Comment by dimitrios1
3 years ago
> -- customers who don't behave as well or kindly as before
Easy. Refuse service. You aren't legally obligated to offer your service to assholes. Any business has the right to do or not do business with whoever they want, provided they’re not refusing service for a reason that violates local, state, or federal law.
> -- customers who need 24 hour customer service
Also easy. You are under no obligation to meet peoples unrealistic demands or needs.
> -- maintenance that can't be done himself, and he has to employ people
He already is familiar with third party contracting.
> -- customers and vendors who sue you for breach of contract, or other simply nuisance lawsuits
Frivolous lawsuits are a risk in any business in America.
> -- upgrading the network to the next technology requirement, or when he's unable to get 2nd-hand parts so cheaply, etc.
What is this "next technology requirement"? My area cable company still runs most their network on 30 year old lines.
> -- or a natural disaster that unexpectedly forces replacement of (and charging for) equipment that wasn't anticipated in the original subscriber price
Cost of doing business, doesn't matter the size.
I think people don't understand just how profitable municipal broadband can be. It's why big players spend so much lobbying and bribing so they can keep their established position running and keep the gravy train running, but really the economics of it are fantastic once you've done the initial digging and running the lines, which sounds like he has here.
At $55 /mo for 400 households he's bringing in $22,000 a month plus whatever federal and local government subsidies and grants. The odds of a disaster, or one of the other scenarios you mentioned happening anytime soon is low, so he will have runway to build a decent sized war-chest to be able to easily afford handling any of these scenarios with third party contractors. The more houses he brings on line, the better it gets.
Right, but that's OPs point. If he does what you say, he's no better than Comcast, ignoring customers and telling them to screw themselves at the first sign of trouble.
There’s still a country mile between what gp is suggesting and what Comcast gets away with because of their monopoly position.
Anecdotally, I replaced a router they gave me because it would randomly crap out (probably neighbors using the xfinity Wi-Fi feature I couldn’t turn off), and they kept trying to charge me a monthly rental fee for their router. Every time I would call with confirmation it had been returned, the charge would be removed for just that month and back again the next - this is just the most recent example of a long line of infuriating time wasting schemes I have dealt with from them.
This happened to me as well with Cox Cable in AZ back in the early 2000s. I returned the modem and got the returned receipt. Next 6 months I had to call and get them to reverse the charges. At that point, I started recording all the calls each time I had to call and get the charge reversed. Recorded 5 months of calls, had them transcribed, and sent the transcriptions, recordings, and a copy of the return receipt to the AG’s office saying “I believe Cox is committing fraud, and I wonder how many people they’re doing this to”. Never heard from Cox again. I did actually wonder how many people just continued paying it because “it’s just $5 a month”
Yeah but at least they're getting gigabit from an asshole, instead of 1.5 Mbps from an asshole.
I'm with an ISP that is fairly well known for having poor support. I have never had an issue with them. They deal with problems on their end efficiently and without complaint. I would never expect them to deal with a problem on my end, so they never have an excuse to provide me with poor customer service. It all works fairly well, particularly since I am paying about the half the price compared to a major telecom company.
Compare that to a major telecom company. Even if I took the same approach, I would have more issues to deal with (typically issues over billing, rather than technical problems).
I seem to see this a lot especially with American business owners. You don't have to service every customer market. If you offer only certain speeds or certain hours of support, despite being able to support otherwise, that's fine. Not every customers fits your target market.
> Easy. Refuse service. You aren't legally obligated to offer your service to assholes. Any business has the right to do or not do business with whoever they want, provided they’re not refusing service for a reason that violates local, state, or federal law.
Then isn't this a point against the scalability / feasibility of this idea working broadly for others or becoming a model for replacing dumb telcos?
If part of the reason telcos are the way they are is because they have to serve everyone, and at some point if you run a service like this you will run into that requirement, then you will too become like a telco because of those obligations. And this is just one example of a factor that starts to matter.
I try to help out in my HOA of 25 people to manage the utilities, infrastructure, landscaping, and even with this small a group people are uncooperative and 1-2 people are constantly questioning and threatening to sue if we don't do what they say. Hundreds/thousands of people is even more a nightmare.
> threatening to sue if we don't do what they say.
I do love the occasional power trip. I'd look them straight in the face: "here's our lawyers number, have your lawyer give my lawyer a call. Since you seem to be so adamant about suing, you should have no further contact with me. I'll see you to the door." and if they don't go? Arrest them for trespassing.
Sounds like a great power trip.
I'm in a condo here, with an HOA / board, and it was a pain in the ass to get fiber brought in from the local telco. They wasted months sending out letters, waiting for people to give input, votes, etc. until they finally agreed it was a good idea. The telco pays for the whole install: trenching, digging, running fiber between the buildings, etc. That doesn't matter, because you still have people complaining about the utilities messing up their lawn.
It's been over a year now and the project still isn't done. The fiber is right on the street, not even 30 feet from my unit. I'd have paid a couple grand to get my own conduit brought in, if that was an option.
> Then isn't this a point against the scalability
The technical solution would be a QOS that deprioritizes/throttles these people first, with clear wording in the contract. The reality is that these people are a negligible fraction of the users.
>I think people don't understand just how profitable municipal broadband can be.
Operating the network might be profitable. Recouping installation costs are not, when Comcast and other coaxial cable internet providers are sitting there ready to undercut you the second you enter the market. Unfortunately, sufficient customers are not willing to pay more for a reliable symmetric fiber connection yet over whatever the cable company is offering with meager upload.
Also, I assume you mean fiber when you wrote “municipal broadband”. I thought municipal broadband refers to taxpayer funded internet networks, where there would be no profit required (and hence is the only alternative to getting a better internet connection than the cable company).