Two Guys Hated Using Comcast, So They Built Their Own Fiber ISP

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Samuel Herman and Alexander Baciu never liked using Comcast's cable broadband. Now, the residents of Saline, Michigan, operate a fiber Internet service provider that competes against Comcast in their neighborhoods and has ambitions to expand. 'All throughout my life pretty much, I've had to deal with Xfinity's bullcrap, them not being able to handle the speeds that we need,' Herman told Ars. 'I lived in a house of 10. I have seven other brothers and sisters, and there's 10 of us in total with my parents.' With all those kids using the Internet for school and other needs, 'it just doesn't work out,' he said. Herman was particularly frustrated with Comcast upload speeds, which are much slower than the cable service's download speeds. 'Many times we would have to call Comcast and let them know our bandwidth was slowing down... then they would say, 'OK, we'll refresh the system.' So then it would work again for a week to two weeks, and then again we'd have the same issues,' he said. Herman, now 25, got married in 2021 and started building his own house, and he tried to find another ISP to serve the property. He was familiar with local Internet service providers because he worked in construction for his father's company, which contracts with ISPs to build their networks. But no fiber ISP was looking to compete directly against Comcast where he lived, though Metronet and 123NET offer fiber elsewhere in the city, Herman said. He ended up paying Comcast $120 a month for gigabit download service with slower upload speeds. Baciu, who lives about a mile away from Herman, was also stuck with Comcast and was paying about the same amount for gigabit download speeds.

Herman said he was the chief operating officer of his father's construction company and that he shifted the business 'from doing just directional drilling to be a turnkey contractor for ISPs.' Baciu, Herman's brother-in-law (having married Herman's oldest sister), was the chief construction officer. Fueled by their knowledge of the business and their dislike of Comcast, they founded a fiber ISP called Prime-One. Now, Herman is paying $80 a month to his own company for symmetrical gigabit service. Prime-One also offers 500Mbps for $75, 2Gbps for $95, and 5Gbps for $110. The first 30 days are free, and all plans have unlimited data and no contracts. 'We are 100 percent fiber optic,' Baciu told Ars. 'Everything that we're doing is all underground. We're not doing aerial because we really want to protect the infrastructure and make sure we're having a reliable connection.' Each customer's Optical Network Terminal (ONT) and other equipment is included in the service plan. Prime-One provides a modem and the ONT, plus a Wi-Fi router if the customer prefers not to use their own router. They don't charge equipment or installation fees, Herman and Baciu said.

Prime-One began serving customers in January 2025, and Baciu said the network has been built to about 1,500 homes in Saline with about 75 miles of fiber installed. Prime-One intends to serve nearby towns as well, with the founders saying the plan is to serve 4,000 homes with the initial build and then expand further. A bit more than 100 residents have bought service so far, they said. Herman said the company is looking to sign up about 30 percent of the homes in its network area to make a profit. 'I feel fairly confident,' Herman said, noting the number of customers who signed up with the initial construction not even halfway finished.

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