Couple bought home in Seattle, then learned Comcast Internet would cost $27,000

Authored by arstechnica.com and submitted by speckz

When Zachary Cohn and his wife bought a house in the Northgate neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, they didn't expect any trouble getting home Internet service. It was only after closing on the house in July 2019 that they learned the bad news. "All six neighbors I share a property line with are wired for Comcast, but our house never was," Cohn told Ars.

Comcast's predecessor company had wired up the neighborhood with cable decades earlier and the ISP provides high-speed broadband to the abutting properties. But the cable TV and Internet service provider never extended a line to the house purchased by Cohn and his wife, Lauryl Zenobi.

Cohn spent many months trying to get answers from Comcast on how he and Zenobi could get Internet service. Eventually, he contacted his City Councillor's office, which was able to get a real response from Comcast.

Comcast ultimately said it would require installing 181 feet of underground cable to connect the house and that the couple would have to pay Comcast over $27,000 to make that happen. Cohn and Zenobi did not pay the $27,000, and they've been relying on a 4G hotspot ever since.

"I was just flabbergasted that a house like this, in an area like this, could possibly have never been wired for Internet," Cohn said in a phone interview. Because the house is "in the middle of Seattle, it didn't even dawn on me that that was possible," he said, adding that the lack of Internet service would be "more understandable if I was two miles from my nearest neighbor."

The Seattle Kraken hockey team's $80 million practice facility is in the same Northgate neighborhood, about a half-mile from the house. There's a major bus station in the area, a light rail station that recently opened nearby, and an elementary school within about a 90-second walk, Cohn said, noting that the property is "well within the Seattle city limits."

The house, built in 1964, is also about 10 miles from both T-Mobile Park, where the Seattle Mariners play, and Lumen Field, the Seattle Seahawks stadium named after CenturyLink's Lumen brand. T-Mobile doesn't offer its new home Internet service at the house. CenturyLink offers Internet service at Cohn's address—but only its ancient DSL with download speeds of up to 3Mbps and upload speeds up to 500kbps. Cable and fiber just aren't available at the house. Advertisement

Not our first Comcast horror story

We've written about other people who bought houses without realizing there was no home Internet service, but those stories generally took place in small towns or rural areas. In some cases, Comcast's website and customer service employees falsely told home buyers that service was available due to errors in the company's availability database.

Comcast availability data wasn't a problem in this case, as Cohn said he didn't think to check that there was a Comcast connection before closing on the Seattle house. "Honestly, I didn't even think to look. What house in the middle of Seattle wouldn't be wired for reasonable Internet?" Cohn said.

Cohn contacted Ars after reading one of our previous Comcast horror stories, hoping to get the word out to others that an Internet connection is no guarantee even in densely populated cities—and even when all your neighbors have service.

Government broadband programs generally focus on "connecting neighborhoods in particular underserved communities, which I think is great," Cohn said. But he wants people to know "there are large swaths of people, both in large geographic areas and in small individual cases, that just never got connected to high-speed Internet, and how difficult it is to go through life without that sort of connection."

While Cohn's situation is unusual because all the surrounding houses have broadband, he's far from the only urban dweller without modern service. It's particularly a problem in lower-income areas where ISPs have chosen not to upgrade old telephone lines.

Comcast junction box across the street

With the properties abutting Cohn's, there are overhead power lines that Comcast used to extend cable to the houses. But "our power is underground and so... there are no poles to ride off," Cohn said.

The block is shaped like a triangle, Cohn said, adding, "We're the only house on our side of the triangle, and the other two sides each have three houses." On the side of the house that doesn't face its neighbors, there is an arterial road. The nearest Comcast junction box is across that road, "so they would have to dig under the arterial to connect our house to that junction box."

Cohn told us the sellers disclosed in documents before the sale that Internet wasn't connected at the home, but he didn't realize it wouldn't be possible to get service at all. After the failed attempts to get service, "we had our agent reach out to the sellers to figure out what actually is going on here," Cohn said.

They learned that the previous homeowners struck a deal with a neighbor who ran a cable "from his Comcast hookup, across his property, across our property, and then into this house," Cohn said. The previous owners were renting out the house, and "they sort of made this last-minute deal with the neighbor to appease the renters," Cohn said.

But "when we talked to [the neighbor], he made it very clear that he was pretty unhappy with that arrangement in the past," Cohn said. "I basically convinced our neighbor to continue that arrangement until we could come up with some alternative."

lindersmash on June 29th, 2022 at 15:43 UTC »

in 2018 I was about to rent an apartment and while I was getting all the paperwork done, I asked who the ISP was, and they said they currently dont have service run for high speed internet, I would have to use dial up or satellite internet. This was in a pretty well developed area of south florida, they were just under some type of contract dispute. I noped the hell out of there. Good thing I was about to hand them a check for the background check and application fees.

powercow on June 29th, 2022 at 14:42 UTC »

Sure they do, well they could, When you allow monopolies, you can easily regulate them to do things like this. The sole reason comcast is trying to do this is due to the lack of competition.

happened to a bud of mine, he lived rural, his only functional options at the time, was DSL.(yeah sat, but he game) and it was slow as all fuck. Spectrum said the same thing, he had to pay to run the lines to his neighborhood AND get a certain percent of his neighbors to promise to sign up and at the time spectrum was 80 bucks for 20megs down 1 meg up. It was insane.

this is independent rural power company decided to roll their own. he got 100meg bidirectional for $50... in rural no where. I was paying $80 a month for 20/1meg, IN THE CITY. (over the years spectrum did get to 100 down, 20 up, but he is at 200/200 now and still pays less.)

what gets me is we regulate the fuck out of the power company, because people have no choice, there is only one. When they want to raise prices they have to apply through gov. BECAUSE they are a monopoly and people have no fucking other choice. I get when net started it was nitch and mainly for techy people and gamers and entertainment, but now its required for life. and we grant these assholes monopolies and despite equipment has gotten cheaper, the prices just creep up every year.... meanwhile my rural friend still pays a lot less than me for faster net.

you dont really want price controls in a healthy competitive market, but a gov granted monopoly, they sure as fuck need to be.

iamisandisnt on June 29th, 2022 at 13:56 UTC »

Me and all my homies know that the party is in the downvotes, Comcast