Original Cost Sharing Policy for LAH
High Speed Internet in Los Altos Hills has been an issue for many years. As a resident near Fremont Rd, the Comcast Cable connection comes to a pole right at my neighbors house next to me. I was quoted $17,000 to get service installed in 2014 to extend the cable plant 3 poles above ground to my house. Above ground existing pole installs typically cost over $10,000 per home and underground connects on private streets are typically not offered at all.
In 2016, the City Council decided to offer some relief to residents who are in challenging area of town that can’t get viable internet service from AT&T or Comcast. The Town adopted a resolution on August 18, 2016 to provide a 25 percent cost sharing policy for the construction of Comcast Cable System Infrastructure within public ways.
The official town resolution on their town website for this is available at:
We have also archived this PDF document on our website at:
You can read an article in the Town Crier about this resolution here.
Cost Sharing Resolution needs to updated for all viable vendors
In 2021, the need for high speed internet is more than ever with Covid forcing almost everyone to be home and virtual on every activity of their life from work, school and entertainment.
Los Altos Hills Community Fiber typically offers a less expensive install compared to Comcast and faster Internet connectivity option than Comcast. Comcast also has basic design architecture issues that stem from their original “cable TV” designs from the 70’s and 80’s that make it an legacy and outdated Internet medium compared to a Fiber solution. The 90 percent down and 10 percent up is a deal breaker for many residents that want to run zoom meetings and security cameras.
Comcast’s thick wire cable infrastructure simply can not compete in the long term with a fiber to the premise (home) solution that LAHCF is offering today. The town should not be spending any more money cost sharing for outdated telecom technologies that will only become more obsolete in a few years. Fiber solutions allow increases in speeds of 10 gigabit/sec (available now for LAHCF) to 40 gigabit /sec in the future and more with some low cost devices. Comcast will never be able to provide these speeds over their cable physical plant – EVER. They are not set up convert their infrastructure and whole architecture from Cable to Fiber to each home anytime soon. And they really don’t want to.
AT&T and Comcast would almost have to start over with much of their infrastructure to deliver service the last 1/4 to 1 /2 mile. They have invested over time in their copper/wire based solutions and can not simply switch out to fiber.
LAHCF is a completely new build starting from scratch. We are installing all fiber based networking infrastructure directly to the homes. This is the future of connectivity for the world, and how we are taking it the last mile to the home itself. We are also not installing any of our new owned network on poles.
A simple act of the council could amend the Cost Sharing Policy resolution from 2016 to include any viable Internet provider that the residents wishes to invest in as they are investing in 75 percent of the investment.
An example of this new wording for this resolution (not approved or discussed yet by LAH Council) can be found in the PDF document below.
Los Altos Hills Community Fiber 