4 ms·

Comcast wanted $210k-$1000k to hook up my house inside of city limits, on a public street, where all other homes on that street already had service.

gottorf 3y ago
Am I reading that right? Two hundred and ten thousand to one million dollars?
- tristor 3y ago
  Yes, you are likely reading that right. A standard installation charge for most broadband providers when you start service is somewhere between $100 and $250. That's when you already have everything in place and they just need to provide a modem and activate it at the head-end. For situations where they need to run an entrance line, especially for fiber-optic entrances, the prices can truly be absurd. I previously was charged $12/foot for coax entry for a cable connection at a house that didn't previously have cable service, and they made no efforts to optimize for length, fiber is usually $25/foot or more. This is on top of an "service initiation fee", which was $500 for gigabit over coax, and would have been $2500 for gigabit over fiber. All told it was nearly $3k to get gigabit coax as new service at my prior house, and fiber would have cost me more than $15k, despite it all being microtrenched in an existing easement where the provider had right of way, no street crossings, and covered in part by state and federal subsidies on the back-end. What these broadband regional monopolies do is basically double-charge for the same work. The state and feds pay them to do it, then they also charge the customer to do it, and they take no efforts to minimize any of the costs because there is no incentive to do so. The prices they charge are also outrageously higher than the actual cost of delivering the service. I was once a BICSI certified fiber optic installer. I happen to know exceptionally well exactly what the costs are for running that service. For what they wanted to charge me $7000 for, I could have done the work myself (including my former labor rates) for a mere $1600, which includes a healthy margin. That's also based on fiber prices from ~20 years ago, and things are much cheaper now from a materials perspective. There's really no excuse.
  - gottorf 3y ago
    $3k-15k sounds like a realistic estimate (no judgment on whether it really should cost that much), but what GP said is three orders of magnitude higher.
    - tristor 3y ago
      True, but the moment you have a street crossing (which requires municipal permitting and traffic management) the cost skyrockets unless there's existing conduit under the street. Since that wasn't my situation I don't have exact numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised to know it would be $20k-$30k for each street crossing. If the GP of my original comment was in such a situation, it could easily exceed $100k for a fiber run.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- zbrozek 3y ago
  Yes, you read correctly. They refused to provide service at the nearest corner of the property (where it would be a short drop from a pole) and insisted that it be at the primary dwelling. That was going to be more than some maximum distance for new aerial service imposed by the municipality, so would have to be underground. Comcast refused to let me hire my own contractor to install a conduit, and instead wanted $300 per foot and a needlessly circuitous path. That's where $210k came from. Their original bid at $1M didn't have any details on cost breakdown. I didn't get Comcast.

gottorf 3y ago

Am I reading that right? Two hundred and ten thousand to one million dollars?

tristor 3y ago
Yes, you are likely reading that right. A standard installation charge for most broadband providers when you start service is somewhere between $100 and $250. That's when you already have everything in place and they just need to provide a modem and activate it at the head-end. For situations where they need to run an entrance line, especially for fiber-optic entrances, the prices can truly be absurd. I previously was charged $12/foot for coax entry for a cable connection at a house that didn't previously have cable service, and they made no efforts to optimize for length, fiber is usually $25/foot or more. This is on top of an "service initiation fee", which was $500 for gigabit over coax, and would have been $2500 for gigabit over fiber. All told it was nearly $3k to get gigabit coax as new service at my prior house, and fiber would have cost me more than $15k, despite it all being microtrenched in an existing easement where the provider had right of way, no street crossings, and covered in part by state and federal subsidies on the back-end. What these broadband regional monopolies do is basically double-charge for the same work. The state and feds pay them to do it, then they also charge the customer to do it, and they take no efforts to minimize any of the costs because there is no incentive to do so. The prices they charge are also outrageously higher than the actual cost of delivering the service. I was once a BICSI certified fiber optic installer. I happen to know exceptionally well exactly what the costs are for running that service. For what they wanted to charge me $7000 for, I could have done the work myself (including my former labor rates) for a mere $1600, which includes a healthy margin. That's also based on fiber prices from ~20 years ago, and things are much cheaper now from a materials perspective. There's really no excuse.
- gottorf 3y ago
  $3k-15k sounds like a realistic estimate (no judgment on whether it really should cost that much), but what GP said is three orders of magnitude higher.
  - tristor 3y ago
    True, but the moment you have a street crossing (which requires municipal permitting and traffic management) the cost skyrockets unless there's existing conduit under the street. Since that wasn't my situation I don't have exact numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised to know it would be $20k-$30k for each street crossing. If the GP of my original comment was in such a situation, it could easily exceed $100k for a fiber run.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
zbrozek 3y ago
Yes, you read correctly. They refused to provide service at the nearest corner of the property (where it would be a short drop from a pole) and insisted that it be at the primary dwelling. That was going to be more than some maximum distance for new aerial service imposed by the municipality, so would have to be underground. Comcast refused to let me hire my own contractor to install a conduit, and instead wanted $300 per foot and a needlessly circuitous path. That's where $210k came from. Their original bid at $1M didn't have any details on cost breakdown. I didn't get Comcast.