Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

Post by gnopgnip » Thu, Jun 14, 2018, 5:57 PM UTC

amorphid wrote: post #137

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…

Post by driverdan » Thu, Jun 14, 2018, 6:02 PM UTC

yahyaheee wrote: post #146

davidw wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 co…

Post by rayiner » Thu, Jun 14, 2018, 6:15 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #149

rayiner wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 14, 2018, 6:17 PM UTC

teachrdan wrote: post #119

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…

The advantage of having this subsidized by Boulder is that the city will capture some of the increased productivity due higher speed internet in the form of taxes, both for individuals who are able to earn more money and companies that benefit from better internet infrastructure. I've also read about studies that show that access to the internet improves health outcomes for poor people, so Boulder may also benefit fr…

Post by rayiner » Thu, Jun 14, 2018, 6:23 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #139

sanderjd wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.