One notable thing I don't see mentioned anywhere on the site: where do they plan to get their upstream bandwidth from, and for how much?
It's in the FAQs.
Rural residents' DIY 1Gbps fibre project
31–37 of 37 posts
Re: Rural residents' DIY 1Gbps fibre project
#32As 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…
It's really unfortunate that there are still places where people casually call 1 mbps "broadband." It's the same in rural areas of the USA though.
This was ~2002
Re: Rural residents' DIY 1Gbps fibre project
#33I 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…
Trenching a conduit is multiple times more expensive than laying fiber direct. More than likely using conduit would not be cost effective.
With a conduit you have to: (i) purchase the conduit, which is more expensive than the fibre cable itself, (ii) install the conduit, (iii) blow the fiber cable into the conduit and (iv) install all the support infrastructure required for a conduit system, such as manholes and cable wells.
Furthermore access points have to be installed at close enough intervalls to make air blowing or water jetting possible. In rural settings this might well be far more often than otherwise needed for a direct burial network. In all the steps along the way, a conduit based network drives up the cost, resulting in a multiple on the buildout cost.
Protection, diagnostics, additional capacity and other media. None of the aforementioned are necessary any better or easier in a ducted network. A duct does not protect against backhoe fade any better than a proper direct burial cable. Diagnostics are done the same way in a ducted and a direct buried network. However direct burial cables with metallic streng members are easier to find than a non-metallic ducted cable. Adding more cables to a small diameter duct is not always easy, feasible or straightforward, especially if the duct was not properly or professionally installed. As to other media, such as metallic cables, the whole point of installing a fiber network is to only need to maintain one outdoor plant, not multiple legacy networks.
In addition to the extra cost, there is a lot of fun and games to be had if you install ducts in regions with subzero temperatures. Water is going to get into the ducts and then you are going to have giant icicles with cable in the middle and duct on the outside.
Walking on a proper direct burial fiber optic cable is not even going to register. Anything less than a backhoe is unlikely to even leave a mark. On the other hand if you even look funny at a ducted cable, you might have problems.
Repairing a ducted network or a direct burial network is basically the same. You excavate the problem area and you replace the faulty parts. The main difference is that in a ducted network, you are going to spend most of your time fiddling and fixing the ducts, less time with fixing the fiber optic part.
Now, what a ducted network gives you, is flexibility, but at a greater cost. If properly built that is. A ducted network means you might not have to retrench later, but this might not be an issue in a rural setting.
Re: Rural residents' DIY 1Gbps fibre project
#34If you go active ethernet, not GPON/EPON...
This is now particularly economical for two reasons, aside from the cost of the fiber to the home itself (either aerial or buried, which is going to cost more for labor/bucket trucks/trenching than for the fiber itself). Why?
1) Inexpensive good quality 24-port 1U switches from Taiwan (Planet.com.tw) with 24 1000Mbps SFP ports, 10gigE uplink.
2) Inexpensive $65 1000BaseLX SFPs
3) CPE routers like the Mikrotik RB2011Ls which have a SFP port.
Re: Rural residents' DIY 1Gbps fibre project
#35This may actually be much easier in a rural area, as opposed to urban/suburban. Rural landowners have large tracts of land, and the land is in fewer hands. You need less individuals to buy-in, since a single buy-in on the project can mean miles of line. You don't need a jackhammer to dig up sidewalks and streets, and you (presumably) don't need as many (if any) permits; you don't need to take as much care not to disr…
The ratio of landowners to households should be very close to 1:1 in the country. (-: In the city, there will be somewhat fewer landowners because of multifamily dwellings (apartments and similar).
I agree with your permits and jackhammer points.
Re: Rural residents' DIY 1Gbps fibre project
#36There is some financial trickery going on here. It's buried in Section 6.1.3 of the business plan (pp 23-24).
Any resident who invests £1500 or more can nominate a property for free connection and one year's free service. The tax authority gives a tax credit of 30% of that £1500, and the investment can be sold back in year 4 (2016?) at full value.
So, pay £1500 (or more) in 2012, get £450 in 2012 tax credit, then sell for £1500 in 2016. That's a 9.2% ROI plus free Gigabit Internet service. Of course, there's risk involved, just like any startup investment.
Re: Rural residents' DIY 1Gbps fibre project
#37B4RN 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.
The problem with incumbents is there already making money selling the old product which means Fiber instillation needs to be paid back on their 'extra' profits from running Fiber.