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“Dig once” bill could bring fiber Internet to much of the US

arstechnica.com

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Re: “Dig once” bill could bring fiber Internet to much of the US

#11

Post by zafka »

stronglikedan wrote: post #9
dbg31415 wrote: post #6

I think this bill is a great idea. All of my hassles with AT&T and Google wouldn't have come up if this law existed when my neighborhood in Austin was being built. Time Warner installed cable when the homes were being built. Then about 10 years ago AT&T went through and installed their "fiber" (their words, not mine), and tore up everyone's lawn in the process. This last year Google came in... and just made an enormo…

> and tore up everyone's lawn in the process They just did this to mine and a few neighbors, even though they weren't supposed to. They had a Ditch Witch (DW) Directional Drill [0] that would tunnel under all the lawns, and only make a little hole every few houses. However, they didn't count on the coral rock, and the DW broke, so they had to bring in a bigger one which was going to take a week or two. Well, they wer…

Where do you live? Miami area?

Re: “Dig once” bill could bring fiber Internet to much of the US

#12

Post by zkms »

rayiner wrote: post #2

This is a great bill. It creates a slight public subsidy for broadband, but the total amount of subsidy is minimized by tying it to digging that's already going to be done. This should be extended to power line and water pipe construction. No reason you can't put in some dark fiber while you've got someone up there hanging new power line (which I imagine is way more expensive). Most importantly, it minimizes market d…

The "dig once" policy is a public subsidy for broadband in the same sense that a national roads network is a subsidy for FedEx or Amazon.com -- it indeed reduces the costs that operators need to pay to get into the market but there's a panoply of benefits to the public beyond those of a literal, "paying government money to broadband operators" subsidy.

Re: “Dig once” bill could bring fiber Internet to much of the US

#13

Post by npratini »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #8
rayiner wrote: post #2

This is a great bill. It creates a slight public subsidy for broadband, but the total amount of subsidy is minimized by tying it to digging that's already going to be done. This should be extended to power line and water pipe construction. No reason you can't put in some dark fiber while you've got someone up there hanging new power line (which I imagine is way more expensive). Most importantly, it minimizes market d…

I agree entirely. If you're building a road or doing construction, why not put in conduits that allow installation or upgrades for years to come, rather than having to dig repeatedly? And if you have to re-dig an area because it doesn't have conduits, don't just bury a wire, install conduits . This is directly the job of local government: to build infrastructure. And this wouldn't force the use of any particular serv…

I'm definitely on the same page - that said, a big determining factor of success is the efficiency of the local gov in question. For example, dig once already exists in San Francisco (http://sfgov.org/dt/dig-once). I've had a conversation with someone who project manages fiber installation across the city, and he mentioned it takes many months for any dig to actually happen, because every potential stakeholder has to sign off before going forward.

Again, am on the same page that dig once makes a lot of sense, but there are some practical roadblocks that could make it less desirable.

Re: “Dig once” bill could bring fiber Internet to much of the US

#14

Post by 33W »

stronglikedan wrote: post #9
dbg31415 wrote: post #6

I think this bill is a great idea. All of my hassles with AT&T and Google wouldn't have come up if this law existed when my neighborhood in Austin was being built. Time Warner installed cable when the homes were being built. Then about 10 years ago AT&T went through and installed their "fiber" (their words, not mine), and tore up everyone's lawn in the process. This last year Google came in... and just made an enormo…

> and tore up everyone's lawn in the process They just did this to mine and a few neighbors, even though they weren't supposed to. They had a Ditch Witch (DW) Directional Drill [0] that would tunnel under all the lawns, and only make a little hole every few houses. However, they didn't count on the coral rock, and the DW broke, so they had to bring in a bigger one which was going to take a week or two. Well, they wer…

Or for me, accidentally cut the copper line to the rest of the neighborhood and had to dig a trench in my front yard to repair it. I'm on the corner and towards the front of the subdivision, so I had quite a bit of work being done over the past 6 months.

