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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

#171

Post by msbarnett »

jessaustin wrote: post #145
sigstoat wrote: post #105

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.

> Regularly trimming trees around the power line seems less expensive than boring through granite?

That's not going to do anything to stop ice from forming on the lines, which is a far bigger problem in the winter than tree falls.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#172

Post by gascan »

njarboe wrote: post #99
crunchlibrarian wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I live on glacial till, can confirm it's a huge pain to dig through, just in my own backyard. Drilling holes for anchors, I spend more time prying fist sized rocks than drilling. Which is incredibly difficult in a four foot deep, ten inch wide hole.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#173

Post by panopticon »

numbsafari wrote: post #159
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).

The average Comcast customer paid something like $150/mo in 2017. Replace that with a $100/mo. FTTH plan, plus Netflix and you're still saving money. And many people have Netflix + Comcast already.

I image that $150/mo average include cable and landline? I spent between $35-65/mo at my last 3 apartments (CA, KS, MO) for ~100-200mbps through Comcast for internet only.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#174

Post by gascan »

jessaustin wrote: post #145
sigstoat wrote: post #105

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.

The front range gets 100mph+ chinook winds, and late spring storms dump feet of heavy snow leading to what we affectionately call "treemageddon", during which town will be filled with the thunder of trees crashing down for hours and hours. It's not an ideal environment for lines on poles.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#175

Post by gascan »

exabrial wrote: post #22

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…

With the cost of copper rising, who knows, maybe fiber isn't all that much more expensive, at least when you're buying a lot of it.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#176

Post by gascan »

rb808 wrote: post #23
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.

That's bad, but also interesting that you can have the world's main tech region without much fiber to home. Maybe fiber isn't really that important.

It seems pretty clear municipal fiber is a reaction to poor quality of service, absent competition, and high pricing from the private copper, rather than a vital technological advancement.

Though Longmont residents tell me it is fast. Really fast.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#177

Post by gascan »

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.

Fits right in with the bigger NIMBY picture.

Also, from visiting the Bay Area, it's my opinion there's an overarching complete lack of investment in public infrastructure. It's not due to lack of money in the area; witness the countless exotic cars, bouncing down what I consider some of the worst pavement anywhere.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#178

Post by btrautsc »

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…

these are great stats.

I live in Chattanooga.

I know 3 residential users of gigabit fiber. (I'm not 1. 100 is perfect).

Don't get me wrong. The "gig" here has made a major impact. My company is based here and the change in volume/quality of startups from 7 years ago to now is staggering.

But... I'm not sure why Boulder needs this.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#179

Post by sanderjd »

rayiner wrote: post #170
Retric wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's coming in the next 5 years. AT&T and Verizon are already buying up the necessary spectrum and running trials with working hardware. There will be no point trenching fiber through everyone's yards when you can build a 5G cell in each subdivision for far less money.

I'll believe it when I see it. I don't mean that sarcastically, I mean it literally: when a few competitors appear to own sufficient spectrum, and trials with working hardware have been completed, I will believe it. Until then, I'm happy to pay some sales tax to improve existing well-understood but (in my opinion) under-deployed technology.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#180

Post by Tijdreiziger »

briffle wrote: post #36
exabrial wrote: post #22

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…

For all but the smallest apartment buildings, this is not a good idea. Ethernet has a 100m limit. By the time you go up a wall, back down it, zig and zag around things in the ceiling, etc, you can quickly hit that limit. Then you can start getting errors such as packet loss, crosstalk, etc. Yes, it depends on the size and layout of your building (maybe your building has a comms cabinet on each floor, or wing, etc) bu…

The downside is that you then need to give your subscribers modems. The dorms in my university town have Ethernet in them, and it's a hook-up-your-own-device type of deal.
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