Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt • Hacker News Board

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#91

Post by monocasa » Thu, Jun 14, 2018, 3:39 PM UTC

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.

I heard on the grapevine that the real reason was that city council tried to hold the new campus hostage as a bargaining chip (nice campus you have there, it'd be a shame if the property was re-assessed and greatly increased your tax burden) but Google was having none of it and pulled the plug then and there.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#92

Post by StillBored » Thu, Jun 14, 2018, 3:40 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #82

ttul wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is precisely the kind of long term investment that cities should make.

That's twenty years. There is a decent chance that mainstream high speed Internet will be wireless in 20 years.

Wireless has been perpetually behind star topology wired networks despite the fact that it tends to be much easier to upgrade a few antenna's and radios around a city then make people buy new modems every couple years. Worse, wireless is really spotty, I can barely get a data connection where I work and at my house with my carrier, much less a few Mbit/sec. Like WiFi, the advertised peek rates tend to be far in excess of what your likely to get most of the time.

Optical communication is the same way, there is massive bandwidth that isn't being used, so while it might roll out at 1Gbit, it wouldn't' surprise me that in 20 years a x8 stranded fiber network would be well into the Tbit/sec rate.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#93

Post by monocasa » Thu, Jun 14, 2018, 3:41 PM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #80

sigstoat wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

poles are uncommon in residential areas here, everything is buried. and digging is expensive.

It seems dumb that poles are uncommon in an area with little topsoil over a granite substrate? Why so fancy? Incidentally this could mean that the trailer parks are cheaper to serve than swankier neighborhoods; there are lots of poles in trailer parks.

It's Boulder, houses are getting close to California levels. The cheapest starter homes are around $700k.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#94

Post by s73v3r_ » Thu, Jun 14, 2018, 3:42 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #82

ttul wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is precisely the kind of long term investment that cities should make.

That's twenty years. There is a decent chance that mainstream high speed Internet will be wireless in 20 years.

That wireless still has to connect to a wire at some point.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#95

Post by monocasa » Thu, Jun 14, 2018, 3:42 PM UTC

leesalminen wrote: post #78

st26 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kinda makes it sound like they've got too much road. Property taxes are only a thousand or three per single family household, I believe.

It sure doesn’t seem that way :). Traffic in Boulder has gotten significantly more annoying over the last several years.

That's the explicit strategy of the "slow growth" crowd running city council.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#96

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 14, 2018, 3:43 PM UTC

psalminen wrote: post #81

makerofspoons wrote: post #18

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…

This is exactly what I was thinking about while reading the article. Funny they didn't mention it.

[deleted]

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#97

Post by Cshelton » Thu, Jun 14, 2018, 3:44 PM UTC

makerofspoons wrote: post #18

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…

Obligatory Sko' Buffs!

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#98

Post by lotsofpulp » Thu, Jun 14, 2018, 3:45 PM UTC

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.

Unless Comcast is doing a fiber installation to your home, it's not comparable. They are probably just raising the caps they have on their existing conditions, but the neighborhood is still sharing the same amount of bandwidth. It's also not symmetrical up and down.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#99

Post by njarboe » Thu, Jun 14, 2018, 3:49 PM UTC

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.

I have not studied the whole Boulder area in detail, but as a PhD Geologist and having visited friends in Boulder that have added a basement to their house, I'd say you might have been fed some misinformation. Maybe little topsoil but lots of glacial till. They might be right about digging being expense though. Glacial till can be full of huge boulders that are hard to trench.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#100

Post by s73v3r_ » Thu, Jun 14, 2018, 3:50 PM UTC

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.

The "America USA too big for fast internet," argument would hold a lot more water if our densely populated cities were shining bastions of broadband. As it happens, our cities have some of the shittiest internet available.