Ask Slashdot: How Do You Convince an ISP To Bury Cable In Your Neighborhood? 324
EmagGeek writes "I live in a semi-rural micropolitan area that generally has good access choices for high speed Internet. However, there are holes in the coverage in our area, and I live in one of them. There is infrastructure nearby, but because our subdivision covenants require all utilities to be underground, telecoms won't even consider upgrading to modern technology. The result is that we're all stuck with legacy DSL (which AT&T has happily re-branded as U-Verse even though it isn't) as our only choice for wireline access. There is a competing cable company in the area, also with infrastructure nearby, but similarly they are reluctant to even discuss burying new cable in our 22-home subdivision. Has anyone been in this same predicament and been able to convince a nearby ISP to run new lines? If so, how did you do it? Our neighborhood association could really use some pointers on this because we hit a new brick wall with every new approach we try — stopping just short of burying our own cable and hoping they'll at least be willing to run a line to the pole at the end of the street and drop it into our box."
The basics... (Score:5, Insightful)
Money
Re:The basics... (Score:5, Informative)
Comcast in our area was willing to run the line to an office if we paid for the cost of running the line. At the time they needed a new distribution hub with it so the cost was $60k+. 2 years later they changed their tune and did it for free in return for a 2 or 3 year business class internet contract.
Chances are good you'd need a hub in your subdivision so it isn't like running a single cable and daisychaining the houses will work. If you can get commitments from enough of the neighbors however, you may be able to get somewhere with the company. 10 homes wanting $100/mo cable+internet adds up to $1200/mo and $14,400/yr. That might get them interested. 5 of you wanting $40/mo Internet only isn't likely to get them interested.
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2. Pour said gravy onto train
3. Make phone call to cable company
4. Profit?
Re:The basics... (Score:5, Insightful)
1. City allows utilities to charge a fee to underground telecom and power cables.
2. Utilities collect the fee for decades without actually burying any cable.
3. Fees stopped, utilities allowed to keep what they collected.
4. Folks with ocean views pay to bury stuff on their own
Fast forward a few years...
1. City allows utilities to charge a fee to underground telecom, internet, and power cables.
2. Utilities collect the fee, promise to have everything buried by 2067 ...
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MB, CA?
To the OP, you can't bury lines; all you can do is bury a duct bank and give a pull string for the telco. Unfortunately, they will require dedicated pathways, so you can't have competing providers in the same conduit or boxes. If they aren't even amenable to that, provide your own network and build an "association clubhouse [lowes.com]" at the main street. Get the fastest service (or two) to that point, and distribute out on the network.
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What's the big deal? Most areas I know of have utility poles.
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In TFS, it says that the subdivision covenants require that all utilities be buried. Depending on the exact wording of the covenants, it may be possible for the HOA to change them or that they may expire at some point. IIRC, the covenants that cover the development I live expire in something like 2018 (house built in 2002), so at least some are time limited.
The reality is that it really, REALLY depends on where the poster lives. Some states and/or municipalities have seriously reigned in the power of HOAs a
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In California, part of the resistance comes from the fact that buried cable is subject to property tax, while overhead line is not. (Or so I was told by an engineer at the power company, when I was investigating costs to bring in utilities.)
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No, neither business nor engineering. This is a social decision.
This area has decided that all services must be buried, even services added later - which means large costs to dig up etc.
A far seeing town council would have emplaced buried pipes large enough for future services, but these were just fools. Now all their residents suffer the need, and there are probably enough regressive farts to stall any changes to the rules.
Re:The basics... (Score:4, Insightful)
Very much true. Money.
Also, if you are paying for it yourself, why go with cable? Normally the cable companies just go in with an underground torpedo (yes, just like in the ocean, a big projectile that rockets through the ground) and shoot the thing toward the destination. They occasionally hit water lines, power lines, and other infrastructure. Then they hunt for it on the other end and hook things up.
If you are serious about doing it, avoid cable. Hook up the neighborhood with fiber to each home. It isn't that much more expensive if you are going to tear up the streets anyway, and is far more valuable in the long run. You will still need someone to hook up the neighborhood to the grid, but once the fiber is in place, connecting the neighborhood's hub to a CO is pretty easy.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Covenants are there to restrict what you can do with land you... long-term lease from the neighborhood association under the guise of land ownership.
