Running new cable line to house-costs and considerations

[gurt 749]

I am considering moving out to some land in my wife’s family south of Austin, as I am working permanently remote now.

 

The problem is that there isn’t internet out there currently. With Starlink coming online I am definitely considering going that route, but there might be reliability issues inherent to satellite internet that could make it untenable.

 

Does anyone have any insights into what it would cost to run internet lines several hundred yards? How do you even go about having this done?

[DalTxHornFan 3106]

Live wherever you want, but stay away from satellite internet.  Expensive and unreliable. 

Check out Wireless Digital Subscriber Line service providers.  It is a radio link from your home to a terrestrial ISP data source.  In our case we have a 50 ft tall tower (we had to get above some big trees) that has a radio receiver that bounces off of a transmitter located on a water tower a couple of miles from us.  It is broadband fast, very reliable, and costs around $150 a month for a pretty robust download/upload capacity subscription.  We probably dropped around $600-ish on the initial tower/installation.  Totally worth it. 

[gurt 749]

Live wherever you want, but stay away from satellite internet.  Expensive and unreliable. 
Check out Wireless Digital Subscriber Line service providers.  It is a radio link from your home to a terrestrial ISP data source.  In our case we have a 50 ft tall tower (we had to get above some big trees) that has a radio receiver that bounces off of a transmitter located on a water tower a couple of miles from us.  It is broadband fast, very reliable, and costs around $150 a month for a pretty robust download/upload capacity subscription.  We probably dropped around $600-ish on the initial tower/installation.  Totally worth it. 

Interesting...what kind of speeds are we talking? I would need at least 50-100 mbps download and 10-20 upload. Are you in that range?

[Upgrayedd 5814]

Whose lines are out in the street?

[DalTxHornFan 3106]

40 minutes ago, gurt said:

Interesting...what kind of speeds are we talking? I would need at least 50-100 mbps download and 10-20 upload. Are you in that range?

Wow. Are you a gamer?  My plan says "15.0 Mbps down and 1.5 Mbps up, with burst."  So much better than satellite.  Good luck.

[DalTxHornFan 3106]

1 hour ago, gurt said:

Interesting...what kind of speeds are we talking? I would need at least 50-100 mbps download and 10-20 upload. Are you in that range?

I get nothing like those speeds even from my direct connect at my pied-a-terre in Downtown Dallas.  Comcast is ISP.  Good luck.

[gurt 749]

Whose lines are out in the street?

Spectrum, I believe.

[gurt 749]

I get nothing like those speeds even from my direct connect at my pied-a-terre in Downtown Dallas.  Comcast is ISP.  Good luck.

Really? Pretty standard to get about 50/10 in a normal urban setting.

I will be working from home, with lots of video calls, so I can’t have slowness disrupting those.

[Upgrayedd 5814]

16 minutes ago, gurt said:

Spectrum, I believe.

Did you ask them to bring it from the closet pedestal to your house?  If the have facilities in the street, they shouldn’t charge you.

[luke duke 6413]

Did you ask them to bring it from the closet pedestal to your house?  If the have facilities in the street, they shouldn’t charge you.

[Handcruser 2805]

Uncle just had it done out In the country. No charge.

[RPM 26322]

Centurylink didn't charge me to bury a DSL line to my house. But the trade off was they have shitty service.

[High Plains Drifter 11050]

10 hours ago, Handcruser said:

Uncle just had it done out In the country. No charge.

 

 

same here. Local internet provider is upgrading to fiber optic cable. No charge.

A crew showed up last week and trenched from the road to the house. Of course they hit the goddamn water line running from the well, but that's another story.

 

 

Edited March 19, 2021 by High Plains Drifter
yo mama knows the reason

[gurt 749]

2 hours ago, High Plains Drifter said:

 

 

same here. Local internet provider is upgrading to fiber optic cable. No charge.

A crew showed up last week and trenched from the road to the house. Of course they hit the goddamn water line running from the well, but that's another story.

 

 

How far did they have to trench?  

[High Plains Drifter 11050]

38 minutes ago, gurt said:

How far did they have to trench?  

 

Well, they are having to run the fiber cable all through the development (lots of ~10 to 30(?)) acres. I've seen them trenching along the highway into town for months. For just me, they trenched from the road to my house, which is probably close to 100 yards.

