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How much would it cost to actually dig a line to the nearest Internet peering exchange? Just to build an underground backbone fiber line itself, in terms of co

How much would it cost to actually dig a line to the nearest Internet peering exchange? Just to build an underground backbone fiber line itself, in terms of cost/mile? And how different is that from a neighborhood underground line? This would be for Washington DC suburbs - Germantown, MD. I mostly want to know about the backbone-level work. We already have pretty fast Verizon FIOS, so I'm trying to figure out what it would take to go to the next level - 10gbps, etc..

grahamburger 10y ago
Once you start looking at trenching fiber you're looking at 10ks to 100ks. Not really my specialty, I would be looking at doing it wirelessly but yeah if you need 10gbps there's not a good wireless option right now. You can get up to 2gbps reliably on licensed wireless links, but in that area (lots of rain?) You'll need short links (3-4 miles tops) and big dishes.
- kuschku 10y ago
  Reminder: Check if in your city, the municipality has empty cable tunnels to each building – in many cities, that’s a thing, and you can pull your fiber through there with a simple RC car, and usually use them for free.
  - Ericson2314 10y ago
    That's a great trick, and the RC car part is hilarious.
shoo 10y ago
ballpark cost of trenching for fibre installation is AUD$120 / metre. this varies quite a bit depending on what you have to trench through. may be somewhat cheaper in US than Australia due to lower labour costs. e.g. Australia's minimum hourly wage is about double that in the US. can reduce costs by ~70% if you are able to re-use existing duct / conduit in the ground, but you'd have to negotiate usage of that
Veratyr 10y ago
I'm not sure how much of this is the trench itself but I asked a local ISP about how much it would cost to connect the apartment building I live in to the municipal owned (and shared) fiber located ~200ft down the street. I was told $15000, "most" of which was the trenching. This is a rather built up suburban area.
- grahamburger 10y ago
  Sounds about right. Great opportunity for wireless, though - If there's line of sight along that 200ft you could put up a wireless link for ~$2-3k and get fiber speeds to the whole complex.
  - BeefySwain 10y ago
    Unless I am missing something, I believe you could do wireless for well under $1k. Ubiquity is my go-to for things like this.
    - grahamburger 10y ago
      Yes you could do ubiquiti for considerably cheaper, probably even less than $500. I was thinking at least an airfiber to get up to gbps speeds and have a little more reliability, but yeah you can definitely go cheaper.
  - Veratyr 10y ago
    Really? This is a ~70 unit building. Is it really possible to get gigabit to all occupants with a single wireless link? The fastest I'm seeing seem to be ~6Gbit and for a building this size I'd expect we'd need at absolute least 10ish.
    - grahamburger 10y ago
      Yes, absolutely. If you put up a 1gbps wireless link everyone in the complex could do 1mbps speedtests at nearly any time. If you were to bring in unlimited bandwidth to your complex and look at a traffic graph of the usage, those 70 customers would only use more than 100mbps for maybe one hour out of the day, probably more like 20 minutes. If you had a 1gbps link feeding them, you would only be slowing them down at all for at most one hour a day, and even then you wouldn't be slowing them down in any noticeable way. It only takes at most a few dozen mbps to stream a 4k movie, for example. There would almost certainly never be a time when one of your customers could not stream a 4k movie. If it made you feel better you could sell it as a 900mbps product, or even a 500mbps product. Above 100mbps for residential it's really all marketing anyway - there are no services that a residential customer uses that provide a noticeably different experience at 1gbps vs 100mbps. Also see sathackr's post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12520531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12520531 EDIT: Consider also that the fiber line you'd be connecting to is probably at most 10gbps, and might only be 1gbps. Residential / muni fiber networks (including Google Fiber) are using at best 10gbps fiber circuits to feed entire neighborhoods with thousands of subscribers.

grahamburger 10y ago

Once you start looking at trenching fiber you're looking at 10ks to 100ks. Not really my specialty, I would be looking at doing it wirelessly but yeah if you need 10gbps there's not a good wireless option right now. You can get up to 2gbps reliably on licensed wireless links, but in that area (lots of rain?) You'll need short links (3-4 miles tops) and big dishes.

kuschku 10y ago
Reminder: Check if in your city, the municipality has empty cable tunnels to each building – in many cities, that’s a thing, and you can pull your fiber through there with a simple RC car, and usually use them for free.
- Ericson2314 10y ago
  That's a great trick, and the RC car part is hilarious.

shoo 10y ago

ballpark cost of trenching for fibre installation is AUD$120 / metre. this varies quite a bit depending on what you have to trench through. may be somewhat cheaper in US than Australia due to lower labour costs. e.g. Australia's minimum hourly wage is about double that in the US. can reduce costs by ~70% if you are able to re-use existing duct / conduit in the ground, but you'd have to negotiate usage of that

Veratyr 10y ago

I'm not sure how much of this is the trench itself but I asked a local ISP about how much it would cost to connect the apartment building I live in to the municipal owned (and shared) fiber located ~200ft down the street. I was told $15000, "most" of which was the trenching. This is a rather built up suburban area.

grahamburger 10y ago
Sounds about right. Great opportunity for wireless, though - If there's line of sight along that 200ft you could put up a wireless link for ~$2-3k and get fiber speeds to the whole complex.
- BeefySwain 10y ago
  Unless I am missing something, I believe you could do wireless for well under $1k. Ubiquity is my go-to for things like this.
  - grahamburger 10y ago
    Yes you could do ubiquiti for considerably cheaper, probably even less than $500. I was thinking at least an airfiber to get up to gbps speeds and have a little more reliability, but yeah you can definitely go cheaper.
- Veratyr 10y ago
  Really? This is a ~70 unit building. Is it really possible to get gigabit to all occupants with a single wireless link? The fastest I'm seeing seem to be ~6Gbit and for a building this size I'd expect we'd need at absolute least 10ish.
  - grahamburger 10y ago
    Yes, absolutely. If you put up a 1gbps wireless link everyone in the complex could do 1mbps speedtests at nearly any time. If you were to bring in unlimited bandwidth to your complex and look at a traffic graph of the usage, those 70 customers would only use more than 100mbps for maybe one hour out of the day, probably more like 20 minutes. If you had a 1gbps link feeding them, you would only be slowing them down at all for at most one hour a day, and even then you wouldn't be slowing them down in any noticeable way. It only takes at most a few dozen mbps to stream a 4k movie, for example. There would almost certainly never be a time when one of your customers could not stream a 4k movie. If it made you feel better you could sell it as a 900mbps product, or even a 500mbps product. Above 100mbps for residential it's really all marketing anyway - there are no services that a residential customer uses that provide a noticeably different experience at 1gbps vs 100mbps. Also see sathackr's post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12520531 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12520531 EDIT: Consider also that the fiber line you'd be connecting to is probably at most 10gbps, and might only be 1gbps. Residential / muni fiber networks (including Google Fiber) are using at best 10gbps fiber circuits to feed entire neighborhoods with thousands of subscribers.