If you don't like the restrictions... don't like on snooty restricted land. If you're not rich enough to just bring your own fiber in underground, why are you living in wannabe snootyville?
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Covenants are there to restrict what you can do with land you... long-term lease from the neighborhood association under the guise of land ownership.
If you don't like the restrictions... don't like on snooty restricted land. If you're not rich enough to just bring your own fiber in underground, why are you living in wannabe snootyville?
Because, 95% of all homes built in my area come with deed restrictions and an HOA with Nazis on the board. The other 5% are more expensive or located a LONG way from work.
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If you don't like the restrictions... don't like on snooty restricted land.
Or bear the cost of the restrictions, buy paying the extra cost to compensate the company for burial.
The other thing one can do is ignore the restrictions, and build out what they want. Make certain that nobody will complain, or take adverse action, because if they do -- it will be expensive.
If you are in violation long enough, with nobody complaining --- an estoppel then applies.
It may also be possible to fight the restri
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Learn the laws if you state too. In many states you have rights to "enjoy your property" lots of thoes HOA agreements don't exactly get a solid legal review before they are enacted. I know people that have successful challenged various provisions in court and had them found to be I unenforceable, be careful with that through there are hefty attorney fees to be encountered there, and if you do prevail against the HOA you might not get invited to the next block party
Re:The basics... (Score:4)
In many areas, HOA-controlled neighborhoods are all that have been built for quite a while now... My home is in one of the very last traditional neighborhoods built in my suburb/city; all of the homes built here after ~1980 are either apartments, condos, or HOA-controlled houses on tiny plots of land. :-(
Re:The basics... (Score:5, Insightful)
Money
This, and access requirements. The article says "our subdivision covenants require all utilities to be underground, " that's not a normal subdivision, it's controlled by an HOA and they control access from the edge of the development to the individual lots. It's basically the same thing as a trailer park except each person who owns a plot has an ownership stake/voice in the HOA- there isn't public right-of-way like there is in a non-covenant development.
When these types of developments are originally being built, the contractor will generally offer the local ISP's/telco's the chance to come run their lines while the trenches are open. In most cases local companies which already service the area will even come out drop their copper into the trenches for free, which is most likely how the DSL got there, but in some cases they HOA or original developer has to pay them. (Especially if you want fiber instead of copper).
So the first part of the answer is- you're going to have to work with the HOA no matter what. The ISP is not likely to pay to open trench and/or push conduit without being paid to do so, and HOA's can be extremely difficult to deal with at times depending on the membership. The HOA probably wants the ISP to pay to run the lines and landscape it afterwards, and the ISP probably wants the HOA to do it themselves or pay them to do it.
The best route to go is consult with the HOA and if there's support for it, have the HOA itself approach the ISP's Construction Manager, possible speak with someone who works on Business accounts. Once they understand the HOA is on board, they will be more willing to prepare an actual Quote to get services run.
But it's also possible the HOA worked out an exclusive deal with the existing DSL provider, where they won't allow anyone else to run lines in exchange for the ISP 'freeing out' the construction/build-out fees.
Good Luck!
Side Note- this is one of the reasons why I really hate HOA's and would never buy property in a covenant development.
Re:The basics... (Score:4, Informative)
I work for a cable company and sat near the Commercial Dev agents for several years it was not uncommon for them to negotiate deals to lay new construction. Many communities opted for bulk agreements as part of the deal that required some basic level of service for all members for a number of years resulting in the cable company willing to cover a larger portion of the construction cost, sometimes all of it.
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Yep
Option 1) Use your vast political machine to convince congress to once again smash the HOA's in the mouth and allow it.
Option 2) You kill enough people in your community they vote to allow it
a)or vote to pay for the underground wires
b) or the remaining bleaters all leave and you ARE the
HOA and you can do what you want.
Option 3) You destroy the local telecom and plunder all of it's accounts of cold hard cash, lau
Re:The basics... (Score:4, Informative)
It depends on who owns the underground infrastructure.
In many places who ever did the subdivision originally, deeded all of that underground wire or piping to the city, or to the home owners association (if there is one) or to who ever they contracted for putting tin the original DSL. (AT&T apparently). If those owners won't allow use of the in ground infrastructure for a new purpose, you have to build new parallel plumbing.
