating costs. Let's take an average over country then apply it in my back-on-the-envelope. Doesn't matter if areas alike Manhattan would probably have 100x the cost of running coax in the rural area (which obviously drives the average). Then justify the existence of monopolies when in fact purely local providers are actually better able to reduce the costs associated with broadband installation. Those monopolies subsidise central areas by providing way worse service for rural. I've actually got this issue in London (I didn't check before moving, that our house is literally in the middle of about 5 exchanges). Went as far as reaching providers relating to Gigabit Voucher Scheme or even thinking of asking a friend living about a mile away to provide a wireless link from his house.
  - C1sc0cat 7y ago
    Your going to have to run fibre to the Cab and probably Upgrade the Cab as well
  - bluedino 7y ago
    Local cable company wanted $10,000 to run a half mile of cable to my brother-in-law's house. Their other option is some local wireless provider that gives about 1.5mb/s, or cell phones which come in with 1-2 bars of signal. They offered to split the cost with the other neighbors on the street. One are elderly who aren't interested in cable, the other are very religous and don't own a television or use the internet. IMO it'd be worth it for just the resale value of the houses.
- shreyansj 7y ago
  The investment on 50 loss making houses can be subsidized by the investment on 50 profit making houses.
- jlarocco 7y ago
  > Will you ever make that money back? No. They almost certainly would make it back over a long enough time period. Broadband is going to get more important over time. Even if just a few people sign up now, future residents may prioritize it higher.
- dalbasal 7y ago
  Estimates aside (I imagine these vary a lot by area anyway.. city vs rural, etc.), aren't these the same considerations as phone lines?
- the_mitsuhiko 7y ago
  > Running five miles of cable would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars There are more modern laying techniques for rural areas that don't require you to dig up that much. A five person team can lay 3 kilometers of fiber a day in rural areas with modern microtrenching solutions. (looks like this for instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bfbh3ILLD0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bfbh3ILLD0)
- swarnie_ 7y ago
  Isn't this the EXACT scenario government grants and subsidies are supposed to resolve?
seshagiric 7y ago
Asking this as a foreigner - how is the mobile internet connectivity in such areas? (3G, 4G). I wonder if 5G will help such areas where it is too costly to provide cable internet.
- hermitdev 7y ago
  My experience visiting two years ago, it was spotty. If you're in town or along an interstate, it's usually good coverage, but maybe not great speeds. E.g. my phone would show 5 bars coverages, but the speeds were noticibly far slower than what I get in Chicago. I was able to get serviceable, if albeit slow 4G LTE coverage at my parents' home about 7 miles out of town and about 1000 feet on the side of a mountain, but sitting in town at a brewery with a cell tower in sight out of the window, I couldn't get any signal at all. I presume the tower I could see was from an incompatible network. In Montana, I've been able to get surprisingly strong signals in places I'd least expect it. E.g. I was hiking in the Bitterroot National Forest up Lolo peak, and I had near perfect coverage for nearly my entire hike as far back as 2006. But, if you head out into north eastern Montana, you may well find yourself in a dead zone for quite a while. I dont know if it is still the case, but used to be cells were useless anywhere near an ICBM silo (of which there are quite a few along route 200 east of Great Falls, MT - I attended a boy scout camp a few times out that way in the late 90s). Regarding 5G, not sure it would help much in my parent's situation as I understand it is even more reliant upon line of site and more susceptible to interference from weather. There are decently sized mountains blocking them between the closest decently sized city and them. There would probably need to be a series of relay towers to overcome that.
  - AlfeG 7y ago
    Sounds terrible. I've so much used to have almost unlimited 4G data for 5bucks a month...
- AngryData 7y ago
  It is getting better, but a big part of the problem is that it is the only thing getting better. They run fiber lines to cell towers, but the people around still can't even get DSL. More people are relying on mobile data and a few others have gotten mobile data to a home router for internet since the only other option is dialup or slow and expensive as fuck satellite. It is enough for a single person to watch a video at 480 or maybe 720, but that is about it and slightly temperamental.
_AzMoo 7y ago
Don't they have access to any satellite services?
- ghaff 7y ago
  Yes, but people who can't imagine living without Netflix don't consider that an option although I do know people who work remotely in rural areas for tech companies who make do with just satellite. In all fairness, it's not a great option. My dad is at the very end of a DSL line in Maine and Internet is pretty bad. Neighbors who are a bit further out use a combination of satellite and wireless hot spots (on marginal cellular) and no one is very happy.
- sethammons 7y ago
  Satellite for internet is pretty terrible. Last I was on that, the ping was over 2 seconds (sometimes 5 seconds). Practically impossible for video conferencing and real-time gaming is impossible. However! You can download well enough.
- dingus 7y ago
  I work remotely on a satellite connection. Been doing it for a couple of years. The minimum connection latency is 800-1000 ms, and the maximum download speed is 1-3 Mbps. That's with a 10 GB bandwidth cap though, so my actual download speed is 10-100 kbps for 90% of the month. Any live video/audio/screen sharing is not possible. I have to schedule transfers for large files (1-5 GB) overnight, which are not bandwidth constrained during early morning hours. I can get away with it because all of my work communication is through text channels. It's not for everyone, but it's possible. For me, getting out of the city and living in the mountains with nature is well worth the trade-off of giving up some modern conveniences.

