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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

#191

Post by paulie_a »

rayiner wrote: post #120
numbsafari wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$100/mo for FTTH vs. $69/mo for 250MB/s Comcast? I'll take the FTTH and leave Comcast and Century Link behind, thank you very much. Would be even better if the City charged you for the fiber link and then let you select your backend provider. E.g., the way consumer choice works in the electric space. Let the city run/own the cable, and let the back-end carriers compete to provide the backbone and value-added services…

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).

An extra 50 a month is definitely worth not ever dealing with Comcast support or their shitty network.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#192

Post by paulie_a »

jartelt wrote: post #55
rayiner wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's about 10 million per year in debt payments for the full $140 million investment. If you assume that 50% of households subscribe, and the city subsidizes rates so no capital is recovered from folks below the poverty line, that's about $686/year per subscribing household. Which is crazy high--the non-subsidized ARPU will have to be $140 to break even. (Which is also not out of line--Verizon will barely break eve…

Comcast charges $160 a month for 1000 Mbps internet and $110 a month for 400 Mbps. The $100 per month you quote isn't terrible when compared to those numbers.

If I was an employee of Comcast, when someone asked what I did I would be so ashamed I would rather say "i am a prostitute that uses the money for drugs".

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#193

Post by tw04 »

15155 wrote: post #144
tw04 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

We're talking single mode fiber, not miltimode. The glass hasn't changed in 25 years.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#194

Post by jbuzbee »

kyrra wrote: post #3

Longmont (which is ~12 miles north of Boulder) got municiple broadband a while back. https://www.longmontcolorado.gov/departments/departments-e-m... This also follows Fort Collins from 7 months ago: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/voters-reject-ca... Note that Longmont took a couple attempts I believe to get it passed (it failed in 2009 and 2011, then passed in 2013)

I'm in Centennial CO. We also voted in municipal fiber broadband a while back. My neighborhood is slated to get 1GB symmetric from Ting for $89

https://ting.com/internet/town/centennial

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#195

Post by AboutTheWhisles »

gnopgnip wrote: post #162
amorphid wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There is new tech like g.fast that enables gigabit speeds over copper wire like an existing phone line for short distances.

"First released in October 2013, and updated several times since, the DOCSIS 3.1 suite of specifications support capacities of up to 10 Gbit/s downstream and 1 Gbit/s upstream"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#196

Post by AboutTheWhisles »

philjohn wrote: post #182
amorphid wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The problem is that FTTP/H has a much larger up front cost because of having to clear out potentially blocked ducts if underground, and the labour intensive work that needs to be done at the property.

How is it different from cable? One person can dig a trench and lay cable through a large yard in about two hours. This is essentially how cable tv and internet are hooked up.

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#197

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#198

Post by 0xmaverick »

tschellenbach wrote: post #6

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.

How do you like it in Boulder ? (Question for others as well).

Re: Boulder moves to fund citywide fiber buildout through debt

#199

Post by Shivetya »

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…

Does all this math include building out the call center, technician and customer support, field cars, and on going maintenance? Building it is one thing, maintaining it; not just the cable but the hubs and data center; plus staffing with all be costs to be accounted for. Throw in do they need to subsidize or provide computers for the low income residents as well.

It isn't just lack of availability of internet that keeps low income out its the lack of devices to make use of the internet and rudimentary training.

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