said by cdru 
:said by daslog :I guess it really depends on how much profit they make per customer. For example, if it costs them 5,000 grand to wire 10 houses and they only make 10 bucks a month profit per house, then it's going to take 4+ years for Comcast to break even.
A year ago Verizon happily wired my neighborhood with FiOS. At the time I believe the price tag was somewhere around $1500 per house. I pay $40/month to Verizon for my data online line. At at price it will take 3 years for Verizon to recoup that install cost, and that was with 100% of my payment going to pay for the install. If you figure $10/month (still probably high) it will take over 12 years to recoup the cost.
Comcast has the exact same line buried in my backyard as they did 27 years ago when they built my addition. They have had plenty of time to recoup the initial install costs over that 27 year period. The thought that it might take them 5 or 10 years to recoup the costs shouldn't even be an issue.
And it is issues like that which is causing Verizon a big headache with it's shareholders. They are dumping all this money in FIOS but are not seeing the return on their investment right now.
