Nightmare scenario. Guess due dilligence requires checking to see if there is a high speed connnection in the house.

When Zachary Cohn and his wife bought a house in the Northgate neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, they didn't expect any trouble getting home Internet service. It was only after closing on the house in July 2019 that they learned the bad news. "All six neighbors I share a property line with are wired for Comcast, but our house never was," Cohn told Ars.

Comcast's predecessor company had wired up the neighborhood with cable decades earlier and the ISP provides high-speed broadband to the abutting properties. But the cable TV and Internet service provider never extended a line to the house purchased by Cohn and his wife, Lauryl Zenobi.

Cohn spent many months trying to get answers from Comcast on how he and Zenobi could get Internet service. Eventually, he contacted his City Councillor's office, which was able to get a real response from Comcast.

Comcast ultimately said it would require installing 181 feet of underground cable to connect the house and that the couple would have to pay Comcast over $27,000 to make that happen. Cohn and Zenobi did not pay the $27,000, and they've been relying on a 4G hotspot ever since.

“I was just flabbergasted”
"I was just flabbergasted that a house like this, in an area like this, could possibly have never been wired for Internet," Cohn said in a phone interview. Because the house is "in the middle of Seattle, it didn't even dawn on me that that was possible," he said, adding that the lack of Internet service would be "more understandable if I was two miles from my nearest neighbor."

The Seattle Kraken hockey team's $80 million practice facility is in the same Northgate neighborhood, about a half-mile from the house. There's a major bus station in the area, a light rail station that recently opened nearby, and an elementary school within about a 90-second walk, Cohn said, noting that the property is "well within the Seattle city limits."

The house, built in 1964, is also about 10 miles from both T-Mobile Park, where the Seattle Mariners play, and Lumen Field, the Seattle Seahawks stadium named after CenturyLink's Lumen brand. T-Mobile doesn't offer its new home Internet service at the house. CenturyLink offers Internet service at Cohn's address—but only its ancient DSL with download speeds of up to 3Mbps and upload speeds up to 500kbps. Cable and fiber just aren't available at the house.

Not our first Comcast horror story
We've written about other people who bought houses without realizing there was no home Internet service, but those stories generally took place in small towns or rural areas. In some cases, Comcast's website and customer service employees falsely told home buyers that service was available due to errors in the company's availability database.



Comcast availability data wasn't a problem in this case, as Cohn said he didn't think to check that there was a Comcast connection before closing on the Seattle house. "Honestly, I didn't even think to look. What house in the middle of Seattle wouldn't be wired for reasonable Internet?" Cohn said.

Cohn contacted Ars after reading one of our previous Comcast horror stories, hoping to get the word out to others that an Internet connection is no guarantee even in densely populated cities—and even when all your neighbors have service.

Government broadband programs generally focus on "connecting neighborhoods in particular underserved communities, which I think is great," Cohn said. But he wants people to know "there are large swaths of people, both in large geographic areas and in small individual cases, that just never got connected to high-speed Internet, and how difficult it is to go through life without that sort of connection."

While Cohn's situation is unusual because all the surrounding houses have broadband, he's far from the only urban dweller without modern service. It's particularly a problem in lower-income areas where ISPs have chosen not to upgrade old telephone lines.

Comcast junction box across the street
With the properties abutting Cohn's, there are overhead power lines that Comcast used to extend cable to the houses. But "our power is underground and so... there are no poles to ride off," Cohn said.

The block is shaped like a triangle, Cohn said, adding, "We're the only house on our side of the triangle, and the other two sides each have three houses." On the side of the house that doesn't face its neighbors, there is an arterial road. The nearest Comcast junction box is across that road, "so they would have to dig under the arterial to connect our house to that junction box."

Cohn told us the sellers disclosed in documents before the sale that Internet wasn't connected at the home, but he didn't realize it wouldn't be possible to get service at all. After the failed attempts to get service, "we had our agent reach out to the sellers to figure out what actually is going on here," Cohn said.