In that event, the cost of permitting, call before you dig, trenching, tunneling under driveways, etc can be so expensive they would never get payback, and the risk of destroying everything already in the ground is significant Everything from street lamp wiring, gardens, sprinkler systems, water pipes, etc.
I've seen it done, but there usually has to be a city wide project to get this to happen. Enough work to make it worth employing a professional crew and providing months of work.
You might have better luck getting all 22 homeowners to go on on a private conduit installation, with a bigger than needed conduit (or maybe just armored fiber) to each premises, all terminating at some common (and accessible) location. You'd have to pay for the trenching and materials, but it isn't that expensive, especially if you cover the liability aspects.
All it takes is one hold-out to prevent a complete plan.
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Money
Actually, they want a certain number of base subscribers in your neighborhood to "pre-order", then they'll charge you the ridiculous amount of money to run the lines in your neighborhood, then they profit off the service and the nickel and diming they'll do to you on boxes, converters and DVRs.
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Because all the big dogs on your borders will do everything they can to make it a living hell for you. The big dogs would see what you're doing, move into the area and crush you. In the end you will have lost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.
A few years back my company use to resell AT&T DSL. AT&T would charge us ~$30/month for each account. Now how could we get customers and make some sort of profit on that when the customers can go directly to AT&T to get the same, if not faster, s
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And by "crush" you mean, what? AT&T is going to come in with a backhoe and dig up his lines? Derp! If they wanted into his neighborhood's market, it is currently open, it would cost them less now than if there is local competition. You can't just make DSL cheaper to compete for the customers that want faster connections. Obviously if you're just trying to re-sell what is already available in the neighborhood, you're in a bad position. Totally different than running your own cable.
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And by "crush" you mean, what?
AT&T could refuse to sign up to the neighborhood infrastructure unless everyone paid for a normal account with AT&T. The HOA (or OP) would have to eat the costs of burying and building all of the mini-ISP's infrastructure.
Re:The basics... (Score:4, Insightful)
And by "crush" you mean, what?
AT&T could refuse to sign up to the neighborhood infrastructure unless everyone paid for a normal account with AT&T. The HOA (or OP) would have to eat the costs of burying and building all of the mini-ISP's infrastructure.
They could go to the state and get a law passed that HOAs and public interest groups are not allowed to provide ISP service. Like they did in South Carolina to municipalities. Next they'll go to the FCC and get them to reclassify ISPs are common carriers so that it's impossible to make new competitors due to regulatory hurtles.
I'd like to think I'm paranoid and/or kidding.
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His housing development probably isn't zoned for non-residential use like this.
Re:The basics... (Score:5, Funny)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eruv#Tradition_regarding_eruv
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Wow, really? I would have thought in the long run you save money due to fewer repairs needed due to weather, corrosion, etc.
Re:The basics... (Score:5, Interesting)
Did this once! 2003 or so. Had a workplace with a bitchin' high-speed internet backbone situated at the bottom of a mountain ridge about a mile away from where I lived. My roommate and I we were poor 20-year-olds and wanted fast internet without the cost. We climbed the foothills of the mountain and affixed an antenna on the mountainside using highly directional antennas to give us free high-speed internet at home. We used fancy stuff like spotting scopes and lasers to help us align the two antennas. The antenna on the house was lashed to the fireplace with aluminum bands.
It was a lot of fun to set up, but it didn't work very well. No matter how we tried to stabilize the setup, weather fucked with us. High winds caused things to wobble, which meant packet loss, and slowdowns. And when it would go down completely, one of us would have to - with an exasperated sigh - get in the car and drive a mile away and climb a hillside and check out the setup while the other person climbed on the roof... while communicating to each other with walkie-talkies because it was 2003 and we were poor. We eventually ended up springing for some DSL provider, I don't even remember which.
All that said... I cherish the memories.
City laws (Score:3)
Unless the municipality requires them to, they won't. Time Warner in Kansas City is required to support all of KC. Other ISPs that came in later (AT&T, Google, etc...) don't have such a requirement.
Re:City laws (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly!
I don't know about the details in Kansas City, but in Massachusetts, when Verizon was doing the FiOS roll-out, the typical franchise agreement with each town required that they offer service to every resident within five years of the initial agreement. This typically meant that those with above-ground utilities got it in the first year, and everyone else had to wait until the fourth or fifth year.
