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Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

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Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#141
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

unfortunately you can grow up, because of the view and its prohibited. You could potentially grow in and there have been a lot of condos built in recent years, but part of what makes boulder nice is that its not overdeveloped. Some people would prefer to pay a premium to keep it that way.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

yeah the transportation could definitely use some help

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#143
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

unfortunately you can grow up, because of the view and its prohibited. You could potentially grow in and there have been a lot of condos built in recent years, but part of what makes boulder nice is that its not overdeveloped. Some people would prefer to pay a premium to keep it that way.

> unfortunately you can't grow up, because of the view and its prohibited

Because they don't want to is the reason.

As a consequence, people like teachers, firefighters, police, nurses and so on can no longer afford it and must commute in to serve the landed gentry.

Yuck.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#144
post #57

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.

> upgrading us to 10gbe would be an optic swap in a pop, not digging cable out of the ground.

This is assuming the physical glass was rated for that kind of bandwidth. Cat6a can "technically" do 10gbe

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#145

Earlier 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.

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.

Regularly trimming trees around the power line seems less expensive than boring through granite? The frequency of storm-related outages is a good proxy for how much the power company is spending on vegetation removal.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#146
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unfortunately you can grow up, because of the view and its prohibited. You could potentially grow in and there have been a lot of condos built in recent years, but part of what makes boulder nice is that its not overdeveloped. Some people would prefer to pay a premium to keep it that way.

> unfortunately you can't grow up, because of the view and its prohibited Because they don't want to is the reason. As a consequence, people like teachers, firefighters, police, nurses and so on can no longer afford it and must commute in to serve the landed gentry. Yuck.

As a native to boulder I don't want them to. Nothing predicates you should have to live in boulder, or that the town has to be built up. Thats just a temporary solution, boulder has worked hard to keep the town nice and I appreciate that. They have done a lot of work to provide low income housing but it's a difficult task and we should continue to work on this. The workforce should be negotiating their salaries to compensate, and we should improve transportation for the surrounding areas.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Regularly trimming trees around the power line seems less expensive than boring through granite? The frequency of storm-related outages is a good proxy for how much the power company is spending on vegetation removal.

It's quite a battle as we also get gale force winds coming off of the mountains so often that it's not news, just a normal Tuesday.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#148

Earlier 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.

Most cities try to hide trailer parks as much as possible. 99% Invisible recently did an episode on mobile homes that was pretty interesting.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#149
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have used FIOS for the last 5 years. For a while they where throttling Netflix just like the Cable companies, so better sure but they also wanted to kill net neutrality just like the cable companies.

As to TV, you spread the network costs over both internet AND cable TV and should include a portion of TV/equipment rental revenue when calculating payback periods. Cord cutters are significant, but many people still want cable TV channels and rent DVR's.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#150

I moved from Amsterdam to Boulder, CO. The tech ecosystem is amazing here. It's crazy how many tech companies are in a tiny city with ~100k people. You just walk down the street and it's Nest, Google, Github, JumpCloud, SolidFire, Logrhythm, VictorOps and hundreds of smaller startups. Great ecosystem. People are friendly and welcoming. It's amazing, except the internet. It's expensive, unreliable, and slowwwww.

Calling it a tiny city is a bit of a stretch considering the sprawl along the entire front range (South Denver to Fort Collins). You're suddenly at 3+ million.

Sure, but you just described an area of approximately 2400 square miles. No one who lives and works in denver is going to be happy to start making the commute all the way to fort collins(or vice versa).
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