Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

dailycamera.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 214 posts

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#51

Post by ttul »

morley wrote: post #45
ttul wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I enjoy the state of the art sewer system in my city. It keeps the brown stuff contained and properly disposed of. And it cost billions, with a 100 year replacement cycle that is constantly in progress.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#53

Post by dahart »

yock wrote: post #44
dahart wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It seems far more likely, given history, that this estimate is low.

Which history do you mean? A lot of people have fiber to their house, that’s part of history.

If the cost has ballooned out of control, why? Costs don’t have to do that, and they haven’t always done that historically.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#54

Post by gonzo »

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…

$1.1m/year payback (20 years)

$1,100,000/year, 40,000 households, so $27.50/year mean income per household to service the debt.

If only 50% of households (you said people) subscribe, then $55/year mean income per household to service the debt. If, again, as you state, no capital contribution from households below the poverty line, then, using your math (which, btw, double counts these), we're talking $110/year, or $9.16/sub/month to service the debt.

Here in Austin, there are three providers of 1gbps/1gbps FTTH internet, and all are priced just under $60/mo.

I think someone can probably figure out how to build a similar service in Boulder, paying the City of Boulder $10/mo per subscriber household, and still make fat rolls of cash.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#55

Post by jartelt »

rayiner wrote: post #47
julienchastang wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eve…

Comcast charges $160 a month for 1000 Mbps internet and $110 a month for 400 Mbps. The $100 per month you quote isn't terrible when compared to those numbers.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#56

Post by dahart »

crunchlibrarian wrote: post #42
dahart wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That could explain it. My fiber comes in from an above-ground wire strung on poles. They’re proposing to bury the lines, at high cost?

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#57

Post by tw04 »

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…

Using cat6 would mean you've just invested in the next 5 years, 10 Max before that all has to be ripped out. By going fiber to the last 5ft, you theoretically can use the same infrastructure for the next 50 years. If they had started doing single mode fiber in the 90s, upgrading us to 10gbe would be an optic swap in a pop, not digging cable out of the ground.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#58

Post by zdragnar »

morley wrote: post #45
ttul wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

It's entirely possible that within a year or two, it won't be state of the art at all, if the hype around 5g wireless speeds and bandwidth are to be believed.

Spending a significant amount of money on something that requires a significant install and maintenance (trenching bedrock, cut lines) when there are potential solutions just around the corner seems to me like bad policy.

I'm sure that there are other, more effective uses the government could put that money towards. Maybe the most efficient and beneficial thing for Boulder would be to not take on more debt, I don't know. Just don't be too quick to assume that all expenses and public works projects are net positives.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#59

Post by numbsafari »

rayiner wrote: post #47
julienchastang wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eve…

$100/mo for FTTH vs. $69/mo for 250MB/s Comcast?

I'll take the FTTH and leave Comcast and Century Link behind, thank you very much.

Would be even better if the City charged you for the fiber link and then let you select your backend provider. E.g., the way consumer choice works in the electric space. Let the city run/own the cable, and let the back-end carriers compete to provide the backbone and value-added services. Give every house a basic connection that lets them interact with city and state services only, for free.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#60

Post by [deleted] »

jartelt wrote: post #55
rayiner wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 eve…

Comcast charges $160 a month for 1000 Mbps internet and $110 a month for 400 Mbps. The $100 per month you quote isn't terrible when compared to those numbers.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN