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“Dig once” bill could bring fiber Internet to much of the US

arstechnica.com

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Re: “Dig once” bill could bring fiber Internet to much of the US

#101

Post by planteen »

jdshaf wrote: post #93
maerF0x0 wrote: post #74

Honest question. Is there something better/faster than fibre that they should be laying instead? Seems like fiber is just enough to catch up, but we'd rather get ahead.

Actually, a single fiber strand can support over 1 Terebit per second in real world applications and even more in a lab setting. Fiber-to-the-Home ISPs today can easily provide 1 and 10 Gigabit per second connections using low cost optics on either end of the fiber cables (and some do!). When you see fiber Internet offerings like Verizon FiOS that has speeds of 50-500 Megabits per second, you are seeing the result of…

Just as another data point, CenturyLink in Denver offers gigabit to your home with fiber. Considering most people don't have 10g NICs at home, I think it is a pretty good offering.

Re: “Dig once” bill could bring fiber Internet to much of the US

#102

Post by jon-wood »

zkms wrote: post #40
rayiner wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Infrastructure, whether broadband or highways, has positive externalities that are hard for infrastructure builders to capture, so the free market under-invests in infrastructure. However, government investment in infrastructure also is distortionary and needs to be considered in every instance. For example, it's great that we can get products delivered overnight from Amazon. However, as you point out, that is effect…

> That essentially strips away an advantage local retailers and manufacturers would otherwise have against big, national companies like Amazon. Indeed -- my hope for "dig once" policies would be that they have an opposite effect on competition; namely, that national-scale incumbents (who can currently afford to throw a million dollars here or there to put in fibre of their own in a new region/market) can get effectiv…

In the UK we've had laws requiring common access to telecoms infrastructure since at least the early 2000s, and its had exactly that effect. In almost any home you have a choice of a dozen or so providers, ranging from super cheap basic providers who'll give you a few megabits and a stingy data allowance right up to business specialists who can provide multiple redundant lines on different backbones with 4G backup, generally without any sort of installation being required because. We've also got a big cable provider who run their own lines and give pretty competitive pricing because of all the other options.

Re: “Dig once” bill could bring fiber Internet to much of the US

#103

Post by hhw »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #4
rayiner wrote: post #2

This is a great bill. It creates a slight public subsidy for broadband, but the total amount of subsidy is minimized by tying it to digging that's already going to be done. This should be extended to power line and water pipe construction. No reason you can't put in some dark fiber while you've got someone up there hanging new power line (which I imagine is way more expensive). Most importantly, it minimizes market d…

More importantly: we already did this. Remember when they overhauled the highway system in a lot of areas back in the late 80s and through the 90s? While they were digging, they dropped a lot of fiber. Almost all of the major routes we use today for teleco/internet routing were laid or substantially upgraded then. Almost all the dark fiber laid was laid then. The hilarious part? Most of the fiber laid could do at lea…

SONET was replaced with DWDM a decade ago. With 100GHz ITU Grid C, you would get 40 channels of up to 10Gbps each. More recently, most long haul providers have been upgrading to coherent using 50GHz spacing with 80 channels of 200Gbps, further broken down into 10Gb and 40Gb TDM or PDM circuits. Long haul density is not the issue.

For a real life example, on a recent quote we received, fiber down the west coast from 2001 6th Ave in Seattle to 624 S Grand Ave in Los Angeles was only 1/3rd the cost of going from 624 S Grand Ave out to Malibu.

The issue is not with long haul density, but with last mile due to restrictive municipal regulations and procedures, and lack of collaboration between different metro networks.

Re: “Dig once” bill could bring fiber Internet to much of the US

#104

Post by hvidgaard »

samstave wrote: post #51
rayiner wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the idea is to get fiber into the last mile. Vast parts of the country are still under construction. New subdivisions are being built, and people are moving there from established northeastern/midwestern states. Requiring conduit to be put underground as you build the roads for a new subdivision, for example, would dramatically reduce the costs to deploy fiber in these places.

> think the idea is to get fiber into the last mile. Vast parts of the country are still under construction. New subdivisions are being built Such an interesting subject is this; we have freaking building codes, regulations and requirements - esp re: elec and structure and such... We need to take a step back and make a freaking INFRA code that requires what the data line requirements to a building should be. DATA SHO…

A "radical" idea I'm advocating for, is that all of the following is concidered nessesary for the society, and thus should be done by the government, or heavyly regulared (non profit, enduser owned type of companies):

- Roads

- Water

- Sewer

- Community heat

- Healthcare

- Education

- Pension

- Internet connectivity

- Banking (including loans for 1 family houses) and card payment

Re: “Dig once” bill could bring fiber Internet to much of the US

#105

Post by jimbokun »

hvidgaard wrote: post #104
samstave wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> think the idea is to get fiber into the last mile. Vast parts of the country are still under construction. New subdivisions are being built Such an interesting subject is this; we have freaking building codes, regulations and requirements - esp re: elec and structure and such... We need to take a step back and make a freaking INFRA code that requires what the data line requirements to a building should be. DATA SHO…

A "radical" idea I'm advocating for, is that all of the following is concidered nessesary for the society, and thus should be done by the government, or heavyly regulared (non profit, enduser owned type of companies): - Roads - Water - Sewer - Community heat - Healthcare - Education - Pension - Internet connectivity - Banking (including loans for 1 family houses) and card payment

You just covered a significant fraction of all economic activity (maybe a majority).

