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Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

dailycamera.com

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Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#11

Post by thelastidiot »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #8
thelastidiot wrote: post #5

Once in a while a story about another city getting fiber, while it's fantastic (without knowing much about the cost), progress is slow and even in the heart of the Bay Area, we are pathetically lagging. https://fiber.google.com/newcities/ is looking sparse and honestly worrisome. It's amazing how much the US is behind implementing another solution they invented.

> It's amazing how much the US is behind implementing another solution they invented America is vast. My opinion is local FTTH networks will eventually be interconnected wirelessly, either point-to-point or by bouncing off LEO satellites. Sometimes, letting infrastructure roll out organically is the sounder solution.

I understand vast. I am not expecting Montana to get full coverage by the end of the decade. But San Jose, California? Hello?

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#12

Post by bytematic »

tschellenbach wrote: post #6

I moved from Amsterdam to Boulder, CO. The tech ecosystem is amazing here. It's crazy how many tech companies are in a tiny city with ~100k people. You just walk down the street and it's Nest, Google, Github, JumpCloud, SolidFire, Logrhythm, VictorOps and hundreds of smaller startups. Great ecosystem. People are friendly and welcoming. It's amazing, except the internet. It's expensive, unreliable, and slowwwww.

I was going to say it sounds similar to madison but that is half the population! Would you say it is oversaturated with tech?

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#15

Post by rayiner »

Some back of the napkin math. $140 million for 40,000 households in Boulder = $3,500 per household. If 50% of people subscribe (typical for municipal broadband), that's $7,000 per subscribing household, or higher than Charter's market cap per subscriber.

A quarter of the population of the city is below the poverty line. If the intent is to offer them subsidized broadband, let's assume we get no capital recovery from those households. That brings the cost to $4,666 per household, or $9,300 per subscribing household.

This is high, but not out of the ballpark. Verizon spent about $3,500 on average for each paying subscriber for FiOS. Chattanooga's system was about $5,500 per household.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#16

Post by JumpCrisscross »

thelastidiot wrote: post #11
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's amazing how much the US is behind implementing another solution they invented America is vast. My opinion is local FTTH networks will eventually be interconnected wirelessly, either point-to-point or by bouncing off LEO satellites. Sometimes, letting infrastructure roll out organically is the sounder solution.

I understand vast. I am not expecting Montana to get full coverage by the end of the decade. But San Jose, California? Hello?

> But San Jose, California? Hello?

It routinely blows me away that my Manhattan internet is faster and cheaper than that at my parents' in Cupertino. I suspect common local political dysfunction underwrites the differences in housing supply, public transportation and internet quality.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#18

Post by makerofspoons »

I went to school at the University of Colorado Boulder. Something this article doesn't mention is that the city already has over 100 miles of fiber laid that isn't currently being lit up: http://www.govtech.com/dc/articles/Boulder-Colo-To-Light-Up-.... There were several groups of students looking to build companies to utilize this existing infrastructure, as well as business interests outside the city, but it just never went anywhere. I hope that it will see use soon, I was very envious of my friends that would commute in from nearby Longmont that could use their awesome municipal ISP.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#19

Post by ada1981 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #7

Boulder has a population of about 110,000 people [1]. Given "the estimated cost of the entire network is around $140 million" [2], the per-capita cost of this network comes to $1,300. I pay $80 a month for my 300 / 20 service. In 16 months, I would be able to pay for my share of this network. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boulder,_Colorado [2] http://www.dailycamera.com/news/boulder/ci_31941127/public-s...

Probably should be paid for relative to annual income, but yeah, seems like a reasonable expense.

Once it’s paid off, what is the maintience cost?

Will the city simply offer it as a competing service? Make it free for everyone and then tax?

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#20

Post by yock »

rayiner wrote: post #15

Some back of the napkin math. $140 million for 40,000 households in Boulder = $3,500 per household. If 50% of people subscribe (typical for municipal broadband), that's $7,000 per subscribing household, or higher than Charter's market cap per subscriber. A quarter of the population of the city is below the poverty line. If the intent is to offer them subsidized broadband, let's assume we get no capital recovery from…

Which makes for a pretty compelling reason as to why Charter hasn't done it themselves.
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