rayiner 7y ago

Running five miles of cable would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars: https://www.reddit.com/r/networking/comments/7mp9gz/comment/drvn3ad https://www.reddit.com/r/networking/comments/7mp9gz/comment/.... Then, if you’ve got 50 houses, how many will subscribe? Hint: not many, since folks who buy houses in places without broadband probably don’t prioritize broadband. Say you get 20 houses though, with $200,000 invested. That’s $10,000 per house. That’s an optimistic figure. Will you ever make that money back? No. Charter has a market cap of $5,000 per subscriber. If you blow double that on capital costs alone per subscriber, you’ll never come close to making it back. (Especially in a scenario like the above with high maintenance costs.)

hermitdev 7y ago
Oh, I am well aware of the costs involved. Hence why I stated they likely only ran the cable to fulfill a regulatory check box and appeared to have done it as cheap as possible where you could see dozens of yards of cable exposed in a ditch, or even exposed to vehicles driving over it. But that's also why Congress has passed acts to compel providers to provide service. Hell, I currently live in an affluent Chicago suburb, and I have exposed wires from both Comcast and AT&T just inches from the sidewalk out my back door. My dog literally takes dumps on the internet/TV cables to the townhouses I live in. Haven't had AT&T service since they sold AT&T BI to comcast, but Comcast has the balls to tell me when I complain about an outage I should upgrade to business class if I want fewer outages (lower speeds, more money, supposedly service guarantees).
- rayiner 7y ago
  > But that's also why Congress has passed acts to compel providers to provide service. There are no federal level universal service mandates for broadband. In any event, mandates aren’t free money. Consumers end up paying for it, the cost is just hidden and unaccountable. The mandate obscures the political question of: should we give a $5,000+ subsidy to people out of other peoples’ pockets, or are there are needier people who are more deserving?
  - cannonedhamster 7y ago
    Thee whole purpose of monopolies an the actual subsidies that they take with glee is to cover these costs. I completely disagree, Congress should compel these people to provide what they stated. If Romania can provide fiber for their rural populations for cheaper than we have there's no excuse for not being able to provide internet in the United States for all but the most remote locations.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - rayiner 7y ago
      Congress banned monopoly cable franchises in 1992. These companies have no legal protection from competition that would justify a mandate. They also don’t generally receive subsidies. The universal service fund only recently started offering subsidies for broadband. (Obviously, if a company elects to take those subsidies, it should build the infrastructure they say they will build.) And at least for larger providers, the “subsidy” really isn’t a subsidy. The money just comes from a special tax on the industry, so for say AT&T, the “subsidy” is really coming out of their own pocket. As to Romania—that country has vastly lower broadband penetration in rural areas (where more than half the population lives) than the US: https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2018/05/22/romanian-broadband-the-stats-2 https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2018/05/22/romanian-broadban.... Also, costs are not easily comparable across countries. The vast bulk of costs of building fiber in the US is labor costs, both for initial build and for ongoing maintenance. Building infrastructure in a blank slate with developing country labor costs is a very different proposition than doing the same thing in the US. (It’s also why China can build tons of high speed rail while the California HSR project ran out of money before getting out of Fresno.)
opportune 7y ago
You could charge $60/month and assuming there are no marginal costs to providing service and everybody subscribes (two big assumptions) that would be >7% yearly yield. Not bad at all, actually, in ideal circumstances.
- rayiner 7y ago
  Those two assumptions are wrong. Charter’s (who I use as an example because they’re a most pure cable company) shows an EBITDA margin of about 36%. That means that just under two thirds of revenues get eaten up by operating costs. And that’s on average—maintenance costs will be higher in some respects in rural areas where you have to roll a truck every time a tree takes out a power line. You have to charge a lot more than $60 even if everyone subscribes. Which brings us to assumption 2. At > $100 per month, most people won’t subscribe. (Especially given that, as a matter of local law, in many places you’re required to offer a basic cable tier for $20-$30.) Atlantic Broadband, which covers rural areas around PA and MD primarily, has about 250,000 subscribers, but is available to almost 2 million people. (At least on a census-block basis.) My 40% assumption was quite generous.
zanny 7y ago
In rural areas at least it is not going to cost 40k a mile to run coax. Those kinds of areas are almost always serviced by overhead utility lines that already exist, and just running a new line on those poles just requires township permit. It would be probably an order of magnitude cheaper than the buried lines or new lines building required in other circumstances.
- JoBrad 7y ago
  While I don’t know what providers have to do to actually access it, the Universal Access Fee is supposed to be there for exactly this kind of reason: providing internet to rural areas that wouldn’t otherwise get it, due to low population levels.
- heavenlyblue 7y ago
  Typical MBA-type way of calculating costs. Let's take an average over country then apply it in my back-on-the-envelope. Doesn't matter if areas alike Manhattan would probably have 100x the cost of running coax in the rural area (which obviously drives the average). Then justify the existence of monopolies when in fact purely local providers are actually better able to reduce the costs associated with broadband installation. Those monopolies subsidise central areas by providing way worse service for rural. I've actually got this issue in London (I didn't check before moving, that our house is literally in the middle of about 5 exchanges). Went as far as reaching providers relating to Gigabit Voucher Scheme or even thinking of asking a friend living about a mile away to provide a wireless link from his house.
- C1sc0cat 7y ago
  Your going to have to run fibre to the Cab and probably Upgrade the Cab as well
- bluedino 7y ago
  Local cable company wanted $10,000 to run a half mile of cable to my brother-in-law's house. Their other option is some local wireless provider that gives about 1.5mb/s, or cell phones which come in with 1-2 bars of signal. They offered to split the cost with the other neighbors on the street. One are elderly who aren't interested in cable, the other are very religous and don't own a television or use the internet. IMO it'd be worth it for just the resale value of the houses.
shreyansj 7y ago
The investment on 50 loss making houses can be subsidized by the investment on 50 profit making houses.
jlarocco 7y ago
> Will you ever make that money back? No. They almost certainly would make it back over a long enough time period. Broadband is going to get more important over time. Even if just a few people sign up now, future residents may prioritize it higher.
dalbasal 7y ago
Estimates aside (I imagine these vary a lot by area anyway.. city vs rural, etc.), aren't these the same considerations as phone lines?
the_mitsuhiko 7y ago
> Running five miles of cable would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars There are more modern laying techniques for rural areas that don't require you to dig up that much. A five person team can lay 3 kilometers of fiber a day in rural areas with modern microtrenching solutions. (looks like this for instance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bfbh3ILLD0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bfbh3ILLD0)
swarnie_ 7y ago
Isn't this the EXACT scenario government grants and subsidies are supposed to resolve?

