The future of Fiber • Hacker News Board

Re: The future of Fiber

#271

Post by mkr-hn » Thu, Feb 20, 2014, 1:36 PM UTC

throwaway_yy2Di wrote: post #263

jader201 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And with line breaks: Arizona - Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe California - San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Mountain View, Palo Alto Georgia - Atlanta, Avondale Estates, Brookhaven, College Park, Decatur, East Point, Hapeville, Sandy Springs, Smyrna North Carolina - Charlotte, Carrboro, Cary, Chapel Hill, Durham, Garner, Morrisville, Raleigh Oregon - Portland, Beaverton, Hillsboro, Gresham, Lake Oswego, Tigard Tennesse…

And with frivolous awk formatting: Arizona Phoenix Scottsdale Tempe California San Jose Santa Clara Sunnyvale Mountain View Palo Alto Georgia Atlanta Avondale Estates Brookhaven College Park Decatur East Point Hapeville Sandy Springs Smyrna North Carolina Charlotte Carrboro Cary Chapel Hill Durham Garner Morrisville Raleigh Oregon Portland Beaverton Hillsboro Gresham Lake Oswego Tigard Tennessee Nashville-Davidson Te…

Hopefully one of those cities around Atlanta will grow a line out to Winder.

Re: The future of Fiber

#272

Post by mkr-hn » Thu, Feb 20, 2014, 1:46 PM UTC

sandyarmstrong wrote: post #184

drawkbox wrote: post #171

There is such a high demand for this product because it fulfills a great need and requirement to be competitive, but we are being held back by our providers. Our progress, held back due to lack of innovation. Google Fiber will rule the US as soon as it can get rolled out. Cable companies better be really nice and start being competitive. Please bring it to Chandler, AZ. This article comes to mind, I recently, through…

I recently had to restore a 500GB cloud backup over Cox. I called them to ask if they could give me an exemption for one month, and not only did they refuse, but they could not honestly tell me what would happen if I went over the cap, except that I would get an email about it and my Internet "might slow down". I work from home, and can't afford any degradation of service, so I've been doing the restore piecemeal and…

At least Comcast got something right.

Comcast charges 20 cents per gigabyte in 50GB chunks over 300 after you use up your three "courtesy" overage months. There's a little monthly report in the billing site. The price is thousands of times the actual cost to Comcast, but at least I know the limits and the cost of going over them.

My understanding is that Comcast Business has no caps.

Re: The future of Fiber

#273

Post by CountHackulus » Thu, Feb 20, 2014, 2:19 PM UTC

orbitur wrote: post #232

CountHackulus wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, every major ISP has bandwidth caps, some of which are prohibitively small (20GB). Even the smaller upstart ISPs, like TekSavvy are forced to have a cap (though at 300GB) due to wholesale laws. At least they offer unlimited for a reasonable amount of money. Canada is definitely behind the US for internet access, it's even behind many (if not most) third world countries.

I have BellAliant 80Mb/30Mb in NS. No cap.

You don't have an explicit one, but they have an "excessive use of bandwidth" clause in the contract, which is similar to the early days of Rogers Cable.

Re: The future of Fiber

#274

Post by _mulder_ » Thu, Feb 20, 2014, 2:22 PM UTC

geitiegg wrote: post #259

DigitalSea wrote: post #254

Google needs to bring Google Fiber to Australia. The coalition have plans for a fiber/copper hybrid in which the fibre runs to a box and then you connect via outdated copper from the street to your house. It's like driving a sports car 90% of the way and a horse and cart the rest of the 10% — I think what Google are doing is great, they need to expand though. I know New Zealand could use something like Google Fiber a…

While I won't argue that Fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) is better than Fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) it is, at the very least, much cheaper. The cost per consumer for "last mile" connections can be an order of magnitude more than those used in the core network because of the economies of scale at play. [1] Most of the UK is currently being set up with FTTC, representing a dramatic increase in the country's average broadb…

Is it cheaper? It depends on how long you expect your investment to be relevant for. If you accept that FTTH is going to be an ultimate 'end game', at least for the foreseeable future, then going FTTC is not cheaper. It may require less capital investment today than FTTH, but in 5 years, you're having to invest a similar amount all over again, in new equipment or by going FTTH.

FTTC is just delaying FTTH.

Re: The future of Fiber

#275

Post by triangleman » Thu, Feb 20, 2014, 4:02 PM UTC

_greim_ wrote: post #90

JunkDNA wrote: post #41

I know it would be painful, and the local politics certifiably insane, but if Google wanted draw attention to the dysfunctional monopoly of the cable industry, there would be no better place to wire than Philly. Take the competition right into Comcast's back yard. Start with a rollout of the Philly 'burbs where the Comcast execs live and work inward toward the city from there.

It would go against their strategy. By wiring up all the GF-friendly cities first, people living in GF-unfriendly cities start asking "why can't we have that, too?" Thus ratcheting up pressure on the local political systems.

