American Ingenuity - Guy starts his own 'telephone company' to get broadband

[BehindBlueI's]

https://arstechnica.com/information-...own-fiber-isp/

The old saying "if you want something done right, do it yourself" usually isn't helpful when your problem is not having good Internet service. But for one man in rural Michigan named Jared Mauch, who happens to be a network architect, the solution to not having good broadband at home was in fact building his own fiber-Internet service provider.

"I had to start a telephone company to get [high-speed] Internet access at my house," Mauch explained in a recent presentation about his new ISP that serves his own home in Scio Township, which is next to Ann Arbor, as well as a few dozen other homes in Washtenaw County.

Mauch has been charging $65 a month for symmetrical 50Mbps service, $75 for 250Mbps, and $99 for 500Mbps, with an installation fee of up to $199 depending on the installation's complexity (recently raised to $599 for new signups). If a house is more than 200 feet from the road, he charges an extra 45 cents per foot to extend the cable.

His estimated break-even is at 42 months. That's the sort of thing that makes this country great. Identifies a problem, decides to not pay someone else to fix it, creates a solution that makes his community better and will (in less then 4 years) be a source of income for the problem solver.

[Borderland]

Where I live very slow DSL (20 Mbps) is all we have and it costs $90/month. We can't have Dish because of the canopy and there is no cable in my neighborhood, although our house was wired for cable when it was built. When I moved here we had Verizon who owned both wireless and wire. They sold their wire to Frontier who gave us DSL. Now Frontier, who lost millions, has sold their wire to Zipley Fiber that claims they're building out their fiber network. We will never have fiber because of the expense to hook up people who are 1000' from a trunk. I have a request with Starlink to sign on when they can provide the service, if we don't move before that happens.

Mauch's idea is the same as our new wire providers idea. It doesn't cost that much to hook people up to fiber if they have it close by, which a lot of people do. As far as I know there are no fiber trunks on either on the two islands in my county and there probably never will be. Starlink will beat them to that 90K customer base. Probably why Musk has more money then Bezos now.