You need to talk to your elected officials in town. Find out when the license is up for renewal. It may be a ten-year deal with the town (that's not unusual). Push hard to have the town require universal access to all residents within a reasonable time as a condition on any license renewal.
The simple fact is that, taken as a whole, most towns with a mix of above and below-ground utilities still result in a profit for cable companies when they have to install service to all neighborhoods. Below-ground utilities alone are still profitable, but the payback is longer, so they prefer to invest in infrastructure elsewhere.
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I don't. (Score:2, Offtopic)
Simple. Allow no competition. (Score:2)
It's simple: assure an ISP that any "competing" ISP that follows them will not offer prices, services, or data restrictions substantially better than theirs; et voila, cable and/or fiber.
Cartels and de facto monopolies are what seems to get them building these days.
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For 22 houses? They'll laugh at your bluff.
So... (Score:3)
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Changing covenants [wikipedia.org] is not easy by design. Covenants are usually imposed by someone else, usually the local government, to allow the project to go forward. If they were easily changeable by the HOA it would be a bylaw not a covenant.
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Covenants are usually imposed by someone else, usually the local government, to allow the project to go forward. If they were easily changeable by the HOA it would be a bylaw not a covenant.
Covenants are usually created by the HOA - usually by the developer who is creating the homes and has 100% control of the HOA at it's beginning. If the local government wants to impose a restriction, they create ordinances.
To change covenants usually isn't "easy" - but it's doable. The problem is getting everyone to ag
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The problem is getting everyone to agree to the change. (or at least a lot of the people)...
Your first statement is usually right. The *only* way where you can get away with changing the CC&R's without 100% of the lot owners agreeing to it is *if* the existing CC&R's have a way to edit them that doesn't require everybody to agree. I've read a lot of CC&R's in my area and I've NEVER found one that allowed modifications so I'm assuming that is extremely rare.
Re:So... (Score:5, Informative)
In the US covenants are almost always contractual conditions imposed by a private party that are signed as a (perpetual) condition of purchase or transfer. Generally this is where the developer builds a "subdivision" all at once, and forms a "neighborhood association" composed of some of the original owners. They come up with a list of things that can't (or have to be) done with the property; common ones in my area are restrictions on removing trees (without some sort of vote by the association), banning of manufactured homes, parking restrictions on private roads, stricter "quiet hours" than the municipal code provides, and in some cases even a ban on building a house from the same design as any existing house in the neighborhood.
Sometimes even the allowed colors of homes are controlled. It is almost unrestricted. Here in the US, there is actually very limited things that the local government can do with regards to property restrictions. Arbitrary restrictions are generally thrown out by the courts, as are things that restrict your freedom of speech. However, a neighborhood association is not a government, and since the restrictions are contractual in nature, you can include a wide variety of severe, arbitrary, and speech-related restrictions.
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The problem usually isn't getting 76% to agree, it's getting 76% to care enough to show up to the meeting and vote at all. Most homeowners don't go to HOA/COA meetings and in terms of changing covenants, an abstention is usually treated as a no vote.
I've done it. (Score:3)
I had one critical advantage. Our HOA board members were being complete dicks about the clause in question(*) - so much so that the management company (a third party paid by the HOA to run things in accordance with state law) was sympathetic to me, a new home owner, and advised me on the exact process for changing the covenant.
With their advice, my wife and I created a one-page proxy form which we took door-to-door and got our neighbors to sign, one at a time. It took a month, but we eventually got proxie
Pay them. (Score:4, Insightful)
The only alternative is to go to your locality's cable commission, and find out if/when the cable provider's license is up for renewal. Make 100% coverage a non-negotiable requirement for renewal.
As an alternative... (Score:3)
Re: As an alternative... (Score:2)
I don't think they'd be willing to drop poles in your little neighborhood just to pick up a dozen or two new customers...
Have any companies expressed a willingness to serve your neighborhood with above ground services?
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Covenants can be very difficult to change. In developments, the local government is usually a party to the covenant and must agree, and sometimes pass bylaws, to changing it. The covenant was probably places on the development to keep its rural flavor. Since there is an alternative, burying the cable, I doubt the covenant would be dropped. If it was changeable by the residents it would be a bylaw and not a covenant. There are ways to remove covenants [wikipedia.org] but they are not easy.
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That was just a guess anyway. The point is that covenants are difficult to get rid of.
