Dear Prudence,
We have a house in a rural area where for years we had only one option for broadband internet that was slow and unreliable. Not long ago, the local phone monopoly ran fiber to our area, but we and our immediate neighbors were shut out because one neighbor would not grant an easement to run 20 feet of cable under a strip of his land that borders the road. We all pleaded with him and offered to compensate him, to no avail. (He’s been unreasonable about other property issues in the past.) My husband and I managed to set up a private network for our neighbors, at considerable expense, without the easement. Shortly thereafter, the old broadband option shut down. Now the cantankerous neighbor has asked if he can hook up to our private network. I say no way. My husband says the guy’s a harmless old coot, and there’s no point in punishing him. Another neighbor suggested we should let him on if he agrees to pay us the entire cost of setting up the network, since it was his intransigence that made us incur the cost. Your thoughts?
—Wireless In The Woods