<story><title>Microsoft says its data shows FCC reports overstate broadband adoption</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/08/microsoft-says-its-data-shows-fcc-reports-massively-overstate-broadband-adoption/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rayiner</author><text>Running five miles of cable would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;networking&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;7mp9gz&amp;#x2F;comment&amp;#x2F;drvn3ad&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;networking&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;7mp9gz&amp;#x2F;comment&amp;#x2F;...&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;p&gt;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.)</text></item><item><author>hermitdev</author><text>MS&amp;#x27;s findings largely lineup with my parent&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;The local cable internet provider wouldn&amp;#x27;t run cable, as it wasnt cost effective. They&amp;#x27;d have had to run around 5 miles of cable to serve less than 50 households.&lt;p&gt;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 &amp;quot;cable&amp;quot; already had Directv or Dish by that point.&lt;p&gt;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).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>zanny</author><text>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.</text></comment>
<story><title>Microsoft says its data shows FCC reports overstate broadband adoption</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/08/microsoft-says-its-data-shows-fcc-reports-massively-overstate-broadband-adoption/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>rayiner</author><text>Running five miles of cable would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;networking&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;7mp9gz&amp;#x2F;comment&amp;#x2F;drvn3ad&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;networking&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;7mp9gz&amp;#x2F;comment&amp;#x2F;...&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;p&gt;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.)</text></item><item><author>hermitdev</author><text>MS&amp;#x27;s findings largely lineup with my parent&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;The local cable internet provider wouldn&amp;#x27;t run cable, as it wasnt cost effective. They&amp;#x27;d have had to run around 5 miles of cable to serve less than 50 households.&lt;p&gt;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 &amp;quot;cable&amp;quot; already had Directv or Dish by that point.&lt;p&gt;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).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hermitdev</author><text>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&amp;#x27;s also why Congress has passed acts to compel providers to provide service.&lt;p&gt;Hell, I currently live in an affluent Chicago suburb, and I have exposed wires from both Comcast and AT&amp;amp;T just inches from the sidewalk out my back door. My dog literally takes dumps on the internet&amp;#x2F;TV cables to the townhouses I live in.&lt;p&gt;Haven&amp;#x27;t had AT&amp;amp;T service since they sold AT&amp;amp;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).</text></comment>