Why not researching a wireless solution? (Score:4, Insightful)
Are there no wimax solutions available? Wouldn't a hspa+ / LTe / 4g solution be much more cost efficient?
Re:Why not researching a wireless solution? (Score:5, Informative)
No, just no. I had Clearwire for a while in downtown Seattle. While the speed was great since it was nearly 50 times faster than CenturyLink (formerly Qwest) DSL, it was actually slower in practice because of the horrific latency and packet loss. I know it's hard to believe, but the typical Seattle less than 1 Mbps DSL line was more pleasant to use than the Clearwire connection that was fifty times faster on paper. Wired is just that much better than wireless.
It's expensive (Score:4, Informative)
It's really expensive to bury lines, something like 10x the cost of above ground lines in some cases. The only way you're gonna get them to do it is if your neighborhood ponies up the money. The other alternative is to change the C&Rs to allow above ground, and even then they'll only do it if they're gonna make more money than what it costs.
stopping just short of burying our own cable and hoping they'll at least be willing to run a line to the pole at the end of the street and drop it into our box.
Well, if you want it badly enough, then that may be pretty much what you have to do (or at least bear the cost of it). You're dealing with a for-profit company, not a charity, so from a business perspective why would they spend the money when they have no hope of making enough to cover it in the foreseeable future?
Or You Could Think Like A Grad Student: (Score:2)
Step 2 Offer a substantial bribe (hot pizza & a cold pop, your wife's promiscuous sister's affections, whatever...you may ho for hbo) to the serviceman who arrives at your domicile after a request for service
Step 3 After winning the technician's heart, convince him that you and yours are worthy of the hookup.
You get what you pay for (Score:2)
Move somewhere without these types of covenants and this type of association. Sounds a little bit like you're getting what you deserve or you didn't do the research before moving in.
Ham radio operators have been dealing with this since I was licensed in 1991 and probably much earlier. Move somewhere, they forbid you from erecting an antenna, and you can't set up your station, public service or otherwise.
Re:You get what you pay for (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps you could clarify about being restricted from putting up an antenna:
http://www.arrl.org/restrictive-antenna-ordinances [arrl.org]
Are you being prevented from putting up an antenna by ordinance or by covenants?
Oh no (Score:3)
Too quick to dismiss DSL? (Score:2)
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Problem already been solved before (Score:5, Interesting)
There are two options HOAs can access high speed Internet or other telecom services.
Option 1: Poll your neighbors and determine who will sign up for what services if they where available. Write down their contact info, what services they want and take it to a local telco office. Tell them you want to speak with a business sales rep. Tell them your need and provide a copy of the document. They should be able to justify the build-out based on the number of signed service agreements. The standard ROI is two years. So your neighbors will have to be okay with the services they receive for at least two years. This has been numerous times with multiple carriers. So if you get push back from the sales rep speak to their manager. Trust me, they want to make the sale!
Option 2: Install it yourself then contact the provider for bulk services. In bulk arraignments the savings is sufficient to payoff the build-out within 18-24 months if you farmed out the build and maintenance. ROI is much less if you do it yourself. I have some MDU properties with 100/50Mbps service out to each apartment.
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Great answer. If you can show up with fifteen homes willing to sign up, they are a lot more inclined to take you seriously.
Go wireless (Score:5, Interesting)
Use WISP technology. And before you say our covenant won't allow antennas....
http://www.fcc.gov/guides/over-air-reception-devices-rule [fcc.gov]
Re:Go wireless (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep. Members of my HOA were harassed by the board of directors back when minidishes started popping up. We invoked the 1996 telecommunication act and dared them to take us to court. They dropped the issue.
WISP will get you the mesh, but you still need a big pipe to the internet. If the neighborhood is close enough to an area that does have broadband, maybe you can work something out with them. Set up a LLC and become your own ISP.
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Find someone who can get 50mb+ cable/dsl that is near your subdivision and put up a mesh network connecting the homes with that site. Get a VPS that is geographically near you or in the normal path for your internet traffic with sufficient ip addresses that you tunnel back to your subdivision. Instant ISP, the cable/dsl guys will just see tons of VPN traffic and never know....
