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

131–140 of 214 posts

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#131

Post by davidw »

yahyaheee wrote: post #124
davidw wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very nice place. Unfortunately, they are egregiously failing to provide enough housing at reasonable prices, so they copied that bad aspect of silicon valley as well as some of the good.

can't build up, can't build out. Its a tricky problem, but we don't want to use our open spaces for development. The surrounding areas are reasonable

You can grow up, in, out, or grow the prices. Boulder has chosen the latter, meaning that more and more people drive into the town to work. Big win for the environment, there...

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#132

Post by realslimjd »

gonzo wrote: post #54
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…

The monthly cost of fiber in Austin has gone up a bit since you last checked. Google and Grande charge $70/month. AT&T is up to $80.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#133

Post by MAGZine »

sigstoat wrote: post #63
dahart wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

at least in newer developments, my understanding is most underground channels (think sewers) generally provide some facility for running new lines/equipment in them, to reduce the number of times that city streets need to be dug up to lay x,y or z.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#134

Post by planteen »

kiallmacinnes wrote: post #121
planteen wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Does it really matter if there are comms closets nearby though? It wouldn't surprise me if fiber optic cable was cheaper than cat6 to buy in bulk (Copper is expensive, and the process to manufacture the copper cables is more complex), and if you're doing fiber to the building anyway, you still end up with a media converter - so there is likely no significant cost saving there either. It may actually be higher cost to…

This was 10 years ago, but the data closets had SFPs on the switches for the fiber. So the cost of the "media converter" was really low - just needed a few. There was existing CAT5 in the walls, all of the runs would be well less than 100 m which is why I brought up the comm closets. For a new builds, I have no idea for the cost difference. But for the insane number of buildings wired with CAT5/CAT5e/CAT6, this solution works well. Trying to pull fiber to replace CAT5 (as in without removing the drywall) would be very expensive and likely to damage the fiber.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#135

Post by sanderjd »

yahyaheee wrote: post #124
davidw wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very nice place. Unfortunately, they are egregiously failing to provide enough housing at reasonable prices, so they copied that bad aspect of silicon valley as well as some of the good.

can't build up, can't build out. Its a tricky problem, but we don't want to use our open spaces for development. The surrounding areas are reasonable

I think the "can't build out" thing is over-emphasized. We can't build out only in the relatively skinny band of open space around town. But there is lots of space that is / can be built on outside that band, ie. Louisville, Superior, northwest Arvada (Candelas), Gunbarrel, Niwot, Longmont. None of thee places are very far from Boulder. What we need is better public transportation. Most people drive into town, so there is lots traffic and parking is hard, which makes people want to live in town to avoid that.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#137

Post by amorphid »

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…

In Australia, fiber-to-the-home vs. fiber-to-the-node has been a fairly political issue about which I knew very little, so I looked it up. [1] After reading about parent comment and the miles of unused fiber, I wondered what the difference between fiber near my home vs fiber in my home would be, and found some good info. [2]

[1l http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-13/federal-election-nb...

[2] https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/whats-difference-fttc-fttp-car...

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#138

Post by rayiner »

Retric wrote: post #123
rayiner wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you're willing to pay more. Most people probably aren't. (FiOS uptake rates are under 40% even though its always been much faster than competing cable services.) And the brutal economics of fiber really punish you for that. If your uptake rate goes from 50% to 33%, your per-subscriber costs have to go up to compensate (which puts even more downward pressure on your uptake rate).

FIOS includes TV. The real issue is Verizon is not that much better than cable companies.

I'm not sure I understand your first point? TV is a major part of the economics of fiber deployment. Chattanooga's fiber system also includes TV, so does Google Fiber. As to your second point--have you ever had FiOS? Verizon's wireline division is run like old-school AT&T--FiOS is very high quality.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#139

Post by Retric »

sanderjd wrote: post #125
tptacek wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

There is also a decent chance that it won't be. We (in Boulder) have this same "should we continue the status quo in the present because better technology may be widely deployed in the future?" debate with public transportation vs. self-driving cars / hyperloop / whatever and municipal power infrastructure vs. solar + storage. It's always a tricky question (and I don't come down on the same side in each of those deba…

If the network has been paid back then it's a non issue. Wireless broadband has a host of issues and fiber makes it's adoption less pressing. Sure, if it rolls out in 15 years then the city might be out some capital, but it also gets 15 years use from that fiber network. So, unless it's coming in the next 5-10 years it's probably not worth considering.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#140

Post by 15155 »

AlphaSite wrote: post #127
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…

100 miles of fiver isn’t really that much is it? Maybe in absolute terms but when you have runs to each house that’s probably less than a couple hundred homes

Boulder isn't very large.
Post reply on HN