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Rural residents' DIY 1Gbps fibre project

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Re: Rural residents' DIY 1Gbps fibre project

#22
I applaud the effort but not the method.

The last video on their website shows the trenching, laying and backfill operation. IMO, it's better to lay a 2" or 4" continuous PVC pipe between the access points rather than lay the outdoor fiber directly into the trench.

It's better for protection, diagnostics, additional capacity, and if needed, other types of cable (twisted pair, coax) can be run alongside.

I think what they are doing is great, but seeing the workers walking all over the fiber while backfilling the trench made me shiver. Isolating and repairing a break is going to be difficult downstream.

Re: Rural residents' DIY 1Gbps fibre project

#24
post #8

We run a couple of startups like B4RN, one in the US, one in Europe en one in South America. We build our own 10 GBps routers. Come join us, we have room for extra founders. info at buurtnet dot org

I see nothing on that site about the US. Where would I find such information?

I'm not displaying any info on the US on our sites, as we are still in stealth mode and have fierce (but toothless) competitors. If you want info, email me at info at buurtnet dot org

Re: Rural residents' DIY 1Gbps fibre project

#25
Interesting project, thanks for sharing.

The link, http://b4rn.org.uk, should have been directly used when submitting this.

This is not digg, nor slashdot, nor reddit. A description of, or commentary about, what you are submitting is not required, as the content should speak for itself.

Re: Rural residents' DIY 1Gbps fibre project

#26

This is a great initiative. I wonder if there are any plans to bridge sections with WiMax or similar and/or break out from 1G fibre to Copper GigE or wifi in population points to reduce the client-side install and equipment cost.

We use some of these tricks to reduce cost for people who don't need 1 GBps. But serious users all want 10 GBps fiber. We deliver that over 4 redundant connections of 10 Gbps each.

Re: Rural residents' DIY 1Gbps fibre project

#27
post #14

B4RN is using burial, which is a great approach for reducing long-term maintenance, but the extra costs of burial may or may not work in other localities. Burying wires in gravel, or burying below the usual furrow depths in farmer's fields is fairly easy, and trenchers are commonly available. (And if you bury your wires outside of the growing season, you won't disrupt the farming.) In an area of the US that I'm famil…

We build a fiber optic link of 10 miles in rural areas for less then $400 per house. I think many of the assumptions you make are incorrect, as we find no rural area that is to expensive to service. Just don't ask the incumbents.

Re: Rural residents' DIY 1Gbps fibre project

#30

As someone who grew up in a rural part of the UK, I can empathise with how annoying it is to be limited to a 56k connection with daily timed limits (usually around 3 hours or so) to be connected when all of your city dwelling friends have 1mbps broadband. I wonder if this is as much to do with property values as anything? It must be very difficult to sell a house with no option of fast internet and the modern interne…

I live in rural Yorkshire, and there's a village about five miles from me where broadband is not available - at all. There's no FTTC/H, no ADSL, no 3G coverage from any network, nothing. Residents still use either dial-up, or expensive, high-latency satellite connections from an outfit called Tooway. It's a beautiful little village, not bad for commuting into the nearby city of Sheffield, but last time I looked, ther…

If you tell us the name of the beautiful little village, we'll be happy to come build our 1-40 Gbps fiber in this village. Finding a local contact to help us get started would speed up that process.
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