Pay for it. (Score:3)
Our Telcom told me they would put fiber up to me if I paid for it. A mile and a half. I put in 12 pair phone underground wire laid on top of the ground inside 1" black plastic water line 25 years ago and it has lasted well. This was back before DSL when we had 14Kbaud modems or so - ripping faster than the old 300baud modems which were definitely better than throwing rocks or smoke signals. :)
I'm trying to get them to just let me run the fiber through my existing 1" water line pipes which has plenty of bandwidth. :)
Research (Score:2)
In this day and age there is no excuse to not have done your research before hand.
Any time you plan to move somewhere (whether renting or buying but especially if you're buying a home) find out what is available for internet at that address.
In NZ we're rolling out fibre to the premises over most of the country but there are lots of places that get screwed and will probably never get it, so RESEARCH RESEARCH RESEARCH.
Property that can't get decent internet should be worth less because it will forever be less
My recent experiences in this (Score:2)
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It's all about the money (Score:2)
Economics. Burying is going to cost a lot. The ISPs would have to borrow money now to pay the diggers, and hope that they can recoup the cost in the long run. The up-front cost is like $2000 per city lot. The ISPs are unlikely to foot the bill, even though interest rates are at record lows.
Call your friendly Electric Coop (Score:2)
As long as the local electricity is provided by a Coop you should be able to get it. You might have to get all your neighbors to sign up as well but you get a Gig fiber connection to your house( called an ONT ) and you pay for whatever bandwidth they decide to sell. Usually 10, 25, 50 and 100 megabit business service. It works really good.
You say your electricity comes from a local monopoly like Consumers Energy, well I guess you will have to wait 2 decades and they might have it, they are just a little
Offer to help pay for it... (Score:3)
With a 22 home subdivision, there is no way it is going to pay for the utility Companies to do this on their own.
Your labor is cheap. (Score:2)
Look- you and your neighbors could dig that trench in about 1 day (each person digging their own 2' deep, 1' wide trench.
You could then buy the line for under $500 bucks.
So then it's just a question of getting comcast to hook to it.
You don't (Score:5, Insightful)
I work for a phone company. The only way to do it is pay for it yourself. Which is actually an option. We get businesses that will move into an area and want larger data-pipes and they just end up paying to have the cable laid. I think though, that after you get the estimates on the costs, you'll quickly realize why they have no desire to upgrade your trunking. It's upwards of a million dollars a mile... then take the number of people in your neighborhood, multiply that times what you pay per month, then divide the cost of laying the cable by that, and I bet you're looking at 40yrs before it pays itself off. By then there will be a new technology that you'll be bitching at them for not installing.
Not $1M/mile (Score:3)
I've heard that $1M/mile number thrown around, but in the context of putting all utilities underground. Most of that cost is for the electric lines that probably have to be put in deeper with a backhoe. When they put in the FiOS lines in our neighborhood, they used the same equipment that they would use to put in a sprinkler system. The conduit is probably two feet down. Probably the most expensive part was repaving where they had to cut through sidewalks and driveways.
burying cables (Score:2)
Utilities companies are cheapskates. In Australia, and I'm sure it's probably similar in America, the power companies here are still reluctant to bury power cables that arc, ignite bush fires and then kill people.
I'm not saying what you are trying to achieve is impossible, but however you attempt to achieve it you are up for a lot of hard work.
Contact the state cable franchise authority (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Franchises such as cable providers are required to pull lines to all people is a territory. In exchange for being the only cable company, the cable company is typically required to provide services to everyone regardless of the cost.
The HOA's burial requirement nullifies this by eliminating the public right of way from inside their development. A covenant development falls outside the franchise, and in general: the HOA will have to make a deal with the utility, and pay the utility for the installation o
anther direction (Score:2)
Have you considered getting all the residents together to beat up the HOA or whoever it is that controls the shortsighted covenants, in order to get them to make an exception for cable?
Yes (Score:2)
We got a petition, so they would know how much money they could earn, thus know the investment would pay off. Took a year, we got underground cable. Persistence and organization won the day. This was just over 10 years ago with Time Warner and we all lived on 4 acre lots. 40+ of us.
Gov't regulation (Score:2)
I'm not complaining. I'm in favor of infrastructure investment. Just don't expect them to bother if it's their money on the line and they're not promised a tonne of long term profits (and a bail out if those profits never materialize). The k
I love 1/4 mile from a site that has 40mbit DSL (Score:3)
easy peasy (Score:2)
Bait them (Score:3)
HOA - aka subdivision covenants (Score:2)
You are part of an HOA. I'm assuming that some/many/most others in the HOA also want better services. Raise HOA rates a bit, have the HOA run the wires and provide the service.