They learned that the previous homeowners struck a deal with a neighbor who ran a cable "from his Comcast hookup, across his property, across our property, and then into this house," Cohn said. The previous owners were renting out the house, and "they sort of made this last-minute deal with the neighbor to appease the renters," Cohn said.

But "when we talked to [the neighbor], he made it very clear that he was pretty unhappy with that arrangement in the past," Cohn said. "I basically convinced our neighbor to continue that arrangement until we could come up with some alternative."



No quick answers from Comcast
One of the hardest tasks for Cohn was getting any information by calling Comcast. Customer service representatives didn't have access to useful information, and he would invariably be transferred to other Comcast employees who also couldn't help.

"I did frequently get a ticket number that I was supposed to be able to reference to sort of shortcut some of this, because it would always take five or six hops to be able to be redirected to the right or even the wrong voicemail and office," Cohn said. "They were never able to get me a direct number to call. I always had to be transferred into it, which is why it always took so long and so many hops to get back to anyone's voicemail."

After about eight months of calling Comcast, leaving voicemails, and not getting calls back, "finally I decided to contact my City Council person," Cohn said.

Cohn reached out to the office of Seattle City Councilmember Debora Juarez. Within days, Cohn received a call from a Comcast engineer, and the company later performed a site survey to determine the cost of extending Internet service to the property.

"The City Council person and their staff have been great this whole process," Cohn said. "They weren't able to fix it with me but they were very much able to get Comcast to respond in ways that I wasn't able to."

The bill: $27,119.00
It took another few months for Comcast to tell Cohn how much the project would cost. Cohn provided us with a November 2020 email from a Comcast employee with the title of "new build account executive."

"I've received verification that hard cost for contribution is $27,119.00," the email said. While it would be possible to get an easement over a neighbor's property, the Comcast executive told Cohn this wouldn't reduce the cost much because it "would only save about 30 feet [of wiring], and we would still need a permit, as we would need to go under the road as well."

At another point, a Comcast employee "told me the job actually was going to cost something like $80,000, and they were only requiring me to pay a portion of that," Cohn told Ars.

Cohn reached out to Juarez's office again in December 2020, saying he found the $27,000 fee to be "insane" given that it would be in addition to "whatever [Comcast's] monthly subscription cost would be for the rest of time."

“Unfortunate” case of an oddly shaped lot
Later on, the city government's broadband and cable program manager talked to Comcast to get more information on the property. In April 2021, the city's IT governance advisor provided Juarez with an update via email, and Juarez forwarded the email to Cohn.

"This residence is an unfortunate case of an odd-shaped, hard-to-access lot that was never connected with cable service in years past, and the City has no authority to require Comcast—or [any] other Internet service provider—to make the connection," the email said. "Unless a service provider can find another way to help support recovery on the large capital investment (i.e., connecting more households in an area) then it's typical for the provider to expect the resident to support the cost of construction. In this case... there are no other potential customers gained by the buildout; the neighboring households are already on Comcast's network."

The $27,000 price is "based on directional boring for the underground work, as well as engineering, permitting, mobilization, and restoration costs required to do the work," the email said. Because the "existing distribution plant is on the opposite side" of the street, it would "require 181 feet of underground construction to get to the property," the email from Seattle's IT governance advisor said.

The email suggested that "the most cost-effective option will still be a wireless hotspot through a mobile carrier," which is what Cohn and Zenobi were already using.

"Although it seems like there are solutions, I don't believe this is the result you were hoping for," Juarez told Cohn when she forwarded the email.

Comcast wired up neighborhood in 1970s or ’80s
A Comcast spokesperson told Ars that the company never received a request to wire up the house before the current homeowners moved in. The spokesperson described it as a major project because of the requirement to dig underground to cross the street, which has two lanes plus a center turning lane.