 

To be clear, I didn't ask for this. They just decided it was time to upgrade, and started the work some time back. They finally got to my house last week.

 

[Nueces River Rat 5539]

7 minutes ago, High Plains Drifter said:

 

Well, they are having to run the fiber cable all through the development (lots of ~10 to 30(?)) acres. I've seen them trenching along the highway into town for months. For just me, they trenched from the road to my house, which is probably close to 100 yards.

 

To be clear, I didn't ask for this. They just decided it was time to upgrade, and started the work some time back. They finally got to my house last week.

 

It shouldn't cost you a dime if it's Spectrum or any telcom/cable provider.    

Now the issue might be the time it takes to get this done.   I had to get Spectrum to run their service to brand new warehouse we leased a few years ago when we had our healthcare business and because the line was across the street on utility poles, another series of poles had to be set the on our side of the street to bring over that line.   That involved three sets of teams from Spectrum and about 2 months of waiting.  First, the survey team had to come out and take measurements and design.  Then the construction team to install the poles and the line to the property.  And then the install team to bring the line to the warehouse and do inside stuff.    It was a royal pain in the ass for lack of a better word and delayed our move.   The owner of the warehouse complex should have done the work while the complex was under construction and disclosed the lack of high speed before we signed the lease....  Lesson learned as from now on when I lease, the first question I ask is high speed internet available?  

[BearSchlong 8098]

That's why good landlords pitch multiple provider access as a feature.  I've sold fiber bandwidth for the last 25 years, I work for a network provider that provides backbone connectivity to cell phone towers and for hyperscalers.

But my last gig was the Enterprise side of Spectrum, did that for 10 years.  Depending on their current setup they have an allocation for cost to "autobuild" based on projected costs.  Most residences are set back 100-200 feet from the feeder on the street and a simple drop, either buried or overhead, provided sufficient signal for high speed docsis (cable modem) internet.  You'll see smaller boxes about the size of a shoe box which are line extenders that amplify signal for houses near the end of the line, as well as larger boxes (think big aluminum breadbox with heat sink spikes/channels and a power supply connected to the grid) which are Nodes and convert coax to fiber for approximately 500 houses/businesses.

The issue with several hundred yards is that it exceeds Spectrum's acceptable "drop" length which IIRC is 250 or 300 feet.   In the old Time Warner Cable analog cable days, they would go up to 400 or 500 feet on the drop and the resident would be happy with 15Mb x 2Mb of Internet.  But with more channels allocated for higher internet speeds, db (decible, signal drop) is more important which explains the shorter drop length.

When I left there a year ago the autobuild was I think $5,000 meaning if you sign up for service they will pay that much for construction, or let you pay for any overages which might be slightly over, maybe $1K.  But that covers building feeder cable to your building, setting a tap, and then a drop to the room where you want your cable modem.

If residential won't do it, you could probably get a small business account - I did hundreds of those during my decade their, where I would build fiber to a corporation then tack on coax connections to the business accounts so that key employees could have a company provided internet.  I also put a ton of dedicated fiber into CEO's houses and charged them 1K/month for dedicated internet.

Spectrum just won a ton of Covid money to build out network for rural broadband, I saw the map yesterday and it's impressive.  And they don't do contracts but they will pay $5K to build to you and then charge you $100/month which you can end at any time so it's not a moneymaker for them.

Construction intervals at spectrum were usually 60 days worst case, depending on which region. If they are on the pole line fronting the property there shouldn't be any permitting involved which is usually a huge delay.

I traded that fortune 100 gig for a privately held boutique provider, the flipside is if you need 10Gb internet I can build to your ranch and drop you off direct into multiple peering drains at 1950 Stemmons in Dallas, so PM me if that fits your profile. 

Alternatively, my firm sells wholesale IP transit to most of the WISPs (Wireless Internet Service Providers) in Texas and that's where I would look as well like a previous poster mentioned.  Again, the feds just injected tons of money into WISPs so expect their infrastructure and reach to expand.  My company actually just won a contract to provide 5G to specific areas of NoVA/DC area and I expect that to be replicated in Texas within a few years.

@gurt pm me coordinates or an address if you want me to take a closer look at your options.

Edited March 19, 2021 by BearSchlong