Municipal control of infrastructure +1
Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt
101–110 of 214 posts
Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt
#102I work in downtown Boulder in a tech startup. The tech and startup scene is amazing for a city the size of Boulder. After Longmont and Fort Collins, finally Boulder will be getting the municipal broadband as well. Nice!!!
I'd just like to point out that Fort Collins voted in municipal fiber, but it has yet to be implemented as Comcast and I assume other telecoms have been pushing back and delaying the roll out. We had to re-vote on it last year to approve more money for the project.
I live in Fort Collins - bonds are being sold, and everything is going forward. In theory, the first customers should be on Mid to late next year.
Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm impressed by your math skills, but I used to live in Boulder and I'm shocked to learn that 25% live below the poverty line. Is that really true? I suppose it could be the fact that many are college students, but still. That seems high.
Those trailer parks in North Boulder are very well hidden. Many don’t even realize they’re there. Some of the nicest trailers I’ve ever seen, FWIW.
There's also the hippy co-ops like the radish.
There's also a ton of kids waiting fir their trust fund to, vest I guess?, and don't really care that they aren't making any money at the moment.
Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
It sure doesn’t seem that way :). Traffic in Boulder has gotten significantly more annoying over the last several years.
Perhaps too much road infrastructure has induced traffic? https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/
I only visit Boulder, so I'm not positive, but it seems to me that they have tons of people coming in from the suburbs. Most of the people inside of Boulder, in my experience, tend to ride bikes and/or take public transit, but you need a car to get to some trails and you need a car to get into Boulder as a resident of the surrounding areas (or at least most people do).
Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt
#105Earlier 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.
winter storms and strong winds. i've never lost power in the boulder area, except when a substation failed, regardless of the weather. when i lived in areas with overhead lines, power loss was a regular event, occurring during winds that would be considered mild in boulder.
Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
there are at least 3 trailer parks in boulder, maybe more. i wonder how prices in them have changed over the years? :)
Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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
What did Japan do with their vast broadband lead (which has now eroded entirely)? How did that dramatically benefit their economy? It didn't revolutionize their tech output, it didn't jump start their moribund economy. Finland has been among the ten fastest nations in regards to broadband speeds for a long time. That didn't do much for their economy as it languished in a near ten year recession. It didn't spur an epi…
Of course it doesn't matter economically - when only a tiny fraction of a potential userbase has anything approaching gige to the home there is going to be zero application development based on those requirements.
You may be entirely correct that "150mbps is good enough for anyone" - but based on watching capabilities grow with data speeds the past 35 years I'd bet heavily in the opposite direction. If 50% of Internet users in the US had uncapped gige I think you'd see some rather interesting tech start using it once they can rely on it.
Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt
#108I 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 the case in many, many major cities. When discussing this type of rollout, it’s almost always talking about last-mile, which is the most expensive to rollout and maintain.
Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt
#109Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt
#110Some 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…
Exactly. This makes so much sense for the city. This type of calculation doesn’t even include a fuzzy bump in technological growth for a city that’s connected with cheap fiber.