seshagiric 7y ago

Asking this as a foreigner - how is the mobile internet connectivity in such areas? (3G, 4G). I wonder if 5G will help such areas where it is too costly to provide cable internet.

hermitdev 7y ago
My experience visiting two years ago, it was spotty. If you're in town or along an interstate, it's usually good coverage, but maybe not great speeds. E.g. my phone would show 5 bars coverages, but the speeds were noticibly far slower than what I get in Chicago. I was able to get serviceable, if albeit slow 4G LTE coverage at my parents' home about 7 miles out of town and about 1000 feet on the side of a mountain, but sitting in town at a brewery with a cell tower in sight out of the window, I couldn't get any signal at all. I presume the tower I could see was from an incompatible network. In Montana, I've been able to get surprisingly strong signals in places I'd least expect it. E.g. I was hiking in the Bitterroot National Forest up Lolo peak, and I had near perfect coverage for nearly my entire hike as far back as 2006. But, if you head out into north eastern Montana, you may well find yourself in a dead zone for quite a while. I dont know if it is still the case, but used to be cells were useless anywhere near an ICBM silo (of which there are quite a few along route 200 east of Great Falls, MT - I attended a boy scout camp a few times out that way in the late 90s). Regarding 5G, not sure it would help much in my parent's situation as I understand it is even more reliant upon line of site and more susceptible to interference from weather. There are decently sized mountains blocking them between the closest decently sized city and them. There would probably need to be a series of relay towers to overcome that.
- AlfeG 7y ago
  Sounds terrible. I've so much used to have almost unlimited 4G data for 5bucks a month...
AngryData 7y ago
It is getting better, but a big part of the problem is that it is the only thing getting better. They run fiber lines to cell towers, but the people around still can't even get DSL. More people are relying on mobile data and a few others have gotten mobile data to a home router for internet since the only other option is dialup or slow and expensive as fuck satellite. It is enough for a single person to watch a video at 480 or maybe 720, but that is about it and slightly temperamental.

_AzMoo 7y ago

Don't they have access to any satellite services?

ghaff 7y ago
Yes, but people who can't imagine living without Netflix don't consider that an option although I do know people who work remotely in rural areas for tech companies who make do with just satellite. In all fairness, it's not a great option. My dad is at the very end of a DSL line in Maine and Internet is pretty bad. Neighbors who are a bit further out use a combination of satellite and wireless hot spots (on marginal cellular) and no one is very happy.
sethammons 7y ago
Satellite for internet is pretty terrible. Last I was on that, the ping was over 2 seconds (sometimes 5 seconds). Practically impossible for video conferencing and real-time gaming is impossible. However! You can download well enough.
dingus 7y ago
I work remotely on a satellite connection. Been doing it for a couple of years. The minimum connection latency is 800-1000 ms, and the maximum download speed is 1-3 Mbps. That's with a 10 GB bandwidth cap though, so my actual download speed is 10-100 kbps for 90% of the month. Any live video/audio/screen sharing is not possible. I have to schedule transfers for large files (1-5 GB) overnight, which are not bandwidth constrained during early morning hours. I can get away with it because all of my work communication is through text channels. It's not for everyone, but it's possible. For me, getting out of the city and living in the mountains with nature is well worth the trade-off of giving up some modern conveniences.