Comcast told us it first installed cable in the neighborhood in the late 1970s or early 1980s. (The wires were installed by a predecessor company as Comcast entered the Seattle area when it bought AT&T's cable division about 20 years ago.) Though it's not unusual for Comcast to install underground wiring, it only used aerial wiring in that neighborhood, the spokesperson said. Comcast also confirmed to Ars that there are no other homes in the immediate area without a connection to the Comcast network.

In cases where multiple homes don't have service, a group of neighbors could split the cost, or Comcast might not require any up-front payment if the project adds enough homes to the network to make it profitable for Comcast. But with only one house lacking service, a single homeowner has to pay the full amount Comcast demands.

Mobile hotspot fills the gap, with some problems
Cohn and Zenobi have been using UnlimitedToGo, an MVNO (mobile virtual network operator) that resells cellular network service from AT&T and other carriers. "I picked UnlimitedToGo because they made a really big deal about how their service was truly unlimited," without any data caps or throttling, Cohn said.

But after experiencing slowdowns and "talking to UnlimitedToGo a bunch of times," Cohn said he learned that AT&T was clamping down on heavy data users. "We finally got the answer, which is [that] AT&T has these undocumented data caps where they won't cut your service off like they did with traditional data caps but they will throttle you if you're in a higher tier of users during peak congestion times," Cohn said.

Cohn and Zenobi each do about six hours of video calls a day for their jobs and have to tether from their phones' Internet connection when the UnlimitedToGo hotspot gets to be unusable. "My Internet connection would grind to a halt, typically in the morning and in the evening, to the point of being unusable even for like basic web browsing, let alone video calls or Netflix or something like that," Cohn said.

Cohn said the couple uses about 300GB of data per month. The hotspot has worked pretty well lately, but "we definitely still have occasional problems," he said. When the connection is working well, they get speeds of about 10 to 15Mbps downstream and 5 to 10Mbps upstream.

"Usually the quality is fine until it's not. It's fine until there's lag or the connection drops or something like that happens," he said.

With no competition, “you have to pay whatever they want to charge”
At the previous places he's lived in Seattle, Cohn could choose between two ISPs and threaten to switch if one raised the rates. Not even having that option after paying $27,000 is one reason he's leery of paying it.

"I'm just very nervous about dropping $27,000 to lock myself into a company who can then jack the rates up, and we don't even have the classic 'send me to your retention department because I'm going to threaten to quit and switch to another company' argument. You just have to pay whatever they want to charge," Cohn said.

Another concern Cohn raised is that the $27,000 would get them a cable connection with much slower upload speeds than download speeds, instead of a fiber line with symmetrical bandwidth. Still, if mobile Internet gets to be unusable, "maybe there's a way I could take a loan out or refinance the house" in order to get Comcast cable, he said.

Cohn signed up for the SpaceX Starlink waiting list and recently got an invite. But the Starlink mobile app that tests a location's suitability for satellite Internet showed that it likely wouldn't work well, Cohn said.

"Unfortunately, our neighbors have a lot of very tall trees," Cohn said. Cohn said he posted screenshots from the app to the Starlink subreddit, where people with experience using Starlink advised him that he would suffer "drops every couple of minutes, and video calls will be unusable."

5G hasn’t saved the day
The email from Seattle's IT governance advisor pointed out that future 5G upgrades could make cellular Internet more suitable for a home connection. "Zachary Cohn's location, so close to the Northgate retail area and the coming NHL facility, will see that type of wireless capacity improvement," the email said.

But our recent checks of Cohn's address on carrier websites showed that T-Mobile and Verizon aren't offering their 5G home Internet services in that location. AT&T doesn't sell 5G home Internet at all yet.

"If T-Mobile were to offer 5G home Internet here, I would certainly try it," Cohn said. Still, he noted that mobile providers' use of "deprioritization" could mean that ditching UnlimitedToGo would just be "trading one ISP for another with the same problem." T-Mobile's Home Internet FAQ says, "During congestion, Home Internet customers may notice speeds lower than customers using other T-Mobile services due to data prioritization."

