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Comcast has agreed to provide cable service to 540 homes on Chappaquiddick Island, but only if residents agree to cover part of the cost, which Comcast estimates will be $1,526 per home, assuming everyone offered the service signs up.
Martha’s Vineyard, with Chappaquiddick Island to the east
The cable company has been at odds with town officials in Edgartown, which is responsible for negotiating franchise agreements for six Massachusetts island communities and Edgartown itself. Comcast said it would cost $1.58 million to wire up the small island, and it wants residents to pay $824,000 of that.
The cable company also wants residents to pay extra for connections if their homes lie more than 250 feet from the primary cable Comcast intends to wire across the island. Beyond that, customers will pay Comcast’s usual rates for cable TV, phone, and broadband service.
Edgartown wants Comcast to cover the island towns that surround it, and the company in turn has routinely claimed there were insufficient customers available to recoup the costs of the investment. But attitudes have softened now that Comcast’s franchise is up for renewal.
Local officials issued a request for proposals in February, 2011 to a variety of cable operators that might be interested in serving Martha’s Vineyard, of which Chappaquiddick is a part. As anticipated, Comcast — the incumbent, was the only company that responded.
But after an extended back and forth, Comcast seemed willing to relent, if someone split the tab.
Local residents have had mixed reactions to the proposal. Some wonder why they should have to foot the bill for a company that will earn $8 million annually from customers on the various nearby islands. Others are willing to pay, but in installments.
Edgartown town administrator Pam Dolby wants a more detailed breakdown of the cost estimate of $1.58 million to wire just over six square miles of the island.
Other stories of interest:
- Comcast Tries to Sell Customer Phone Service While He Reports a Service Outage
- Boston’s Cable Conundrum: Mayor Upset With Comcast Rate Hikes, But Did Little to Bring Competition
- Shaw Abruptly Terminates Cable Radio Service in B.C., Angering Customers
- Cable Industry Collaborates to Provide Shared Wi-Fi Access to Customers
- Misrepresenting Broadband Stimulus Benefits: A Case in Point on Rhode Island
You know what would be a heck of a lot easier than twisting Comcast’s arm into putting in coax for the island? Having someone build a wireless network to provide similar services at a fraction of the cost.
I’m not positive about the terrain on Chappaquiddick Island, however my guess is that it’s flat enough that a single wireless tower site in the middle of the island would be enough to cover everyone. Maybe multiple sites are required, but for a fraction of 540 homes per site, you wouldn’t need a tall tower, and backhauls would be inexpensive but fast enough for everyone’s Internet traffic, and then some.
Shooting a high-capacity (hundreds of megabits per second, enough to realistically offer 25 Mbps service to anyone on the island with reasonable contention ratios) link across from Edgartown to the middle of Chappaquiddick wouldn’t be a big deal either, as long as you can get fiber to somewhere that can get line of sight to the island from Edgartown. For example, the 150-foot former AT&T (now American Tower) cell tower on 59 North St, 2.5 air miles from the center of Chappaquiddick island. Maybe Martha’s Vineyard should just ask Comcast to give whoever wants to “wire” the island a discount on a metro Ethernet circuit to that tower…say, $1500 for a 100M circuit, scaling up to $5000 for a gigabit. Nothing unprofitable for Comcast, since my guess is that they’re already prepping to light that tower for when Verizon puts LTE on it.
The cost to Chappaquiddick residents: maybe $100 for an install, plus monthly rates comparable to (or better than) what Comcast is charging on the larger island. The cost to set up the backbone of the system? As little as $25,000 (plus monthly tower lease and bandwidth fees), including tower construction. Granted, the system won’t be able to do triple play over one wire, but Dish and DirecTV seem to have that ground covered anyway…VoIP and ‘net access are not an issue at all, as long as residents are okay with another antenna on their roof and a base station a couple miles away.
If they can’t stand the sight of a cell tower on their beloved island, maybe the Edgartown tower will reach most (but not all) homes. But hey, maybe not having a cell tower anywhere on the island…even if the “tower” is less than 100 feet tall, is out of the question for these residents, even if it is more than an order of magnitude less expensive than getting Comcast to wire the island. In which case, good luck raising the money to give Comcast a monopoly on Internet access on the island for the next twenty years…
Hmm…maybe someone is already *supposd* to be doing exactly what I outlined:
http://www.mvtimes.com/2012/05/02/opencape-promises-broadband-connections-by-next-year-10532/
…and they have enough stimulus funding to either do a good job or waste it in awesome fashion.
Did some more research, and I can understand why Chapy residents would be disillusioned with wireless service…here’s their current option for Internet service:
http://mvwifi.com
Their top-tier package is 1.5M down, 384k up for $50 per month or so, billed yearly. This does not, however, include the ability to connect a non-computer to the network. For that, you need to pay another $15 per year per device. If you want to use VoIP on the network, that’s another $10 per month, including the “MAC Lock” fee, though you do get 256k down and 64k up to play with, dedicated to that device. If you want to use a TV streamer, it’s $20 per month extra instead of $10, with double the bandwidth (in other words, barely enough to watch low-def Netflix).
I can see why residents want some other option than their current provider but, in all honesty, Comcast isn’t built for that sort of thing.