Re: “Dig once” bill could bring fiber Internet to much of the US

#15

Post by massysett »

dbg31415 wrote: post #6

I think this bill is a great idea. All of my hassles with AT&T and Google wouldn't have come up if this law existed when my neighborhood in Austin was being built. Time Warner installed cable when the homes were being built. Then about 10 years ago AT&T went through and installed their "fiber" (their words, not mine), and tore up everyone's lawn in the process. This last year Google came in... and just made an enormo…

"All of my hassles with AT&T and Google wouldn't have come up if this law existed when my neighborhood in Austin was being built."

This law would apply only to federally funded road projects, which likely carry the vast bulk of auto traffic but are a small fraction of the total road mileage; it will not affect most neighborhood streets with lawns.

Re: “Dig once” bill could bring fiber Internet to much of the US

#16

Post by massysett »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #4
rayiner wrote: post #2

This is a great bill. It creates a slight public subsidy for broadband, but the total amount of subsidy is minimized by tying it to digging that's already going to be done. This should be extended to power line and water pipe construction. No reason you can't put in some dark fiber while you've got someone up there hanging new power line (which I imagine is way more expensive). Most importantly, it minimizes market d…

More importantly: we already did this. Remember when they overhauled the highway system in a lot of areas back in the late 80s and through the 90s? While they were digging, they dropped a lot of fiber. Almost all of the major routes we use today for teleco/internet routing were laid or substantially upgraded then. Almost all the dark fiber laid was laid then. The hilarious part? Most of the fiber laid could do at lea…

"outside of last mile usage, which this bill is directed at"

How is that? It applies only to federally funded projects. Most homes and businesses are not on federally funded roads. This bill is not a FTTH driver.

Re: “Dig once” bill could bring fiber Internet to much of the US

#17

Post by rayiner »

zkms wrote: post #12
rayiner wrote: post #2

This is a great bill. It creates a slight public subsidy for broadband, but the total amount of subsidy is minimized by tying it to digging that's already going to be done. This should be extended to power line and water pipe construction. No reason you can't put in some dark fiber while you've got someone up there hanging new power line (which I imagine is way more expensive). Most importantly, it minimizes market d…

The "dig once" policy is a public subsidy for broadband in the same sense that a national roads network is a subsidy for FedEx or Amazon.com -- it indeed reduces the costs that operators need to pay to get into the market but there's a panoply of benefits to the public beyond those of a literal, "paying government money to broadband operators" subsidy.

Infrastructure, whether broadband or highways, has positive externalities that are hard for infrastructure builders to capture, so the free market under-invests in infrastructure. However, government investment in infrastructure also is distortionary and needs to be considered in every instance.

For example, it's great that we can get products delivered overnight from Amazon. However, as you point out, that is effectively a public subsidy of Amazon's business model, and that has negative effects too. Subsidizing public road infrastructure makes shipping products across the country artificially cheaper compared to making and selling them locally. That essentially strips away an advantage local retailers and manufacturers would otherwise have against big, national companies like Amazon.

Re: “Dig once” bill could bring fiber Internet to much of the US

#18

Post by saycheese »

Possible my numbers are wrong, but based on the "1% of the project cost" appears this will cost 3.5 billion dollars in total; $305 billion total cost [1] * 1% of total = three billion fifty million for "dig once"

[1] "Congress passed the five-year, $305 billion “Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act” on Dec. 3, 2015, and President Obama signed the bill the next day."

Re: “Dig once” bill could bring fiber Internet to much of the US

#20

Post by hackuser »

It might work out fine, but we need to hear from the people who would carry the actual the burden under this proposal, such as those in the construction industry that will have to lay the conduit under 'Dig once', and those who currently make money from laying cable who will have their business taken away. We also need to hear from experts in that field about how much it will cost and how it is best done.

As written it sounds like those IT projects devised by people who have no knowledge of the field, who imagine that their idea must be easy, who make and sign off on a plan, and only then get me involved. These are almost universally poorly conceived, unnecessarily expensive, and produce bad results. In fact, in those respects it reminds me of another great public networking idea, public, city-wide WLAN networks (and in that case too, many IT professionals drank the Kool-Aid without thinking through the details).

Also, when we talk about how easy it is - it is always easy when someone else has to figure out how to implement it, do the work, and pay the bill.

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