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Bill to Require Fiber Optic Cable Friendly Highway Construction

thehill.com

1–10 of 25 posts

Re: Bill to Require Fiber Optic Cable Friendly Highway Construction

#3
Isn't there still a bunch of unlit fiber in the ground from the first tech bubble? Isn't the main problem getting fiber to the household (i.e. the last mile)?

If I understand this correctly, this legislation sounds like it might have been useful a decade ago.

Re: Bill to Require Fiber Optic Cable Friendly Highway Construction

#4

Isn't there still a bunch of unlit fiber in the ground from the first tech bubble? Isn't the main problem getting fiber to the household (i.e. the last mile)? If I understand this correctly, this legislation sounds like it might have been useful a decade ago.

Is that actually true though? I assumed a lot of it had been lit up since then, and if you assume continued exponential or even linear growth in internet traffic (cable tv becoming a relic of the 20th century, etc), it stands to reason we'll need more backbone capacity as well as more last-mile connectivity.

Re: Bill to Require Fiber Optic Cable Friendly Highway Construction

#8
Not the best title. The requirement is to build conduits (empty tubes) at the same time as the road. The fiber would come later.

Better write-up from when it was first introduced: http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/158975-e...

edit: title on HN was changed, woot :)

Re: Bill to Require Fiber Optic Cable Friendly Highway Construction

#9
post #4

Isn't there still a bunch of unlit fiber in the ground from the first tech bubble? Isn't the main problem getting fiber to the household (i.e. the last mile)? If I understand this correctly, this legislation sounds like it might have been useful a decade ago.

Is that actually true though? I assumed a lot of it had been lit up since then, and if you assume continued exponential or even linear growth in internet traffic (cable tv becoming a relic of the 20th century, etc), it stands to reason we'll need more backbone capacity as well as more last-mile connectivity.

I'm not even going to get into whether they're being honest about it, but when I called to ask about transferring my service to a new apartment, Verizon told me that they'd stopped rolling out FIOS to new locations because they didn't have the fiber for it.

I kind of just assumed that it was the prelude to asking for more money, but it seems like there's likely some truth to it.

Re: Bill to Require Fiber Optic Cable Friendly Highway Construction

#10
Somewhat related, the Southern Pacific Communications Company story is pretty interesting. Somebody had the vision to lay down fiber optic under all that rock and railroads ties. This network is now known as the vast Sprint Internet backbone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_Nextel#GTE_Sprint

http://www.rightofwaymagazine-digital.org/row/20110708?pg=31...

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