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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

#21

Post by berbec »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #16
thelastidiot wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Only in the right parts of Manhattan. I live on 78th street between 1st & York (0th) avenues. I am in a one square block fiber dead zone. :(

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#22

Post by exabrial »

I works really like one of these projects to trial a 'practical' last mile, like something like cat6 for the last 100m.

In KC, I live in a 4 story apt, and frequently stopped to talk to the installers when Google fiber was pulling everything into the building. It really is Fiber to a jack in your unit, but the last 5ft is still copper Ethernet. I figure they could have saved themselves a bundle of $ if they ran copper inside the building. The consumer wouldn't notice and it's a lot more practical.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#23

Post by rb808 »

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.

That's bad, but also interesting that you can have the world's main tech region without much fiber to home. Maybe fiber isn't really that important.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#24

Post by rayiner »

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...

The math is bleaker than that (see my other post, calculating $7,000 per subscribing household).

Also, out of the $80 you pay, most of it gets eaten up by operational costs. Charter's EBITDA is about 35% of revenues. So even if the city pays no taxes., it'll take 250 months to pay back your share of the network.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#25

Post by kinsomo »

tunap wrote: post #17

I sure hope they don't need to open up roads(lane closures) to pull the fiber. Traffic is already agonizing, closures would make the commuting nightmare even worse for cars, buses & bikes alike.

Hopefully they're laying conduit with new road construction. I read somewhere that there are proposals to mandate that (can't remember if it was state or federal level).

Edit: seems like it's both:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/natio...

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/10/fed-u...

https://www.csg.org/pubs/capitolideas/enews/cs41_1.aspx

https://www.azleg.gov/legtext/50leg/2r/bills/sb1402s.htm

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#26

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#28

Post by volkk »

rb808 wrote: post #23
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.

That's bad, but also interesting that you can have the world's main tech region without much fiber to home. Maybe fiber isn't really that important.

> Maybe fiber isn't really that important.

My gut feeling is that it is, but the current monopolies providing alternatives just haven't ruined the experience enough for this to be pursued heavily by people with deep pockets

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#29

Post by almiron10 »

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.

Calling it a tiny city is a bit of a stretch considering the sprawl along the entire front range (South Denver to Fort Collins). You're suddenly at 3+ million.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#30

Post by kiallmacinnes »

exabrial wrote: post #22

I works really like one of these projects to trial a 'practical' last mile, like something like cat6 for the last 100m. In KC, I live in a 4 story apt, and frequently stopped to talk to the installers when Google fiber was pulling everything into the building. It really is Fiber to a jack in your unit, but the last 5ft is still copper Ethernet. I figure they could have saved themselves a bundle of $ if they ran coppe…

I don't think they would have saved a bundle at all. I've no references to back this up, however - I would guess the dominant cost of installing cable (fiber or cat6 or coax) is not the cable itself, but the permits and staff hours etc required to do it.

Installing fiber is more future proof, resulting in - potentially - less costs down the line.

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