Considering all the mergers that are going down I hope that eventually more cities follow this model.
Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt
41–50 of 214 posts
Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which makes for a pretty compelling reason as to why Charter hasn't done it themselves.
That, or maybe $140M is a gross over estimate, or is referring to more than what’s discussed in the article? I’m tending toward that; it can’t possibly cost anywhere near $10k per subscriber to build out fiber normally, even in small cities, can it? Seems like if it was normally that expensive, there wouldn’t be fiber anywhere. What’s so different in Boulder? I’d speculate that CenturyLink paid less than $1k to run f…
Costs in Boulder are quite a bit higher than other cities because we have very little to no topsoil in areas, you hit bedrock (which is often granite) immediately, and you need to drill or blast that out for most underground construction.
At least that was the line Google fed us when we got rejected for their fiber, who knows.
Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt
#43Boulder 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...
As Rayiner commented elsewhere in the thread [1] Boulder has a population of 40,000 households, which is the appropriate metric to use when people within a household regularly share a connection. It gets more expensive when you consider non-subscribing households, subsidized households, and operating costs. Payback periods quickly climb to 10-20 years or more, depending on how you do your math.
However, I think it should also be considered that a municipal broadband network adds value to a city in much the same way that a road network, electric grid, natural gas, or water/sewer network adds value. For a point of contrast, the city contains ~300 miles of roads at ~$5 million per mile, or a road network value of $1.5 billion dollars. That's about $40,000 per household! Other utilities have huge costs as well.
I believe that Internet access is becoming as important as transportation, water, and electric service for the economic health of a city.
Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which makes for a pretty compelling reason as to why Charter hasn't done it themselves.
That, or maybe $140M is a gross over estimate, or is referring to more than what’s discussed in the article? I’m tending toward that; it can’t possibly cost anywhere near $10k per subscriber to build out fiber normally, even in small cities, can it? Seems like if it was normally that expensive, there wouldn’t be fiber anywhere. What’s so different in Boulder? I’d speculate that CenturyLink paid less than $1k to run f…
> it can’t possibly cost anywhere near $10k per subscriber to build out fiber normally, even in small cities, can it?
I don't know, because I don't possess any expertise in the matter. What I do have is a history of watching public works projects budgets balloon completely out of control. It seems far more likely, given history, that this estimate is low.
Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This is precisely the kind of long term investment that cities should make.
I agree with you, but governments will ask: is it better to back an expensive technology, or a cheaper one like wireless? Is it the government's responsibility to provide the state-of-the-art. or the minimum viable?
I'd prefer it if us Americans would believe in the former, but unfortunately I think our culture expects the government to do the latter (or nothing at all).
Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt
#46What type of software engineering jobs are available in that area?
if you're all excited about the fiber, then better question is what jobs are available that pay enough to live inside the city limits?
property isn't as expensive as SF, but the pay isn't SF either. a sibling comment mentions all the university/government positions, but starting salaries there don't pay to live in boulder. of all my fulltime coworkers at the university, i was the only one with a boulder address, and i still wasn't inside the city. (the students were usually inside the city, since they were paying for it with loans, and living in shithole apartments.)
Google, Amazon and Uber recruiters in the area are all pestering me. Twitter, Intel, Cray and nVidia are here. Microsoft seems to come and go? Lockheed, Ball, Oracle, NetApp, Workday, Workiva, and The Trade Desk always have job openings.
Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt
#47Some 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…
Repaid over twenty years, as I understand it: "A 20-year debt structure would require annual payments of $1.1 million from the city, according to staff estimates. That could be supplemented with money from the city's general fund and, perhaps, revenue generated by early customers of the fiber network." Though there is some math discrepancy since that would not cover the $140 million. Nonetheless, as a Boulderite, I a…
That's about 10 million per year in debt payments for the full $140 million investment. If you assume that 50% of households subscribe, and the city subsidizes rates so no capital is recovered from folks below the poverty line, that's about $686/year per subscribing household. Which is crazy high--the non-subsidized ARPU will have to be $140 to break even. (Which is also not out of line--Verizon will barely break even on FiOS at $110 ARPU, and that deployment was cheaper and had no subsidy component.)
Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt
#48The bigger picture is Boulder is attracting startups.
Having fiber broadband is a plus to that attraction. So a better broadband means a better economy: more activity, more jobs, more people, more taxes... The cost of that infrastructure makes total sense.
Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt
#49I 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…
For all but the smallest apartment buildings, this is not a good idea. Ethernet has a 100m limit. By the time you go up a wall, back down it, zig and zag around things in the ceiling, etc, you can quickly hit that limit. Then you can start getting errors such as packet loss, crosstalk, etc. Yes, it depends on the size and layout of your building (maybe your building has a comms cabinet on each floor, or wing, etc) bu…
I did technician work as a side job during college. It seemed like most dorms had data closets every floor/every other floor. Some buildings only had them in the attic and basement, but they were also usually limited to 4 levels. Are most large apartment buildings similar?
Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt
#50I have municipal telecom where I live in Vermont and it waaaaay faster and cheaper than the competition. It makes Comcast look like a joke. Hopefully, Boulder will have a similar outcome.