Ah yes, the Wal-Mart model.

Re: The future of Fiber

#276

Post by johnward » Thu, Feb 20, 2014, 4:14 PM UTC

austintaylor wrote: post #89

johnward wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't raleigh already have municipal fiber? I know there is fiber in in the RTP area.

Nope. There is municipal fiber in Wilson, NC which is about an hour away (greenlightnc.com). I'm not sure about RTP. A crappy anti-muni broadband law was passed at the state level a couple of years ago ( http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2011/03/cable-backed-anti... ), so apparently the network has to be run by a private company? There is joint initiative by local municipalities and universities to bring in a privat…

Maybe I was thinking that they were going to get muni fiber but then they passed a law to not allow it.

Re: The future of Fiber

#277

Post by kalleboo » Thu, Feb 20, 2014, 4:47 PM UTC

thedufer wrote: post #261

kalleboo wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Vacancies in NYC are incredibly low Same in Sweden. Often you need to be on a waiting list for 2+ years to get an rental contract in a large city in Sweden (longer in Stockholm[0]). The impatient among us flit around on 6-month second hand rentals. Or you buy an apartment with an untenable loan and hope the bubble keeps inflating... [0]The wait is currently on average 7 years in Stockholm municipality. 15 years if…

Is there some sort of regulation going on there? In a normal market I would expect rent to rise until the wait time was down to something reasonable. You can always find an apartment within a week or so in NYC - its just going to be really expensive. COL here is about double the national average, largely driven by housing costs.

Yeah, there's some quite heavy rent control http://www.thelocal.se/20131113/rent-control-blamed-for-hous... http://www.thelocal.se/20130723/49206

Re: The future of Fiber

#278

Post by Nrsolis » Thu, Feb 20, 2014, 7:03 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #79

Nrsolis wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YUP. The short answer is: it's much easier to build in a greenfield environment where there is a "helpful" local government, ready access to rights-of-way, and underserved population, easy construction costs, access to labor, favorable tax climate, and a host of other reasons that come before "lots of people who want gigabit speeds". The economics of building (or overbuilding) a gigabit fiber network drive you toward…

> (network cables are "property" for property tax purposes) WUT.

Look it up. If you install $15M of fiber in/around town, you can bet your bottom dollar that the local taxing authority considers that real property and will tax you on it at appropriate rates.

In TX, colo providers have had to send business property tax bills to people who locate their servers in those centers. Sometimes those bills are quite shocking.

In CT, the local phone companies started putting DSLAMs on poles because it got them off the ground and saved them millions on property taxes because there was a rate differential between property that was pole attached and property that was on the ground.

Never underestimate the effect that taxes can have on the deployment, operation, and maintenance of business property. You can explain great deals of financial shenanigans to the real savings associated with avoiding taxes.

And who gets screwed? Anyone who doesn't have the scale or size to make avoiding that tax worthwhile. e.g. the small-business owner.

Re: The future of Fiber

#279

Post by tekalon » Thu, Feb 20, 2014, 8:15 PM UTC

nobleach wrote: post #199

aetherson wrote: post #9

I guess I fundamentally do not understand what makes a city a good or bad candidate for this kind of service. Why is SF or NY not an obvious candidate? Density means that there are lots of customers for a given physical length of infrastructure rollout, they're both wealthy cities with a large proportion of techies who could use faster internet... I'm sure they're both nightmares to deal with permitting processes for…

When Google came to Provo, UT, it wasn't because of the friendly government. It was simply that it already had plenty of fiber and a bankrupt ISP that Google could buy out. There's plenty of fiber that's been buried in the ground since the 80's. Some is in use, some is not. Some has more potential. Here in Utah, we have another fiber company called Utopia... I wouldn't be surprised if Google isn't just going around b…

I had the same thought when I heard this. With Utopia already laying down the fiber (and keeping track of where it is compared to Provo) it would be smart move for Google to buy up Utopia.

Re: The future of Fiber

#280

Post by ericd » Thu, Feb 20, 2014, 8:48 PM UTC

tanzam75 wrote: post #269

ericd wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're right that that was his point. It wouldn't necessarily come out of their budgets, though, it could be done with debt financing on the project itself, repaid purely from the revenues from leasing access to the network to the customer facing ISPs. I also don't think it would necessarily be used by a small subset of the constituents - it seems as though it could potentially be much cheaper than alternativ…

Large capital expenditures undertaken by municipalities are usually funded by bonds. A municipality would issue bonds to fund the replacement of their water mains, which are breaking and pouring water into the streets every winter. It would issue bonds to renovate their elementary school, which has a leaking roof, asbestos insulation everywhere, and drinking fountains that dispense leaded water. Municipalities have l…

Ah great, thanks for the concrete info!

I imagine that a fiber rollout would create entirely new revenue, though, where upgrading water mains and other existing infrastructure wouldn't, so it might be viewed by the govt as offsetting any difference in interest rates?