When Comcast wanted an exorbitant $50k for a $10k fiber run to his
home in rural Michigan, an Akamai engineer built his own ISP. Now he has
received government funding to expand and service more customers in
Washtenaw County.
Operating an ISP isn’t Mauch’s
primary job, as he is still a network architect at Akamai. He started
planning to build his own network about five years ago after being
unable to get modern service from any of the major ISPs.
As we
wrote last year, AT&T only offers DSL with download speeds up to
1.5Mbps at his home. He said Comcast once told him it would charge
$50,000 to extend its cable network to his house—and that he would have
gone with Comcast if they only wanted $10,000. Comcast demands those
up-front fees for line extensions when customers are outside its network
area, even if the rest of the neighborhood already has Comcast service.
Mauch
was using a 50Mbps fixed wireless service before switching over to his
own fiber network. In addition to his home Internet customers, Mauch
told us he provides free 250Mbps service to a church that was previously
having trouble with its Comcast service. Mauch said he also provides
fiber backhaul to a couple of cell towers for a major mobile carrier. …
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