Band together & offer money (Score:3)
Relevant Case Study (Score:3)
You guys are going to have to do this yourself as no ISP will take an interest in your small neighborhood.
You might want to try reading this case study.
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/p... [harvard.edu]
It covers the hurdles a small rural town went through in order to build their own municipal network.
Community owned dark fiber (Score:3)
Create a community that owns the fiber and puts it down. Offer access to the ISPs to the dark fibers and tell them that here you have the fibers, now just connect us at this central point.
Just make the correct contracts and it should work out. That strategy has been used elsewhere in the world.
Re: Owned (Score:5, Insightful)
Your 22 houses represent a very, very small market to the carriers, and your neighborhood decided to be cute and require all utilities be underground... Guess what, your 22 possible customers are too few to interest any carrier in even submitting paperwork to bury cables.
Can you even guarantee that all 22 houses will buy into whatever carrier you can convince to serve your neighborhood?
You should have buried the cables when you built the neighborhood, then you'd have a fighting chance to convince a carrier to serve your neighborhood.
Re: (Score:3)
They should have buried conduit, pulling fiber/cable is cheep digging holes not so much.
Re: (Score:3)
When the subidvision is being built laying underground cable is still expensive, but a lot cheaper then when the area is built out.
What exactly is a "a semi-rural micropolitan area"?
A place where "hipsters" live? Oh, i dont live in a subdivision like you do, i live in a "a semi-rural micropolitan area"
Re: (Score:2)
Someone wanted a subsivisiion to look a very specific way (no overhead cables) and didnt plan things out?
Seems well planned out to me: build the subdivision, sell the units, turn the HOA over to the residents, let them deal with extra costs out of their HOA dues, not your profits.
Re: (Score:2)
It means that to afford a house, he had to move out into the middle of nowhere, but living in the middle of nowhere isn't cool, so he likes to pretend it's an urban area.
What exactly is a "a semi-rural micropolitan area" (Score:3)
What exactly is a "a semi-rural micropolitan area"?
"a micropolitan area is a geographic entity used for statistical purposes based on counties and county-equivalents"
So basically, a subdivision in an unicorporated area of a county. Some place that interesting enough for him to live, but not a sufficient source of sales tax revenue for the area to have been finger-annexed by a municipality so they can collect sales tax from there.
Basically: suburbia, or as the communications industry has been calling it since the 1980's "The last mile", which is a place no
Re: Common situation in Seattle (Score:2)
Move.
Re: Common situation in Seattle (Score:4, Informative)
This is actually a real solution. Internet access is important nowadays. People move for a lot less, like to appear to have better life to their family or get their children into what looks to be a better school.
One would think that for someone who views reliable and fast internet access as an important factor in quality of life, moving to get better internet would be up with those reasons to move in terms of importance.
(I live what I preach. I moved into the house that gets 21mbps connection on ADSL2+ which theoretically maxes out on 24mpbs back when adsl2+ was newest of the new in internet over POTS lines).
Re: (Score:2)
More broadly, move to a place where you own the land you "own."
Re: go public with your own plan (Score:2)
You may run afoul of the exclusive deal the cable company has for your town...
Would the rest of your town be willing to abandon their current cable company so that your 22 house neighborhood can enjoy better internet connections and no unsightly poles? I suspect not, and I suspect the cable company knows this, so you have no leverage over the cable company to get what you want...
Re: (Score:2)
You may run afoul of the exclusive deal the cable company has for your town...
Would the rest of your town be willing to abandon their current cable company so that your 22 house neighborhood can enjoy better internet connections and no unsightly poles? I suspect not, and I suspect the cable company knows this, so you have no leverage over the cable company to get what you want...
Exclusive deals don't come into play in areas the company does not cover.
Re: (Score:2)
"HOAs and property management companies are the scum of the earth"
The people who CHOOSE to empower them get what they CONTRACTED for. They traded freedom for perceived neighborhood "security".
LMGTFY (Score:2)
LMGTFY [google.ca]
Re: (Score:2)
" semi-rural micropolitan area", what the hell?