Perhaps that was your intent?

Re: “Dig once” bill could bring fiber Internet to much of the US

#106

Post by kortex »

hvidgaard wrote: post #104
samstave wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> think the idea is to get fiber into the last mile. Vast parts of the country are still under construction. New subdivisions are being built Such an interesting subject is this; we have freaking building codes, regulations and requirements - esp re: elec and structure and such... We need to take a step back and make a freaking INFRA code that requires what the data line requirements to a building should be. DATA SHO…

A "radical" idea I'm advocating for, is that all of the following is concidered nessesary for the society, and thus should be done by the government, or heavyly regulared (non profit, enduser owned type of companies): - Roads - Water - Sewer - Community heat - Healthcare - Education - Pension - Internet connectivity - Banking (including loans for 1 family houses) and card payment

Banking as a utility? I love it. Credit unions are already a thing, and we have the National Credit Union Association, it's a small jump to the idea of a National Credit Union.

And we need single payer healthcare yesterday.

Re: “Dig once” bill could bring fiber Internet to much of the US

#107

Post by jdavis703 »

rayiner wrote: post #60
samstave wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> think the idea is to get fiber into the last mile. Vast parts of the country are still under construction. New subdivisions are being built Such an interesting subject is this; we have freaking building codes, regulations and requirements - esp re: elec and structure and such... We need to take a step back and make a freaking INFRA code that requires what the data line requirements to a building should be. DATA SHO…

I think the breakdown should roughly be: developers must wire out to the property line (and if they're building a subdivision, out to the main road). The county should wire anywhere a public road is being built and bring glass to some reasonably convenient place (because otherwise developers would have nothing to connect the other end of the line to). Private companies should handle everything that's not dumb glass.…

Why are we even building suburban subdivisions and strip malls still? Maybe if we utilized the infrastructure in urban areas (and even existing suburbs) we wouldn't have the need to keep investing in new infrastructure while our old infrastructure crumbles.

Re: “Dig once” bill could bring fiber Internet to much of the US

#108

Post by tlow »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #4
rayiner wrote: post #2

This is a great bill. It creates a slight public subsidy for broadband, but the total amount of subsidy is minimized by tying it to digging that's already going to be done. This should be extended to power line and water pipe construction. No reason you can't put in some dark fiber while you've got someone up there hanging new power line (which I imagine is way more expensive). Most importantly, it minimizes market d…

More importantly: we already did this. Remember when they overhauled the highway system in a lot of areas back in the late 80s and through the 90s? While they were digging, they dropped a lot of fiber. Almost all of the major routes we use today for teleco/internet routing were laid or substantially upgraded then. Almost all the dark fiber laid was laid then. The hilarious part? Most of the fiber laid could do at lea…

I didn't know about any of this prior to reading your post, so please forgive my naivete. 100% municipal internet access in the US is a game changer for education as education laws like California's CA 61199[1] requires that primary instructional materials be available to 100% of students in both the classroom and at home

In other words, 100% internet deployment or municipal wifi or whatever form it takes, literally changes what is allowable to primary instructional material content in public education in the united states.[2]

[1] http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/cr/cf/textedcod60119.asp

[2] IANAL and different states have different laws, what I am speaking about should be considered California specific as that is the only domain of my knowledge

Re: “Dig once” bill could bring fiber Internet to much of the US

#109

Post by [deleted] »

saycheese wrote: post #24
rayiner wrote: post #2

This is a great bill. It creates a slight public subsidy for broadband, but the total amount of subsidy is minimized by tying it to digging that's already going to be done. This should be extended to power line and water pipe construction. No reason you can't put in some dark fiber while you've got someone up there hanging new power line (which I imagine is way more expensive). Most importantly, it minimizes market d…

>> "It creates a slight public subsidy for broadband" Maybe it's me, but $3 billion is not a small amount of money: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13941757

[deleted]

Re: “Dig once” bill could bring fiber Internet to much of the US

#110

Post by jandrese »

Animats wrote: post #77

This has already been done on many long-haul routes. Fiber to the home is tougher. You can lay a tube past all the houses, but connecting to it means putting in an access box, a tube to the house, and somewhere nearby, a concentrator.

My grandmother's house got fiber this way in sleepy rural Minnesota. They were digging up and replacing all of the streets in town and laying fiber (including the runs to the home) as they went. It seemed really smart to me.

I have to admit I was pretty surprised to go down into her basement for a jar of homemade pickles and seeing an ONT bolted to the wall. She doesn't even have a computer or cable TV, it was only providing POTS. It's going to be quite the perk for whomever moves in after she dies though.

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