If it's anything like the smaller ISP's in my area, his advantages are:
- Vastly superior customer service
- Simpler contracts; straight fee-for-service without any bullshit
- Likely better price overall
- Vastly superior customer service
- Simpler contracts; straight fee-for-service without any bullshit
- Likely better price overall
For the most part, he isn’t competing with DSL. He is competing with cable. It looks like Comcast does service the area.
Another thing that stands out was that the article mentioned he was paying $1000 for a “< 1Gpbs” Fiber line.
From the link on what’s available in Scranton, it looks like Comcast also offers 1Gbps downloads.
He also said that he has 200 customers - mostly business.
I don’t see how this makes sense from an investment standpoint to offer service in an area that doesn’t appear to be underserved.
I’m definitely no fan of Comcast, but their business internet service is straightforward. If I’m running a business, the cost difference between Comcast and Loop is neglible.
Personally, I’m glad to have the much better, cheaper, gigabit service from AT&T, but I would grin and bare Comcast again if I had too.
AT&T Fiber in my experience is a lot more reliable than Comcast ever was. Even thier old DSL was reliable.
My mom has had DSL for years in the small town I grew up in. She got cable internet when I stayed there for the summer because I needed more speed to work remotely. But she decided to keep both. The cable for better speeds and she said after 50 years of dealing with the phone company and 40 years dealing with cable, she trusts the phone company’s reliability more.
If a smaller ISP could offer the reliability of the incumbents, I might switch just to support them, but they would have to do a lot to gain my trust.