Hacker News: chrishacken

New comment by chrishacken in "Never buy a .online domain"

chrishacken — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 23:44:54 +0000

Google loves doing stuff like this. At my last company, before we sold it, I had to reverify our Google Business page about once a week because it would constantly just remove the verification for seemingly no reason.

New comment by chrishacken in "Getting Fiber to My Town [video]"

chrishacken — Wed, 09 Sep 2020 23:04:07 +0000

It’s this way because of how regulated everything is. You have to jump through hoops to get permission to do anything here in the U.S. in other countries you just do it.

New comment by chrishacken in "The War on Upstart Fiber Internet Providers"

chrishacken — Sat, 27 Jun 2020 01:15:57 +0000

How do you plan for these things to get into buildings? Sewer, water, and power utilities are anywhere from 20’ deep to 2’ deep, so unless you want these robots aimlessly digging into utilities, you still need to disturb the ground above. Subway tunnels are generally very deep... 40’+ And verrrrry expensive.

New comment by chrishacken in "The War on Upstart Fiber Internet Providers"

chrishacken — Sat, 27 Jun 2020 01:13:32 +0000

To be fair, microtrenching sucks. It’s extremely difficult to dig around lines that have even micro trenched without damaging them. Our “micro trenches” are still 16” deep, but we stopped doing that. Our new stuff is a minimum of 24”, generally 36” deep. I know people who were doing it between 4-8” and I think that’s just plain stupid.

New comment by chrishacken in "The War on Upstart Fiber Internet Providers"

chrishacken — Sat, 27 Jun 2020 01:10:41 +0000

Well you need conduit to run fiber generally; so you would be doing both.

New comment by chrishacken in "The War on Upstart Fiber Internet Providers"

chrishacken — Sat, 27 Jun 2020 01:08:16 +0000

Are you in Hartford County, MD by chance?

New comment by chrishacken in "The War on Upstart Fiber Internet Providers"

chrishacken — Sat, 27 Jun 2020 00:22:28 +0000

Generally looking at around $200,000 for one of those. They work great in certain areas. If you’re doing urban work like we are they’re not so great because there’s a utility every 10 feet.

New comment by chrishacken in "The War on Upstart Fiber Internet Providers"

chrishacken — Sat, 27 Jun 2020 00:19:36 +0000

The problem with this is you can name a “kickback” by anything else, like “rent”, and that makes it legal.

The War on Upstart Fiber Optic Internet Providers

chrishacken — Wed, 11 Mar 2020 12:46:33 +0000

Article URL: http://chrishacken.com/the-war-on-upstart-fiber-optic-internet-providers?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22545302

Points: 29

# Comments: 2

New comment by chrishacken in "Start Your Own ISP"

chrishacken — Sun, 18 Aug 2019 00:48:20 +0000

I'd love to know where you can get a fiber circuit for $500/m. (And even if you can, then you probably can't compete with whoever's selling you that circuit anyway.) When we started we haggled considerably.. (had to sign a 20 year deal) and managed to get a 2G/10G circuit for $1,500/m. (A 1G circuit would have been $1200/m)

New comment by chrishacken in "Starting an ISP: Deploying Fiber"

chrishacken — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 18:15:42 +0000

We're a profitable company doing over a quarter million a year ATM. We aren't running fiber on a whim.

New comment by chrishacken in "Starting an ISP: Deploying Fiber"

chrishacken — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 15:59:35 +0000

I’m already well aware there’s fiber on poles here. The difference is, their network isn’t built to support FTTH, it’s built to support a few larger enterprises that are willing to pay $3,000/m for a circuit. Name one person that doesn’t want fiber internet. Saying there isn’t a big enough market for service when literally every single household and business purchases internet is ridiculous.

We already have 60% of the street we just cut up signed up for service.

New comment by chrishacken in "Starting an ISP: Deploying Fiber"

chrishacken — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 04:48:26 +0000

I think the key difference is that infrastructure is more of a long term investment. We can return 10x’s but it’ll likely take a little longer than a software company would. However, i can make the case that we have a higher guarantee of delivering than a software company can.

New comment by chrishacken in "Starting an ISP: Deploying Fiber"

chrishacken — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 04:45:59 +0000

Both. Our latency is better than cable in most cases.

New comment by chrishacken in "Starting an ISP: Deploying Fiber"

chrishacken — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 04:45:01 +0000

That it is.

New comment by chrishacken in "Starting an ISP: Deploying Fiber"

chrishacken — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 04:13:21 +0000

Fixed the grammar :p

New comment by chrishacken in "Starting an ISP: Deploying Fiber"

chrishacken — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 03:04:26 +0000

You would think that. Unfortunately many/most people care more about their precious roads than they do about infrastructure.

New comment by chrishacken in "Starting an ISP: Deploying Fiber"

chrishacken — Mon, 10 Sep 2018 02:09:39 +0000

So Mimosa, one of the hardware vendors we use, does actually have this built-in to their firmware. The issue is, from what I've seen, is that it hops around too much. It also moves to congested channels sometimes. I'm sure there's a way to perfect it, we just don't have the time at the moment (I also don't believe they provide full API access yet, so I'm not even sure if we can change it without creating an automated UI tool that clicks around on a browser.)

Starting an ISP: Deploying Fiber

chrishacken — Sun, 09 Sep 2018 23:45:26 +0000

Article URL: http://chrishacken.com/starting-an-internet-service-provider-part-2-deploying-fiber/