Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "Seattle Homeowner Must Pay $27K for High Speed Internet" video.

This is Seattle, operating the equipment is likely the cheap part of it. I live not that far away from where this story is happening and the terrain in parts of the neighborhood is rather rough, and there likely would need to be environmental reviews involved. This is a neighborhood that still has beavers, and parts of the neighborhood have steep hills and ravines. I'm guessing that this house is probably located in that section of the neighborhood, otherwise there would be no need for the digging.. That being said, I'd wager that the best course of action would be to get 5G internet via T-Mobile, as long as they don't need to have their own service or use too much data, it will likely work well. Netflix is generally zero-rated as long as they're using the T-Mobile compression, and most other options aren't so bad. Personally, I live a couple miles north of there and I'm only a few hundred feet away from the nearest fiber optic network from Centurylink.
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It probably isn't mostly grass, that neighborhood has a bunch of weird terrain and what isn't in somebody's lot is more or less forest land that is even more annoying to dig through due to regulations.
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In that neighborhood, it's likely one of those oddballs. I live near there and used to take the bus through that neighborhood, and the terrain is a lot more complicated than one would expect for being in a major city. If there isn't a pre-existing connection for either of the two local telecoms, there's likely a reason for that. There's likely also a reason why they want to bury the cables rather than using the same poles in use for power.
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Depends which part of the neighborhood, most of it should be easy to connect, but if it's in that bit that's going the weird terrain, that may not be an unreasonable estimate.
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Possibly, but I live near there, and it really depends on which part of the neighborhood and where precisely the building is. Parts of that neighborhood have rough terrain that are a lot harder to wire than a standard property would be and given that there's apparently no service for cable or phone service, it's likely a hard-to-reach lot. Or, it could be Comcast being dicks, that's always possible with them.
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The neighborhood has rough terrain, if the lot is in that section of the neighborhood, the cost is likely much closer. Especially if there's the need for an environmental impact study due to being adjacent to the beaver pond. Or, it could just be a CYA quote to try and discourage the person from actually signing up for what could be annoying service to provide.
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The solution is to make them prove that their using the telecom fees to build out their network like they're supposed to be. Everybody with telecom service pays a fee for universal access that's supposed to be used to expand access to households and neighborhoods that aren't currently being served.
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I live not too far from the part of the city that he's talking about, and I wouldn't assume that. This is a neighborhood with steep hills, beaver ponds and a bit of a ravine, if the house is situated in that portion of the neighborhood, chances are good that it is if it doesn't have service from either CenturyLink or Comcast, then it's going to be a lot more expensive than you'd normally expect.
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@mdargusch No, it's not. The bandwidth is being paid for.
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@evilmark443 I live a few miles from that neighborhood and depending upon which part of the neighborhood this is in, the terrain is pretty rough. I'm guessing that this property is probably beaver pond adjacent on the edge of a ravine. As in, something that likely would come much closer to that bill to connect than would normally be the case. If that property isn't already connected to either Comcast or CenturyLink, there's likely a reason for that. Also, most of the properties in that area are already connected for phone service, so presumably, they'd be able to get service from CenturyLink for much less. A house without either cable TV or a landline is an oddity here.
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@GentlemenMonkey I live near that neighborhood, and it's likely that the terrain is pretty rough. Seattle isn't like most other major cities, we've got significant ravines and rough terrain that aren't found in most cities. In terms of Northgate, there are still beaver ponds to be found there and parts of the neighborhood are extremely steep. It wouldn't surprise me if the cost of this service is higher than what one would normally expect for a run that length. And that's even before considering any permitting that's involved.
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