Although Cohn and Zenobi likely wouldn't have bought the house if they had known what was in store, there are still positives. Cohn said the "house is wonderful in every other way" and that "when we have kids, it will be a 90-second walk to school."

But Cohn and Zenobi worked at home even before the pandemic began and intend to continue, so they have to deal with the stress of wondering whether the Internet will work on any given day. "Not having a reliable, consistent Internet connection in the year 2022 is very problematic," Cohn said.

LINK: https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...et-would-cost-27000/

We are way, way, way past the point where high speed Internet service needs to be available to everyone just like water, electricity, gas, etc. Essentially a utility.

I am not a big government guy at all. This is ridiculous

Not too bad.

There is a house nearby that was given a quote of $34,000 (plus installation fees) to run fiber.

Centurylink (aka Lumen) wants $300,000 to run fiber a few hundred feet to connect my neighborhood. For now, the local cable monopoly can charge whatever they want for internet service.

The FCC lists multiple ISPs servicing my neighborhood, but in reality only one exists. Even better, the FCC won't updated their maps. If you were to buy a home in my neighborhood, you'd think internet service was available from multiple sources and prices were likely good.

<sarcasm> No worries, our representatives will work on giving a few billion to local telcos for better broadband service as they have since the 1990s.

Or, the homeowner could run the line themselves for 1/5 the price.

But they’d likely think that "unfair" too.

quote:

Originally posted by LS1 GTO:
Or, the homeowner could run the line themselves for 1/5 the price.

But they’d likely think that "unfair" too.

From what I've seen, both the provider and city would have major issues with this. If it's only on your own property, that's easier IF you can get the provider to use lines they didn't install.

The successor to the company that originally installed the "local loop" (usually Bell Telephone or a Baby Bell) will be who brings the signal to the home either as the primary provider, or a sub to an alternative provider. They basically get to call the shots on pricing, and who gets service. Of course, the initial installs were at least partially subsidized with taxpayer dollars, and local governments placed restrictions on the telcos for some years, but weren't smart enough not to let them expire.

There are alternatives, as already mentioned, the cellular providers, but also satellite providers such as SpaceX's Starlink. These have their drawbacks and pricing complications. but may be worth investigation.

I suspect this is small comfort, but the situation is much worse for commercial AKA "business" subscribers who generally have fewer service options and higher costs.

WRT to pulling your own cable, or contracting a third-party to do so, I have never heard of a provider that will allow this. Even getting them to pull their cables through already laid conduit is chancy. If you want to go this route, setting up a point-to-point microwave link to a nearby service point may be more realistic.

Step 1: Offer to pay for your neighbor's internet.

Step 2: Connect through it.

About 2 years ago my rural area got some heavy equipment dropped off at the end of the road. They were here to lay fiber optic that crosses my driveway about 600 feet from the house. The supervisor on site said we would be lucky to have access to it within the next decade.

Just sold a house in Seattle in May. One of the question had to disclose in the contract was...does the house have cable internet available? or something along those lines. I would think most people would ask these days before buying a house.

A friend just bought a home and added to the contract that it must have verified internet service with specific minimum speeds. He works fully remote, so lack of internet would be a deal breaker. The way he put it, would you buy a home that didn't have electricity or water yet but that agent said you should be able to add it?

I had a similar dilemma that I posted about here. I didn’t get a national news story out of it.

But once 5g is available to them they won’t need Comcast.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
We are way, way, way past the point where high speed Internet service needs to be available to everyone just like water, electricity, gas, etc. Essentially a utility.

I am not a big government guy at all. This is ridiculous

Right there with you PASig. Hard to do much any more without access to the web. The COVID nonsense made it 100x worse too. ONLINE EVERYTHING!!! except not morons in charge never took into account that rural areas still have little to no coverage.

quote:

Originally posted by bryan11:

quote:

Originally posted by LS1 GTO:
Or, the homeowner could run the line themselves for 1/5 the price.

