Is there someway I can get Comcast to bring their internet services to my subdivision in Farr West Utah?

June 2, 2009 1:51 PM

I love Comcast's Internet services. However, I just moved to a new area (Farr West Utah), and Comcast isn't available in my subdivision. Is there anyway I can convince Comcast bring internet services into my area?

I just moved to Farr West Utah, and Comcast internet isn't available in my sub-division. Is there anything I can do, or someone I can call, to get Comcast internet out here?

posted by HC Foo to computers & internet (5 comments total)

In my experience, the only way to get them there (unless they've already established a presence in/very near your neighborhood) is to offer them wheelbarrows full of large denomination Federal IOU notes.
posted by torquemaniac at 2:07 PM on June 2

What ISP is available?
If Utah is like a lot of other states, chances are great that a single ISP has exclusive access to your area.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:51 PM on June 2

The available options are: Qwest, TXOX, Digis, and Relianet (those last three are local wireless providers). Qwest only have 1.5 mb available in my area. The wireless providers have higher speeds, but slower ping times, resulting in laggy gaming. They also throttle your connection after about 6-8 gigs of transfer each month.

Comcast has internet available in other subdivisions near by, but for some reason they aren't available in mine.

As far as capped service, I haven't experienced any capping issues with Comcast yet. I know others have reported it, but I haven't seen it. I know I've hit 100+ gigs of transfer bandwidth in a month before.

Do you think it would make a difference if I called the Comcast regional manager and made a case? There are over 150 homes in my subdivision. I'm pretty sure that Comcast's revenue model depends on getting money from people to provide a service. *sarcasm*
posted by HC Foo at 3:08 PM on June 2

Cable franchises tend to be de facto exclusive to an area; a municipality (or subdivision) cuts a deal with a specific provider and they become the cable only provider. While there's usually not anything legally preventing a cable provider like comcast from building out infrastructure in a neighborhood where a 'competitor' also provides service, the costs typically do not make sense in a market where they might have to engage in price competition with another provider.

Alternatively, you could speculate that there's some sort of agreement, explicit or implicit, between cable providers to stay out of each others' turf, because even if competing were profitable, maintaining local monopolies is generally easier and more profitable than competing and providing consumers a choice.
posted by kid_dynamite at 3:08 PM on June 2

I don't think that you're going to have any luck convincing Comcast to expand. My guess is that they would expand to your area if they could, but as others have mentioned, there are probably complicated exclusivity agreements and other factors involved.

My husband works for a fairly large regional telecomm and whenever I gripe about the fact that his company doesn't provide service to our area, he does his best to explain to me why they can't. Besides the exclusivity agreements, they would also have to build the infrastructure to service the area - a lot of times this means running fiber to areas that are already being fed fiber by a competitor. It's not worth the redundancy and cost. And all these competitors have to work together on some levels, so relations between companies usually involve some give and take.

Another reason that Comcast doesn't service your area may be that they actually are partial owners of one of the companies you listed, and it would be foolish for them to compete against themselves. I know that Comcast has a significant stake in my husband's regional telecomm company.

I wish he were home, because he would be able to explain it thoroughly. He's explained it to me so many times, though, that hopefully my answer provides some insight.
posted by bristolcat at 6:30 PM on June 2