[colug-432] Comcast and connectivity alternatives

[Angelo McComis]

On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 10:43 AM, Jeff Frontz <jeff.frontz at gmail.com> wrote:

> How close are you to your local CO?  Over the years, I've toyed with
> forming a neighborhood "ISP" and getting a fiber pulled from our CO (less
> than a mile away). At some point in time, I talked with a guy who I think
> said that the cost for doing something like that would be on the order of
> $20/ft -- which I think included the use of the right-of-way on the telco
> poles (Is that even in the neighborhood of being correct)?  I'm not sure
> there are enough geeks in my neighborhood who'd chip in to get gigabit
> access…and I'm not sure I'd want to do the customer service ("have you
> tried rebooting?").  But every time I have to contend with TWC, the thought
> of being my own ISP crosses my mind.



For a time, I worked for CenturyLink. Having a "shop talk" with one of the
reps, they told me their provisioning system won't even permit it, because
it's likely considered a residential area, and they have things internally
that block such a request based on the service address so that it doesn't
even make it's way to quoting, let alone construction and installation.

Even if this were possible, the cost for dedicated internet access over
OC-12, that will run in the $10,000s price range per month.  There's no way
to roll-your-own connectivity with any kind of economy of scale here. OC-12
is 622mbps.  Let's say it's 10K/month (probably low, but using that
number), and you resell it to 100 neighbors, you have 30mbps per customer,
at a 5x oversubscription model. Break even is $100 x 100 customers.  This
is before you figure in the cost of the cabling, optics, and high end
on-premise gear to deploy this.

Regulatory and support issues aside, I don't see any possibility of DIY-ing
this.
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