But they’d likely think that "unfair" too.

From what I've seen, both the provider and city would have major issues with this. If it's only on your own property, that's easier IF you can get the provider to use lines they didn't install.

Water provider isn’t responsible for anything after where the water supply connects to the residence, nor is the electricity or sewer.

The residence just needs to run its own line out to the junction point. Same as someone on 40 acres who wants city/county water instead of a well.

Same here. The new home owners need to either run their own line, pay the cable provider, or suck it up.

I know that Cable internet has to follow power to the home. If underground to the home, internet must follow, if an aerial drop of power to the home, then cable follows the arial drop.
These days with the flood of peeps outa of major metro areas to more country living is foolish to believe that high speed internet int highly rural areas. Many areas in N.E. Do not even have cell service.
Buyer Beware !

Yeah, that is why I still had a party line telephone in the late eighties. We would have had to pay to have almost a 1/4 mile of line run to have a private line.

About 15 years ago my business ISP was a secondary provider that put a directional antenna on my roof- connected to their tower.

I’m a little surprised there are no similar alternatives in Seattle.

I have zero sympathy for these buyers.

The seller disclosed to them before closing that this house had no internet. It would seem to me that if your job required 5-6 hours of video conferencing that that just might be kind of a big deal. Apparently not as they shrugged it off and bought the house anyway.

Good grief.

quote:

Originally posted by SIGGUY (THE 1ST):
{Snip}
These days with the flood of peeps outa of major metro areas to more country living is foolish to believe that high speed internet int highly rural areas. Many areas in N.E. Do not even have cell service.
Buyer Beware !

I live in a very rural area - our county has lost population in every Census since 1900. We live in a really sparsely populated area. We had Verizon DSL, which Verizon didn't want to support. My driveway is over a quarter mile long, and the nearest fiber optic line was a mile away, and only three houses were on that road. I never thought I would get high speed internet. My closest neighbor was a beta tester for Elon Musk's Starlink service.

Because of Covid, our state had a budget surplus from the Feds. Our Democrat governor announced that broadband internet would be available to everyone. In December we got fiber optic cable, the installation cost $600 by the broadband company. No permits needed.

We are very happy to be rural residents. Without a Democrat governor

We still terrible cell phone service. That's a blessing, really.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Hay2bale,

quote:

Originally posted by Bassamatic:
I have zero sympathy for these buyers.

The seller disclosed to them before closing that this house had no internet. It would seem to me that if your job required 5-6 hours of video conferencing that that just might be kind of a big deal. Apparently not as they shrugged it off and bought the house anyway.

Good grief.

Yup.

Also, it’s not the government’s job to provide for you - especially internet.

I would argue that natural gas is more important than internet. Are we to require that gov run natural gas to anyone that has an empty propane tank?

Why did anyone write a news article about this, let alone one that long?

We had a similar issue when we built our last house about 13 years ago except it was for natural gas.

We bought the lot from a developer with them building the house.
We were told gas was available and built out the house accordingly to include gas fireplace, dual
Fuel furnace, gas stove, tankless water heater, and a bung on the deck for the grill.

Construction began and we were informed that we would have to pay the developer around $20k so the gas company would bring the line to the house.
We were the 2nd to last lot to be built in that development with a couple hundred houses already having gas. Including the house right next door and behind.

Our builder built very good homes but turns out his business practices were not very good. I guess that added money is what he owed the Gas company for other jobs he had not payed.
Figured we’d just pay it was not worth the added money for us so we just went electric.

About a week or so after telling him we would not pay that and just swap to electric went over to the site which I did nearly everyday to keep track of what was being done and frequently brought snacks and goodies to the workers.
I noticed across the road between our house and the neighbors the gas company came and sprayed a line at our property line with the words NO GAS with arrows pointing to where our house was being built and the last lot that had not been sold yet.