OAKFIELD, N.Y. — Figuring out why some parts of Western New York have the benefit of broadband access and why others don't is like peeling an endless onion that delivers only tears.
For John Oakes, he's been using his AT&T home internet plan as his only access during the pandemic.
But John doesn't live in the deep valleys of Allegany County or the mountains of the Adirondacks. He lives in Elba, about 10 minutes from Batavia.
Oakes lives on Weatherwax Road, about 850 feet from the corner of Drake Street Road, where there is a Spectrum connection running between Oakfield and Elba. He recently had Spectrum conduct a survey to find out what it would cost him to connect. But this recent survey is just the latest chapter of a long story in his life dealing with a lack of access.
"We’ve lived here since 2006," Oakes said. "We’ve had an ongoing issue with Time Warner at the time, told us that they wanted $43,000 for cable on our road."
Oakes says then Time Warner merged with Charter and his address was on a list for the Spectrum expansion. But that didn't come to fruition because Charter, which operates Spectrum, was nearly kicked out of New York State by the Public Service Commission.
Charter renegotiated its deal with the PSC and continued to expand coverage. Then Oakes noticed he didn't make the new list.
"We were on the list, and then mysteriously were taken off the list," Oakes said.
Oakes lives around the corner from his in-laws, about 1,000 feet as the crow flies from his back yard to their farm. They don't have access to Spectrum either, and they live on Drake Street Road. The Spectrum line terminates at the corner of their property. Their house sits nearly 800 feet from the road.
"I decided to do another survey and ask how much it was going to cost," Oakes said. He also requested a survey for his in-law's property.
"It was $20,000," Oakes said.
To be precious, according to the quote Oakes showed 2 On Your Side, Spectrum quoted $20,499.63 to connect 850 feet of cable to Oakes house.
Oakes' in-laws were quoted just shy of $13,000 to connect 775 feet of cable.
Why the $7,000 difference in the quotes for Oakes and his in-laws?
"It doesn’t make sense," Oakes said. "Not only that but if you look at where my in-laws' line is and their neighbors have it, there’s no reason that they couldn’t have run the line or run the line initially, instead of charging them that exorbitant rate."
If the quotes weren’t insulting enough for Oakes, the timeframe to get service was. If Oakes decided to pay the $20,499.63 for the Spectrum connection, it was projected to take 240 days.
"240 days. If I were to fork over the money right now, that’s screaming that you want my business," Oakes said.
There’s nothing Oakes can do. Spectrum isn’t expanding service anymore in that area because their deal with the public service commission allowed them to expand coverage elsewhere. He can’t use satellite for his job in telehealth. He doesn’t have an extra $20,000 kicking around to pay for internet service that will take three quarters of a year to install.
"It’s shameful because you’re living in a modern connected society and you’re declining people the right to be connected," Oakes said.
2 On Your Side reached out to Spectrum to ask about these quotes, they said in part:
"Every single location under consideration goes through an extremely thorough survey and review process. There are many variables, and there is no one size fits all. The survey(s) provides us with what is necessary to assess, work with and provide specific feedback to interested homeowners"
A spokesperson for Spectrum did not answer our question about if a house sitting further back on a lot would be grounds for the provider to skip over it.
If you have been given a quote for broadband access by an internet provider that seems high, or have questions about broadband access in Western New York, you can email 2 On Your Side about this topic directly: broadband@wgrz.com