Jared Mauch built a fiber ISP when Comcast quoted $50,000 to reach his Michigan home

Ars Technica reported in January 2021 on Jared Mauch, a senior network architect at Akamai in rural Scio Township, Michigan, who moved in in 2002 and never got good broadband. Comcast said it would charge $50,000 to extend its cable network to his house; AT&T's DSL topped out at 1.5Mbps. About four years earlier he began planning his own fiber provider and registered Washtenaw Fiber Properties LLC as a competitive access provider with the state.

He copied a prepay model from an existing ISP: some customers paid $5,000 upfront in return for several years of service credits. He bought bandwidth from ACD.net, installed two miles of fiber from his home to its nearest cable vaults, and made his house the hub. A contractor laid conduit, two sets side by side because the second cost little extra; Mauch blew in the cable himself with a fiber blower he built from a rented air compressor and about $50 of hardware-store parts, where a commercial one can cost over $26,000.

The costs ran more than double his $60,000 estimate: about $145,000, of which $95,000 went to the contractor. He expects to break even within 42 months. By January he had connected 30 homes with about 10 more to wire, a take rate of about 70% against his 35% estimate, charging $65 a month for symmetrical 50Mbps. He also sells bandwidth to a local wireless ISP and advises other small providers.

Incumbents priced the extension at a level that made waiting pointless.

Prepaid service credits let neighbours finance construction in exchange for cheap service.

Doing the cable blowing himself avoided a six-figure equipment cost.

The second conduit adds room to expand or lease later for a small extra cost.

When no provider will serve you, a competent insider can copy an existing small-ISP model and let customers prefund it.

Mauch said about 150 other people had contacted him, he was talking with a lakeside community of about 180 homes in Freedom Township, and he had already advised three other providers. The report says costs exceeded his estimate by more than double and that customers were not complaining.